BOOKS

Relative values apply

John Cornwell

When Albert Einstein died in Prince- ton on 18th April 1955, his brain was removed from his skull and preserved in formaldehyde for future scientific research. There were hopes, it seems, that the famous physicist's grey matter might con- tain clues to the enigma of his remarkable mind.

In the wake of Jurassic Park mania, sci-fi aficionados may well have been entertain- ing prospects of a Science Park peopled by squat prodigies with huge heads, walrus moustaches, and a genius for theoretical physics. They will be disappointed to learn that a test on Einstein's necrotic tissues last April found his DNA 'degraded'. Yet the experiment in question had a gruesome sig- nificance for Einstein biography. A labora- tory in Maryland was attempting a genetic profile to establish the truth of rumours about his sexual adventures. Had he indeed sired a second illegitimate child? For the very first time molecular biology had been forensically employed to settle a posthu- mous paternity claim against Einstein by a lady whose mother had been a dancer in New York in 1940. Alas, his DNA proved so unsound that the test was inconclusive.

But just suppose they had proved he had indeed been playing around in New York that year? Would it affect his standing as a scientist one jot?

And would it alter our regard for Ein- stein's achievement to know that he gave away his first daughter, born out of wed- lock; biffed his first wife; hopped in and out of bed with various one-night stands; treated his legitimate children as if they were strangers?

For this is the thesis of Roger Highfield and Paul Carter, co-authors of The Private Lives of Albert Einstein, who contend that Einstein's reputation will remain out of focus until we understand that he was not a figure of impersonal detachment dedicated to the 'angels' of science and mathematics; that he was, rather, a man with a 'desire for Intimacy', a bleak cynic, whose 'modesty was at war with arrogance', and who could be a bit of a brute as well as a rogue into the bargain.

Being a relentless case for the prosecu- tion, with no attempt to give the benefit of the doubt on any unsavoury rumour, High- field's and Carter's book suffers the princi- pal drawback of most investigative journalism: it is biased, and therefore makes for somewhat degraded biography. Fraulein Einstein's swollen jaw, as it turned out, might have been the result of tooth- ache; our authors do not wish to know that. But even if their evidence were to stand the test of subsequent, more balanced biogra- phy, the question remains — what differ- ence should it make to our assessment of Einstein's life and work?

In the lives of literary figures, say the Bloomsbury group, whose work was more or less bound up with their emotions, moral sensibilities and sexual relationships, these sorts of revelations are grist to the mill of a continuing soap of high-grade lit- erary gossip. In the life of a scientist, espe- cially one like Einstein whose work was essentially theoretical, mathematical, and isolated, it all seems beside the point, even in an era in which science is increasingly seen as determined by character and histo- ry. Scientists tend to be ranked for greatness according to three broad categories: their original contributions to science itself; their encouragement of the work of others; the extent to which they have achieved some notable benefit for the human race. Ein- stein's stature is unquestioned in the first of these categories. Arguably, in view of his letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning of the danger of nuclear secrets falling into enemy hands, he qualifies for the third. But unlike Ernest Rutherford, who dedicated much of his life to building up the Cavendish laboratories in Cam- bridge and bringing on a whole generation of scientists, Einstein has no claim to fame in the second. It is just possible that Rutherford's greatness required a high level of personal integrity. It is hard to see how a lack of strict moral and familial behaviour would have a bearing on Ein- stein's work; except that had he been less ruthless, less monomanaical, his physics might well have suffered.

There has been a need in recent years for new assessment of Einstein's story. Ever since Stephen Hawking's best-selling A Brief History of Time brought the new physics into popular consciousness, we have lacked a book of comparable accessi- bility to explain Einstein's contribution in relation to the entire history of modern physics — from Newton right through to present developments in quantum mech- nics and 'theories of everything'.

Accessibility is the key; for although we have Abraham Pais's magesterial biogra- phy, Subtle is the Lord, published ten years back, it is a book that would overwhelm most non-specialists.

The story of Einstein's contribution to the history of physics involves highly math- ematical and counter-intuitive ideas well beyond the inherent difficulty of his theory of relativity. In Newtonian physics, in fact all the physics before Einstein, it was understood that interacting particles, left to their own devices, would carry on interact- ing in precise and predictable ways: this is the scientific furniture of the minds of most of us brought up on classical physics in school. In post-Einstein physics particles dissolve into a mist of uncertainty as soon as we stop looking at them. When the posi- tion of an electron is measured it does not mean that the electron stays where it is, nor that it proceeds along a determined trajec- tory. An essential feature of Einstein's part in this new understanding of the universe is the result, paradoxically, of his unrelenting opposition to it after 1926. But to grasp the importance of that revolution and Ein- stein's contribution requires, for the non- physicist, special guidance. Michael White and John Gribben have admirably filled the bill with their Einstein: A Life in Science, and any one who has attempted — as per- haps we all should to understand at least a lay-person's view of quantum physics, and relativity, and unified theories, should not hesitate to read it, for it is expo- sition at its best.

Such is his towering position in the histo- ry of science Einstein's story will be told and retold in many different ways in years to come. The principal interest of his per- sonal life, however, has less to do with the specifics of his theories than how it relates to his overall philosophy. Einstein wrote in his Credo:

The most beautiful and deepest experience a person can have is the sense of the mysteri- ous. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind ... In this sense I am religious.

This is the very antithesis of the reduc- tionist view of the world often ascribed to modern science. And it is the clearest evi- dence of the variety of philosophical view- points expressed by scientists even within the same discipline, as well as confirmation that science is no evenly unfolding sympho- ny of infallible explanations-. It is at least part of the job of the biographer of a great scientist to attempt to relate the whole life to such a vision.

Highfield and Carter conclude that Ein- stein's private face

should be seen as a marvellous joke on humanity, that such strength and such weak- ness, such wisdom and such obtuseness, could be combined in one man.

This is the disillusionment of the uncriti- cal idolator whose god has proved merely human. In the meantime their researches give us no more clues to his unique sense of mystery and wonder than that chunk of dead cerebral cortex in its canister of formaldehyde.