Variety of Men

In this book C.P. Snow writes portraits, or 'intellectual biographies' of Rutherford, the mathematician G. H. Hardy, H.G. Wells, Einstein, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Robert Frost,Dag Hammarskjold, Stalin.The essays are given a special perspective by the fact that Snow knew personally many of his subjects. The most fascinating are those on Rutherford, Hardy, and Einstein.The essays are informed by Snow's great intelligence and considerable descriptive powers. Above all they are made such compelling reading because of Snow's knowledge of human character. In this essay on one of the great master- physicists of all time Rutherford who worked during the Golden Age of Physics Snow writes of scientists and scientific work in a general. " Nevertheless it is true that , of all the kinds of people I have lived among, the scientists were much the happiest.Somehow scientists were buoyant at a time when other intellectuals could not keep away from despair. The reasons for this are not simple. Partly, the nature of scientific activity , its complete success on its own terms,is itself a source of happiness; partly, people , who are drawn to scientific activity tend to be happier intemperament, the scientists did not think constantly of the human predicament.Since they could not alter it, they let it alone.When they thought about people, they thought most of what could be altered not what couldn't. So they gave their minds to the individual condition not to the social one." This description would seem to apply the essay on the most venerated of all Scientists of the age, Einstein. Snow describes a day long conversation with Einstein and gives a general overall impression of the man that has insights I have not seen elsewhere. Snow speaks of the surprising physical strength of Einstein, but more importantly of Einstein's political wisdom and courage. Snow sees him as having done yeoman work for Mankind after becoming a legend in his own lifetime.. He shows how Einstein while deploring all physical violence, nonetheless had the sense to support the Allied War effort. He shows how Einstein despite his deploring all nationalism supported the Zionist effort because of his sympathy for poor, outcast, suffering Jews of Europe. He shows how the solitary and lonely Einstein nonetheless truly felt and lived by the thought ' that if we do not live for others we do not live.' He shows too the undaunting courage and persistence of Einstein as scientist. In this he finds a comparison between the 'unbudgeable' character of Einstein and that of Churchill. Both persisted in their goals for Einstein the exploration of the Nature of Physical Reality, and pushed all aside to do this. Snow of course tells the story of the wonder year of 1905 and Einstein's three - revolutionary papers. He also tells once again the story of Einstein's weathering the great crisis of the divorce and separation from his two sons, and persisting in the thinking that resulted in the General T