I’m reading a biography of Einstein, by Walter Isaacson. There are lots of “didja knows” throughout the book, but the theme seems to be how Einstein’s creativity and irreverence were the keys to his scientific life and success.
A few notable items that have nothing to do with that theme:
1. He had an illegitimate child (a daughter), with the woman who later became his first wife.
No one outside his family (and very few inside it) knew of the child until after his death, when some letters were discovered. All indications are that he never met her, and to this day, we don’t know whether she was given up for adoption, died young, or something else.
2. His Nobel prize wasn’t for relativity or for finding that energy equals the speed of light (in a vacuum) squared. It was basically for discovering photons. Most science majors probably already know that.
3. When we think of his genius and his huge insight that changed the world, we shouldn’t picture the old guy with crazy hair. He wasn’t an old guy when he wrote those amazing papers in the early 1900s. He was a young guy, in his 20s and early 30s. I think that’s important somehow.
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