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What are you reading? March 17, 2023 [1]
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Date: 2023-03-17
In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books…
I am reading:
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson - Read from the chapter on the Special Theory of Relativity and his slow yet steady rise through European academia up until about 1909-1910.
Sure the science is impressive and the more that I slow down to read Isaacson’s description of the science, the easier I understand it.
I’m more impressed with Einstein’s humanness and the intellectual milieu of various European universities; Einstein’s inability to teach (at first, anyways), politics, his Jewishness, and his randiness is given a pretty full view. Isaacson also describes how he thought and how that made him distinctive from other physicists of his time (e.g. Planck or Poincare).
Such an enjoyable read.
HIs productivity was startling. In addition to working six days a week at the patent office, he continued his torrent of papers and reviews: six in 1906 and ten more in 1907. At least once a week he played in a string quartet. And he was a good father to the 3-year old son he proudly labeled “impertinent.” As Marić wrote to her friend Helene Savić, My husband often spends his free time at home ust playing with the boy.”
..He was not a polished lecturer but instead used informality to his advantage. “When he took his chair in shabby attire with trousers too short for him, we were skeptical, recalled Hans Tanner, who attended most of Einstein’s Zurich lectures. Instead of prepared notes, Einstein used a card-sized strip of paper with scribbles. So the students got to watch him develop his thoughts as he spoke.
During one lecture, Einstein found himself momentarily stumped about the steps need to complete a calculation, “There must be some silly mathematical transformation that I can’t find for a moment,” he said. “Can one of you gentlemen see it?” Not surprisingly, none of them could. “Then leave a quarter of a page We won’t lose any time.” Ten minutes later, Einstein interrupted himself in the middle of another point and exclaimed, “I’ve got it.” As Tanner later marveled, “During the complicated development of his theme he had still found time to reflect upon the nature of that particular mathematical transformation.”
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