Albert Einstein: And the Frontiers of Physics

Albert Einstein did not impress his first teachers. They found him a dreamy child without an especially promising future. But some time in his early years he developed what he called "wonder" about the world. Later in life, he remembered two instances from his childhood—his fascination at age five with a compass and his introduction to the lucidity and certainty of geometry—that may have been the first signs of what was to come. From these ordinary beginnings, Einstein became one of the greatest scientific thinkers of all time. This illuminating biography describes in understandable language the experiments and revolutionary theories that flowed from Einstein's imagination and intellect—from his theory of relativity, which changed our conception of the universe and our place in it, to his search for a unified field theory that would explain all of the forces in the universe.

Jeremy Bernstein has been a professor of physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology since 1967 and was a staff writer for the New Yorker until 1993. Dr. Bernstein has written more than 12 books on popular science and mountain travel, including Three Degrees Above Zero and Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos. He lives in New York City and Aspen, Colorado.