Saturday, November 28, 2015

My hero / Albert Einstein by Graham Farmelo


Albert Einstein

My hero: Albert Einstein by Graham Farmelo


It’s 100 years since Einstein completed his theory of relativity, transforming our understanding of the universe

 Graham Farmelo
Saturday 28 November 2015


T
ime magazine chose well when it named Albert Einstein as the most influential person of the 20th century. As well as being a peerless scientist, he showed great wisdom and integrity – he was an outstanding humanitarian. One hundred years ago, he completed his theory of relativity, setting out a theory of gravity that would surpass Isaac Newton’s and which continues to shape our understanding of the universe today.

Einstein had emerged 10 years earlier, apparently from nowhere, to give the world’s leading scientists a series of physics lessons they would never forget. During his 20-year golden streak, ending in 1925, he did more than anyone else to reshape the understanding of space, time, energy, matter and gravity. He pioneered the crucial idea that symmetry is at the heart of fundamental laws of nature. He could be practically minded, too: with his Hungarian friend Leo Szilard, he came up with an innovative design for a fridge, which they patented in 1930.

Although he valued his solitude – he once said he would happily live in a lighthouse – he was a considerate colleague and friend. His astonishing insight into nature was matched by his understanding of human affairs, and his quotations and popular essays still reward re-reading. Deeply engaged with politics, he spoke out against hypernationalism and fought against the persecution of Jews and other minorities. His friend and colleague in the 1950s, Nándor Balázs, once told me that Einstein’s main weakness was his impatience with people beating a path to his door. On one occasion, a young woman travelled all the way from Bombay to Princeton, simply to talk to him. He reluctantly agreed, groaning: “I suppose I have to go and play God again.” When I asked Balázs whether Einstein was a saint, he shot back: “No, he was better than that – he was human.”

THE GUARDIAN




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016
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