Congratulations to Folsing and his superb detailing of the life story of the greatest man of our era. The book body extends from birth to death to 740 pages of wondrous facts concerning earthly locations and salary details interwoven wonderfully without pain for most readers. From this one source I believe one can determine where Einstein slept for each of his 27500 days on earth. By comparision we know little as to where George Washington slept The translation from German is exellent. One never chokes on a difficult english sentence and the continuity over time moves well throughout. The book maintains ones interest without a mistep. All the difficulties of Einstein not acheiving the all extensive unified theory or accepting quantum mechanics is handled most smoothly without recourse to detailed theory. The concepts of mathematics and theoretical physics glides effortlessly for both layman and science majors I would state with high probability even if Einstein adheres to his belief that God does not play dice. A wonderful slice of history with full charm and spin. ( )

“Einsteins mytische Größe, die heute noch viele Menschen berührt, gründet in vielen Aspekten, hat aber zuerst mit seiner Physik zu tun, und dies in mehrfacher Hinsicht.”



In “Albert Einstein - Eine Biographie” by Albrecht Fölsing”



Do you think Einstein or any other physicists born in 19th century would pass the PC test of today’s “wokeness”…? Very few, obviously, though even then there might have been some whose primary objective was to achieve unprecedented levels of smugness and blandness. In the 1920's Einstein would have been approaching middle age, and many of his views about himself and the world would have been very well established, including his assorted prejudices. Most of us have a large capacity for judgementalism, and it is no less apparent in those who are at pains to identify these attitudes and behaviours in others and admonish them for it than it is in anyone else. Why, in Einstein's case, should he not have been influenced by the same forces which determined the social values and prejudices of this time? Because he was a talented physicist whose accomplishments made an enormous impact? Einstein was still a human being, and not even his impressive intellectual capacity, scientific achievements and subsequent semi deification was capable of making him remote from his humanity or the vulnerabilities and vagaries associated with it.

I read this for the first time 2005 (see picture above with image of my book - photo). Back then in 2005 Einstein’s diaries had not been published with all the dirty bits that we now know. Einstein was a titan of theoretical physics, but when did he get to be a humanitarian icon? I bet he ate red meat, too. Probably even smoked tobacco, the old horror. Apparently he used gendered pronouns as well. It's all quite nauseating now that we live in the age of moral enlightenment. I'm glad the diaries came out it demonstrates what I see as a universal truth that all humans have the capacity for horrible views/actions and its dangerous to pretend that we don't because then we aren't as vigilant in our self-policing (looking at you virtue signallers). Many people gain a great deal of pleasure and a sense of superiority from discovering that others are racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic, etc., and sounding off about it. Many university courses contain a strong emphasis on this type of thought-policing, and it is fairly common in schools and the media. Some recent books on Einstein do an enormous amount to foster this sort of attitude. I know we live in the time of woke stupidity and for many of the under-employed and over-educated, spending some time on social media in the persecution of thought-criminals is a rare opportunity to express some anger and bile, before they return to the spreadsheet or the report on the sales figures. Finding out that Einstein was "racist" (who's next, I wonder!) is a bit like Mediaeval witch-hunters discovering that an elderly woman in the village flies around on a broomstick and casts spells. Delicious!

There are different ways of presenting, modelling and doing calculations about physical phenomena. The most famous example is electromagnetic radiation. Einstein established that electricity and magnetism are different measurable manifestations of the single (unified) electromagnetic force (one of the 4 known forces which haven't yet been unified). In practice, it turns out to be more convenient, for those capable of handling Maxwell's equations, to treat magnetism and electricity as separate interlinked phenomena. That makes life easier for experts in electronics, but it doesn't mean that they really are separate. Likewise, apples falling on people’s heads is a manifestation of something more fundamental than gravity that's beyond the grasp of your average (or above average) science graduate. Fortunately for us and any physics’ graduate willing to use this book, Fölsing knows his Physics and uses a very sensible approach when writing for instance about Maxwell’s equations.

Physics-wise Pais’ book on Einstein is still better because he doesn’t shy away from using equations, but if you want a “true” account of Einstein’s life without the wokeness bias of today this is still the book to go to. While Fölsing does a careful job of describing the context for the discovery of general relativity and how Einstein stumbled toward his final version, Pais provides the detail – the latter is very mathematical as I said above but also very rewarding. ( )