A Boy with Something
on His Mind
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured
against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious
thing we have.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955), who also said:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead.
And, when he was asked for a message to put in a time capsule, this is what he wrote:
Dear Posterity, If you have not become more just, more peaceful, and generally more rational than
we are—why then, the Devil take you.
F
ifteen-year-old Albert Einstein is miserable. He is trying
to finish high school in Germany, but he hates the
school; it’s a strict, rigid place. To make things worse,
his parents have moved to Italy. They think he should
stay behind until his schooling is completed. It isn’t
long, though, before he is on his way over the Alps, heading
south to join them. Why does he
There, to start this book,
is a world-famous scientist
leave Germany? Today, no one is
having fun on a bike in
quite sure, but a letter from the
southern California,
school offers a powerful clue: “Your
in 1933. Having fun helped
make Albert Einstein
presence in the class is disruptive
successful. He never lost his
and affects the other students.”
boyish enthusiasm for new
What are the Einsteins to do
ideas. As a great scientist,
he found the quest to
with their son? He is a high school
understand the universe to
be an adventure, a privilege, dropout who has arrived without
and a grand game.
warning.
“Dear POSTERITY”? In the
third quotation (above),
Einstein is addressing
people who will live after
him. Post- is Latin for “after.”
To postpone means to “place
after” or put off. (Think
homework or chores.) A
postscript (or P.S.) comes
after the signature on a letter.
Einstein’s note is aimed at
future generations— which
means you. So what do you
think of his message?
2
Einstein Adds a New Dimension Chapter 1
Pauline Koch married
Hermann Einstein on
August 8, 1876, in the
synagogue in Cannstaff,
Germany. They became
caring parents who were a
huge success when it came
to getting their children to
think.
A dynamo converts energy
from one form to another.
It can go two ways. If it
turns mechanical energy
(a windmill, for example)
into electrical energy, it’s
called a generator. If it
does the reverse, turning
electrical energy into
mechanical energy, it’s called
a motor. The word comes
from the Greek dynamis,
which means “power.” In
this 1882 engraving of the
Levett Muller dynamo
system, lights are being
wired to the power source.
In Milan, Italy, Albert’s father
owns a factory that builds parts for
machines—called dynamos—which
take energy from coal, oil, or
mountain streams and convert it
into electrical power. A dynamo
can turn the lights on in a village.
It is 1895, and electric lights are a
new thing—and so is all the
electrical technology that is fueling
the Industrial Revolution.
Albert is going to take the world
way beyond the Industrial Revolution. He will bring about a
new scientific age. But no one knows that now. His parents
keep urging him to get serious about school. Hanging
around the factory may be fun and a terrific way to learn
about the exciting electrical machinery, but it isn’t enough
in the fast-changing world at the end of the nineteenth
century. His father suggests that Albert forget his
“philosophical nonsense.” He needs a degree.
While everyone in the family is worrying about his future,
young Einstein’s mind is somewhere else. There is a question
that won’t leave his head. “What would the world look like if
I could sit on a beam of light?” he keeps asking himself.
It becomes an obsession, trying to hang on to the light
beam. And, because
light travels through
space at 299,792.5
kilometers per second
(or 186,282 miles per
second), it also
means that in less
than a second, Albert
will leave the Earth
and its atmosphere.
What are time and
space and matter like
out in the vastness of
A Boy with Something on His Mind
Prague
Ulm
Aarau
Bern
Munich
Zurich
Milan
the universe? No one can help him answer that, because no
one knows what happens at the speed of light.
Einstein may not realize it, but he is thinking about the
scientific question of his age: Why does light—which is
electromagnetic radiation—behave the way it does? Light
doesn’t seem to follow the same laws of motion—Isaac
Newton’s laws—that guide a baseball when you pitch it.
Most people at the end of the nineteenth century don’t
know that this incompatibility is creating a kind of crisis in
scientific thinking. Newton’s laws of motion work
wonderfully well in our everyday world. Electromagnetic
laws, established by James Clerk Maxwell, work
wonderfully well, too. But electromagnetism is leading
science beyond the everyday. It is opening the whole
universe to consideration. And physicists have found that
where there is an overlap between Newton’s science and
electromagnetic science, there seems to be an incongruity.
Isaac Newton’s laws and James Clerk Maxwell’s laws
can’t both be right—at least not completely right. Hardly
anyone is bothered by this, except for a few physicists and
a 15-year-old thinker.
3
You can trace Einstein’s
early life beginning in Ulm,
Germany, and then to
Munich (also in Germany),
Milan (Italy), and the Swiss
cities of Aarau, Zurich, and
Bern. At 17, Einstein
renounced his German
citizenship because, as a
pacifist, he didn’t want to
serve in the German army. He
later became a Swiss citizen
and was a professor in
Prague (then in Austria),
Zurich (Switzerland), Berlin
(Germany’s capital), and
Princeton, New Jersey
(United States). He became
an American citizen in
1940, the year after World
War II broke out in Europe.
Most scientists round off
the speed of light to 300,000
kilometers per second, or
186,000 miles per second—
in a vacuum. (Put light in
water or another medium,
and it slows down.) Light
from the Sun, traveling
through the vacuum of
space, takes about eight
minutes to reach us.
INCOMPATIBILITY?
INCONGRUITY? They mean a
clash, a disconnect, a
difference. In other words, if
Newton’s laws of motion
were right, then something
was wrong with Maxwell’s
electromagnetic laws. Or
vice versa.
4
Einstein Adds a New Dimension Chapter 1
What makes Albert Einstein focus on this dilemma? No
one knows for sure, but 15 is a good age for questioning.
And Einstein, at that age, is already well grounded in
mathematics and the new sciences. He is fortunate; he was
born to parents who are interested in books and ideas and
conversation. Einstein says his father is “very wise.” (But he
isn’t much of a businessman; his factories keep failing.)
Six-year-old Albert is with his
sister, Maja. He was not quite
three when his parents told
him he would have a baby to
play with. He thought they
meant a new toy. He took one
look at her and, puzzled, said,
“Where are the wheels?”
Later, Maja remembered that
he had a temper as a boy and
sometimes threw things. She
said, “The sister of a thinker
needs a sound skull.”
Albert was born in the small
city of Ulm, but a year
later the family moved to
fast-growing Munich, the
intellectual capital of Bavaria
in southern Germany. This
hand-colored photo shows
Munich’s New City Hall
in the 1890s. Hermann
Einstein (Albert’s father)
and his brother, Jakob,
were business partners,
and their families shared
a comfortable house with
a tree-filled garden. The
Einstein brothers had big
plans. They wanted to
produce a dynamo that
Jakob had invented.
When Albert was a five-year-old in Germany and sick in
bed, his father gave him a compass. The needle always pointed
in the same direction. His father said that was because of
magnetism. It made the little boy so excited, he said he
“trembled and got cold.” How could an invisible force work
through the empty space between the magnetic north pole
and his home? No one could explain that to him. It made
him start thinking about nature’s forces.
Einstein’s uncle Jakob introduced him An animal called x?
Uncle Jakob is talking
to mathematics. He turned it into a game. about variables, the
“Algebra is a merry science,” said Uncle
unknown numbers in
Jakob. “When we are hunting an animal algebraic equations.
Here’s an easy one to
that we can’t find, we call him x until we find: x + 3 = 8. Happy
catch him.” Einstein’s mother read aloud hunting.
A Boy with Something on His Mind
5
Here’s Albert in a school
photograph taken in
Munich. He’s the small boy
near the right end of the
front line, next to the boy in
the light jacket. Einstein
showed a talent for math
and for Latin. His teachers
found him hopeless at most
other subjects.
from the best books she could find, and she introduced him
to the violin. His fiddle became more than a friend; it fueled
a lifetime passion for music. His younger sister, Maja,
described the violin as his “dear child.”
And then there was a regular dinner guest. His name was
Max Talmud (later called Talmey); he was studying to be a
doctor. It was a tradition for Jewish families to invite poor
students to dinner. Max came every Thursday, bringing the
latest ideas in science and mathematics to the dinner table.
Together, Max and Albert pored over a science series called
Popular Books on Natural Science. After dinner, Albert’s
father, Hermann, sometimes read Shakespeare or Goethe
to the assembled family.
When Albert was 12, Uncle Jakob gave him a volume
on Euclid’s math, and Einstein could hardly contain his
excitement when he delved into it. He called it his “holy
geometry book.” Max wrote that his eager young friend
was soon far beyond him in mathematical knowledge.
At about the same time, Einstein was discovering a
traditional world of holiness. His parents were
nonpracticing Jews, but the German state required that all
children have religious training. A distant relative was
enlisted to provide lessons for Albert. No one expected the
boy to find religious ecstasy, but he did. Captivated by the
Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (1749–1832) was a
German poet, playwright,
and scientist. Along with
William Shakespeare, he is
one of the great figures in
world literature.
Euclid taught math in
Alexandria, Egypt, in the
fourth century B.C.E. In
his famous 13-volume text,
The Elements, he boiled
down geometry to five
postulates—unproven
statements that are accepted
as true. You can read more
about Euclid in book one
of The Story of Science.
6
Einstein Adds a New Dimension Chapter 1
wisdom and ethics of his faith,
he was soon composing and
singing songs in praise of God.
When he tried to get his parents
to take their religion more
seriously, they were indulgent—
until he asked them to give up
eating pork.
Meanwhile Albert began
studying higher math on his
own, and he and Max kept
sharing books. When Albert was
—Albert Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes”
13, Max lent him a book by the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant is tough reading
at any age, but the boy was excited by the challenge. Kant
25
3
tried to connect all of the great ideas of philosophy into one
embracing system. Later, Einstein would attempt to do the
9
3
5
same thing in science.
4
5
I remember that an Uncle [Jakob] told me [about] the
Pythagorean theorem before the holy geometry book had
come into my hands. After much effort I succeeded in
“proving” this theorem on the basis of similarity of
triangles; in doing so it seemed to me “evident” that the
relations of the sides of the right-angled triangles would
have to be completely determined by one of the acute
angles. Only something which did not in similar fashion
seem to be “evident” appeared to me to be in need of
any proof at all.
4
16
Geometry Without a Doubt
Here’s the Pythagorean
Theorem pictured: In a
right triangle, the square
on the hypotenuse equals
the sum of the squares of
the other two sides. Or,
as here, 32 + 42 = 52.
Looking back on his childhood, Einstein described his wonder at a
compass and then wrote:
At the age of 12 I experienced a second wonder of a totally different
nature: in a little book dealing with Euclidean plane geometry, which
came into my hands at the beginning of a schoolyear. Here were
assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of
a triangle in one point which—though by no means evident—could
nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared
to be out of the question.This lucidity and certainty made an
indescribable impression upon me.That the axiom had to be
accepted unproved did not disturb me. . . . I could
peg proofs upon propositions the validity of
which did not seem to me to be dubious.
Try it: No matter what shape the triangle,
the three altitudes always meet at a point
(called the orthocenter). An altitude
line runs through a triangle tip and
perpendicular (at right angles) to
a side.
A Boy with Something on His Mind
The challenging reading he was doing gradually brought
Einstein to a philosophical view of religion. According to a
biographer, Denis Brian, “Attaching himself to no sect,
repulsed by the rigid rules and compulsory behavior
dictated by most organized religions, he was still considered
by those who knew him to have been deeply religious.”
But his deep reading didn’t help at the stern, rigid
German school—called a gymnasium—where no one
dreamed that what the questioning young Einstein was
doing would lead to a new model of the universe. There, he
was treated as a problem and a misfit, in good part because
he had no interest in practicing sports or memorizing
lessons or serving in the German army (mandatory at 16 for
German boys). A doctor, recognizing symptoms of
depression, gave Albert a note saying that he might suffer a
breakdown if he didn’t spend some time with his family.
That helped get him released. The gymnasium authorities
seemed happy to send young Einstein on his way.
The infinitude of the
creation is great enough
to make a world, or a
Milky Way of worlds, look
in comparison with it
what a flower or an
insect does in comparison
with the Earth.
—Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804), German
philosopher, Universal
Natural History and Theory
of the Heavens
Your (Probable) Future Is in the Data
sunspot number
In school, Einstein was fascinated with statistics,
a branch of mathematics about analyzing data.
His close attention to detail allowed him (and
will allow you) to see not only the specifics
but, surprisingly, the big picture. How? Here’s a
simple example: Scientists have painstakingly
counted the number of sunspots on the Sun,
year after year, for several centuries. If you plot
the average annual number on a long graph,
you can easily see a pattern: Sunspots peak in
number about every 11 years.You can then use
the pattern to predict the most likely year of
the next peak.“Most likely” means probably—
and probability is the term for predicting
outcomes based on statistics. Probably, not
certainly. A sunspot peak could happen from
9 to almost 14 years after the previous one.
Einstein pondered the probability and
statistics of something much tinier than
sunspots. He predicted how atoms and
molecules are likely to behave, on average,
based on temperature and pressure and
velocity.There’s more on his brand of
statistical mechanics to come.
Annual Sunspot Numbers: 1750–2010
300
200
100
0
1760
1780
1800
1820
1840
1860
1880
1900
1920
1940
7
1960
1980
2000
8
Einstein Adds a New Dimension Chapter 1
The Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology, nicknamed
Zurich Polytechnic, has an
international reputation
for excellence. Einstein
graduated in 1900 with
a teaching degree in
mathematics and physics.
The school’s superb
laboratory equipment (like
that above) was supplied
by Siemens, the giant
conglomerate that helped
put Hermann Einstein
out of business.
After 15-year-old Einstein arrives in Italy, his
parents suggest he come down to earth. The family
factory isn’t doing well. Albert has to find a career.
He says he wants to be a high school teacher, so he
is sent off to Switzerland to finish high school and
prepare for a university. There, he boards with a
friendly family, and the Swiss school—in a town
named Aarau—turns out to be just right for him. It
has outstanding teachers, high standards, and an
informal atmosphere. Students are expected to ask
questions and search for answers. And there, he and
a friend play Mozart sonatas in the school refectory.
Fifty years later, he still will remember it as a place
where everyone joined in “responsible and happy work.”
From Aarau, Einstein goes to Zurich, Switzerland, to the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (one of Europe’s
leading technical universities), where he studies physics and
mathematics. Zurich, in the heart of Europe, is a lively city
with cafés and conversations that are attracting an energetic
mix of artists, writers, and political thinkers. Vladimir Lenin
(who will one day rule Russia) and James Joyce (an Irish
writer who will change the modern novel) are two of them.
Einstein has a favorite café, the Metropole, where he
discusses ideas and books with friends. His favorite drink is
iced coffee. (Einstein won’t drink alcohol; he thinks it slows
his brain.) Whenever he gets a chance, he goes sailing on
Lake Zurich, usually in his landlady’s sailboat. (Sailing will
become a lifetime hobby.) With big brown eyes, curly hair,
a quick wit, and an intense intellect, he attracts attention.
A female friend describes him as “irresistible.” A male friend
says he thinks Einstein will become a great man.
There is only one woman in his class, a Serbian, Mileva
Maric. She is a pioneer, one of the first women anywhere in
the world to study advanced physics. Einstein is impressed.
Later, they will fall in love and marry. (It will be a marriage
beset with problems. It will fail.)
Meanwhile, he manages to annoy most of his professors.
It is clear that Albert Einstein is bright, but he has an attitude
A Boy with Something on His Mind
problem. He has little patience with
schoolwork and often doesn’t appear in
class. He seems to learn best by talking
about ideas and problems with friends.
So when he graduates and needs a job
recommendation, he is the only one in
his class who doesn’t get one. One of
his teachers calls him a “lazy dog”
because he doesn’t always do his assignments.
The professor is wrong. Einstein isn’t lazy. His mind is
working hard. It is concentrating on that light beam. For
more than 10 years, the question of what happens at the
speed of light never seems to leave his head. “In all my life
I never labored so hard,” Einstein writes to a friend about
one occasion of deep thinking.
When, finally, in 1905 he is able to answer his own
questions about light, he has developed one of the most
important scientific theories in all of history—the Special
Theory of Relativity. It is just one of the things he will write
about in that annus mirabilis (AN-uhs mi-RAB-uh-lis),
which is Latin for “miracle year.” Einstein is 26, and he is
about to set the direction of the twentieth century.
Albert and Mileva were
deeply in love, as his
passionate letters attest. But
life’s complications and his
work got in the way. They
had two sons, but the
marriage didn’t last. This is
their wedding picture.
Traveling Ahead
What is relativity? And what is it like to ride on
a beam of light? Are there really atoms—bits
of matter too small to be seen by any ordinary
microscope? When the twentieth century
began, no one was sure of the answers to
those questions. If you finish reading this book,
you will know more than anyone did then.
You will know things that even Einstein didn’t
know.
To understand atoms and relativity, we’ll
need to go backward into the past as well as
forward into the future. Just climb into a time
machine, and we can get started.We now
know, thanks to Albert Einstein and others,
that time and space are woven together—and
9
It takes you back, doesn’t it?
so are past and future. Is time travel really
possible? Maybe. Some scientists are taking the
idea seriously. Others are skeptical (which
means they’re not willing to bet on it)—but
don’t let that stop you. Anything is possible in
your mind.