EINSTEIN, THE MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20982, 19 September 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

EINSTEIN, THE MAN.

AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT. " A calm and serious face. Beneath | the strongly-arched forehead there are i dreamy and kindly eyes, and above the forehead the long grey hair. This face ! speaks a clear language and receives the I impression of creative greatness, of achievement and vision, of loneliness and kindliness, of intellectual mastery and social service." Such is the portrait of the great discoverer of relativity drawn by his friend Anton Reiser in " Albert j Einstein: A Biographical Portrait." Though mocked and derided by tho intelligentsia, the man in the street is not always blind to the presence of genius, and though he often misunderstands or at best only dimly comprehends its nature, true greatness is like a light that cannot be hid. M. Reiser, in his sympathetic study reveals the secret of Einstein s greatness. His intellect is not developed ! at the expense of his humanity. He is a " complete human being and, as such, a rarity in contemporary intellectual life. His completeness does not lie in his ability or in his learning, but in his interests and in his inclinations. A genuine creative power always sees beyond its province of specialisation and finds it necessary to attach itself to the collective human mind, that is, to humanity itself. Scientist's Early Days. Intimate glimpses are. given into the earlv davs of the great apostle of rela- i tivitv. He was slow in learning to talk; at school he was at first timid, mentally awkward, with little capacity for languages. But when at twelve years of ago a geometry book was *first put into his hand, what a difference! Here was something which stood to the boy for the very essence of beauty. Previous to this he j had learned some elementary mathematical j facts from his uncle, who one day told | him of the Pythagorean theorem, giving j tho statement without the proof. " The i boy's ambition was to discover the proof j himself, unaided by the least knowledge j of geometry. And the miracle happened : J racking his brains over his small desk, | the child-head supported by the hands, j Albert independently succeeded in proving the central proposition of Euclidean geometry." ■ Side by side with his devotion to mathematics grew his love for music, and to-duy he gladly gives his services at charity concerts. Years ago a musical critic wrote after such an event: " Einstein's playing is excellent, but he does not deserve his world fame; there are many others just as good." The critic - had never heard of Einstein the physicist. The Great Man of To-day. It is a very attractive picture of a ! great man that is drawn in this book, j and the personality of Einstein reminds ; one of W. B. Maxwell's study of great- j ness in " The Guarded flame." He j lives a simple life, loves the beauties of i nature, delights above all things in hand- ' ling a sailing-boat. He is a convinced pacifist, an enemy of every dictatorship, for, as he puts it, '* Dictatorship intro- I duces the muzzle and this produces stupid- 1 ity. Science can flourish only in an at- j mosphere of free speech." By birth a German Jew, he is no bigot. "On the contrary, he perceives the sameness of all religions. The stories of the Old Testa- ; ment and Jesus' Way of Sorrow impress . him with equal power." Einstein is to-day at the high-water • mark of his life, his work and his fame. ! But " his fame has left his essential j humanity unchanged. He has remained ( apart from all the splendour and all the j danger of popularity which has always j ! repelled him. His way follows the law j of methodical thinking and the law of his j own nature. . . Is not this a rare, in- j comprehensible miracle ? The present generation which threatens to sink more ; and more into coarse materialism has "be- | stowed the palm of fame upon a man ; whose labour has been pure reason and ; whose life ha.; been a matter of quiet and j . modesty." "Albert Einstein." by Anton Reiser, j (Thornton Butter I , vorth..) I ~