Einstein: The passions of a scientist by Barry Parker, Prometheus, $28, ISBN 1591020638 Reviewed by David Hughes
IF HE hadn鈥檛 won a Nobel Prize in 1922 and hadn鈥檛 been the greatest scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein would be regarded as refreshingly normal. But Barry Parker continually stresses the word 鈥減assion鈥�. After reading Einstein: The passions of a scientist, I was convinced that Albert had the usual emotions, but I was not sure whether they were passionate or not.
Einstein clearly liked women, lots of women, throughout his whole life, but I was not overly impressed by his rating on the passionate Lothario scale. He was fond of his violin, and of Mozart, Schubert and Bach. But so are lots of people. He enjoyed hiking and sailing, but they did not rule his life. Einstein supported many pacifist and humanitarian causes, and was outraged by anti-Semitism, but seemed rather reluctant to leave Berlin for Princeton in the 1930s. 鈥淧assionate鈥� seems to be the last word one would apply to his relationships with his children.
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Where physics was concerned, things were slightly different. Einstein clearly had a great love for theoretical physics and a deep respect for the mysteries of nature. Nothing can detract from his huge contribution to the subject. But there were many disappointments. His quest for a unifying theory encompassing not only gravity but also electricity, magnetism and the nuclear forces did not succeed. And his failure to predict the expansion of the Universe must have been galling.
Parker鈥檚 aim was to convince readers that Einstein was a passionate man, instead he has written a bland, uninspiring biography. The overall impression is the exact opposite of the one he intended. There seemed to be very little passion in Einstein鈥檚 early life. Instead, it was overshadowed by money worries and educational uncertainties. The problems of family bankruptcy vied with poorly paid part-time jobs and a pregnant fianc茅e much disapproved of by his mother. After sorting out special and general relativity, the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion you might have expected things to look up. But divorce and the need to support his two sons financially didn鈥檛 help. And in retrospect, leaving stable Switzerland for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Theoretical Physics in inflation-torn Berlin was a big mistake.
Einstein became a global celebrity in later life, but illness overshadowed much of the potential for enjoyment. Einstein: The humdrum existence of a scientist seems a more appropriate title.