Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance , Dennis Overbye , Viking / Penguin, New York, 2000. $27.95 (416 pp.). ISBN 0-670-89430-3
Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879–1909 , Edited by Don Howard and John Stachel , Birkhäuser, Boston, 2000. $54.95 (258 pp.). ISBN 0-8176-4030-4
The “Einstein Industry” is flourishing as never before. Since the appearance of Abraham Pais’s best-selling and still unsurpassed scientific biography of Albert Einstein, ‘Subtle Is the Lord …’ (Oxford U. Press, 1982), at least four other, more “popular” biographies have been published, as well as several other Einstein-related books such as a collection of quotations and Einstein’s love letters to his fiancée. Now Dennis Overbye, a well-known science writer and deputy science editor of the New York Times, has added his Einstein in Love to the list of Einstein biographies for a general audience.
Is there a need for yet another biography? Obviously Overbye thinks there is. In his prologue, he claims that this book is not a biography in the strict sense of the word, but rather “an attempt to bring the youthful Einstein to life.” The somewhat strange title, that suggests a musical comedy rather than a serious biography, must be seen in this light: The Einstein portrayed here is a man full of vigor and love—for physics as well as his companions, both female and male. Despite this somewhat different approach, Overbye’s book contains the usual biographical ingredients, such as a narrative of the well-known facts of Einstein’s life and an exposition of his science.
The latter is less successful than the former; although Overbye’s prose is clear and his style is polished, his discussion of the science, aimed at a general audience, is not always accurate. His description of Max Planck’s work on radiation theory, for example, and his summary of Hendrik Lorentz’s electron theory are not only inaccurate but sometimes downright misleading.
But where Einstein as a person comes to the foreground, Einstein in Love makes for good and entertaining reading. In a well-balanced account, Overbye succeeds in making Einstein come to life in all the complexities of his personality, which is no small achievement. He portrays Einstein as a human, not as a saint, and he makes no secret of the darker sides of Einstein’s personality—such as his less than exemplary behavior as a husband and father—without, however, giving them undue emphasis.
The book ends rather abruptly and unsatisfactorily around 1920, after the confirmation of general relativity’s prediction of the deflection of starlight by the Sun, which turned Einstein into a public figure almost instantly. It remains unclear why this cutoff point was chosen. Perhaps it is because Einstein’s correspondence up to 1918 is easily available, both in German and in English translation, and with detailed commentary, in the volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein that have been published so far. In any case, Overbye has made good use of the Einstein edition, enlivening his text with many well-chosen quotations. Despite the shortcomings noted earlier, his book is a useful addition to the Einstein literature.
Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879–1909, aims at a more specialized audience. This collection of essays is the eighth volume in the Einstein Studies series, edited by the well-known Einstein scholars Don Howard and John Stachel, and is partly based on papers presented at a meeting held in 1990.
As the title indicates, the volume focuses on the first 30 years of Einstein’s life, the years before he held an official academic position—the years during which he produced or laid the foundation of his most important work. In eight papers, the contributors to this collection explore the new material that came to light during preparation of the early volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, shedding light on such diverse topics as the influence on Einstein of his readings as an adolescent, the impact of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy on Einstein, and the genesis of special relativity. It is a very valuable volume for all scholars who are seriously interested in the intellectual development of the young Einstein.
