Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

A scientifically sophisticated but also highly sensitive portrait of the great man. It is a biography written for physicists or students of physics, among whom I count myself fortunate to be. Strongly recommended.

The science...the physics is there for those who really want to know. There are no shortcuts or dumming it down. But the heart and the soul is also there of this truly brilliant mind. Over the years I've read this book several times, in fact, have had to order it three times, because every time I loan it to someone, it is never returned to me (I guess they liked it too.)

This is a beautifully written book. I have been intrigued by the personality of Albert Einstein since my childhood (when I saw a postage stamp with his portrait and the famous equation "E=mc^2"), and I always wanted to know what exactly has made him so famous. During my school years I loved to read books about physics, and always enjoyed lessons of physics in school. By that time I thought that I have really good grasp of physics, but still it seemed strange to me why, when the special theory of relativity was explained well enough in many accessible books, the general theory was only mentioned as "the greatest achievement of human mind", but it was never explained in detail, only some of its consequences, like the precession of Mercury's orbit or starlight bending by the Sun, were described, but nobody explained from where these 43" or 1,75" came from ! When in 1989 I bought this book, I enjoyed reading about the details of Einstein's biography, but I was quite shocked that most of the equations in the part about the general relativity were completely beyond my understanding. This fact had been irritating me for a number of years, until in 2002 I have decided to take the plunge and try to learn the general relativity properly. This has been a tough going and took almost two years, but by the end I could really understand what the terms, like the metric tensor, Christoffel symbols or R^i_jkl do really mean, or why R_ij-(1/2)*g_ij*R=k*T_ij, and I was also absolutely stunned by the beauty of this theory. This prompted me not only to read lots of other books about the relativity (MTW, Weinberg, Wald, Hawking & Ellis and many others), but also to learn the classical electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and now I'm trying to learn the quantum field theory - all this thanks to this excellent book !

that is what Einstein had to say, when in 1921 he was confronted with rumours that a non-zero aether drift had been discovered by Dayton Miller, a one-time junior of Albert Michaelson. When asked what he meant by this, he remarked "Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse". He is also said to have opined that he had "not for a moment taken [Miller's results] seriously". That was the kind of faith that Albert Einstein had in the laws of Nature that he discovered...a deep faith not capable of rational foundation..Albert Einstein...the man...the philosopher...the scientist...the physicist...the humanist...the legend...so much has already been written about this one extraordinary human being, that you can be forgiven for grimacing when you see this book and thinking, 'oh, no ! not another one in this never-ending craze'...but think again...this is THE definitive scientific biography of Herr Professor Einstein, coming as it is from a physicist who was close to this great man towards the end of his life. Abraham Pais does a superb job of presenting the state of physics before Einstein, how he changed that and how it has evolved since his times. Science was Einstein's life, his devotion, his refuge, and his source of detachment...Science was his religion...In order to understand the man, then, it is necessary to follow his scientific ways of thinking and doing...and that is what the book precisely does...One more thing...this is not a layman's book...if you have only a little idea of physics, and are averse to mathematical details, then look elsewhere...this is not for you...but if you have that 'holy curiosity' and 'wonderment of the spectacle that is science', with loads of perseverance, this book does an excellent job of satisfying that quest...it can inspire you to seek greater heights of understanding...(there are tons of references to other more detailed texts)...in the end, you will have had but just a glimpse of Einstein's oeuvre. Thank you.

Pais's book is the best scientific biography of Einstein to date. The author, as an eminent particle physicist turned historian, has the ability to understand and portray Einstein's work as few others could. Foelsing's biography is better for depicting Einstein's "life and times", and the scientific milieu in which Einstein came to maturity.