Albert Einstein is depicted in the recent film Oppenheimer. That led me to want to read Walter Isaacson’s biography.
What’s fascinating about the man is that he was a person who was very comfortable in his own skin and was a fierce believer in the rights of individuals. He was a progressive thinker on many topics including race. Einstein didn’t accept many speaking engagements near the end of his life. But he made an exception and gave a talk at the African American college Lincoln University. There he spoke with the college President’s son-six year old Julian Bond who later became a civil rights leader and president of the NAACP.
Einstein was—at times—quite absent minded-often lost in his thoughts. He, after moving to Princeton, liked to take his sailboat out and would drift around writing in his notebook. There were occasions when hours would pass and the Coast Guard would be out looking for him or some other boater would help him get back in. He had a serenity about him and frequently went about life with a bemused detachment.
Einstein was very marginally and peripherally involved in the Manhattan Project. For years he had been a pacifist but adjusted his perspective because of the threat posed by the Nazis. He even played a messenger role in communicating to FDR that the Germans were paying attention to the availability of Uranium in the Congo which indicated that Germany was interested in their own development of the atomic bomb.
There’s much more to the man than what’s presented in popular lore. Isaacson has written a comprehensive and layered biography. He is the first Einstein biographer who had access to his subject’s personal letters which were made available by Einstein’s step daughter in the 1980s. Reading it gives one an understanding of the life of this remarkable individual and the associated contexts of his seven decades.
My first interview as a radio news student at Ball State was Julian Bond. Probably 1971.