Who Got Einstein's Office?: Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful history of a rare group
Review: A fine history of The Institute For Advanced Study, endowed as a place that would "permit a haven where scholars and scientists may regard the world and its phenomena as their laboratory without being carried off in the maelstrom of the immediate. . ."

A memorable series of oral histories / stories about the interaction of some of the 20th century's most famous theoretical physicists: Niels Bohr, Einstein, Max Planck, Lorentz, de Broglie and so many others who passed through the Institute. A fascinating look into the every day lives of some of the brightest stars in physics.

You don't need to know a thing about math or physics to enjoy this fine portrait of a fascinating group of minds at work and play.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful history of a rare group
Review: A fine history of The Institute For Advanced Study, endowed as a place that would "permit a haven where scholars and scientists may regard the world and its phenomena as their laboratory without being carried off in the maelstrom of the immediate. . ."

A memorable series of oral histories / stories about the interaction of some of the 20th century's most famous theoretical physicists: Niels Bohr, Einstein, Max Planck, Lorentz, de Broglie and so many others who passed through the Institute. A fascinating look into the every day lives of some of the brightest stars in physics.

You don't need to know a thing about math or physics to enjoy this fine portrait of a fascinating group of minds at work and play.

Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining history
Review: I'm surprised I didn't know about this book sooner. It was published in 1988 and definitely deserves to be better known.

This is one of the more enjoyable books on the history of science I've read. It details the history of the Princeton Institute for Advanced study through the lives and careers of some of its most famous scions. There are chapters on Einstein, Kurt Goedel, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann (the inventer of the electronic computer), and Ed Witten, the author of the string theory, and many others.

The book is full of amusing and fascinating details and stories about the many famous and often eccentric scientists and mathematicians who worked in its cloistered halls. For example, referring to Einstein's eventual obsession about disproving the uncertainty aspect of quantum mechanics, Oppenheimer once said, "Einstein is cuckoo." Oppenheimer once learned Greek so that he could read classic literature in the original. Upon learning that several of his fellow scientists were meeting to discuss Italian literature, he learned enough of it in a month to start reading the books. Godel developed a paranoid delusion and spent his last months refusing any food, eventually starving himself to death, having become convinced that his doctors were trying to poison him.

Before Einstein came to the U.S., there was a movement in Germany against "Jewish physics." One hundred supposed scientists joined this group and once held an anti-Einstein meeting at a large auditorium, with thousands of people in attendence. Einstein himself went to the event just to see what the whole thing was about, and finding out of course that their objections were nonsense and "absurd," as Einstein said. But it was at that point that Einstein finally decided things were getting a little too overheated in the Fatherland and he finally left for the states--their loss and our gain.

Another funny thing about Einstein was just how crazy the public went over him. They named everything from their children to their boats after him. One time Einstein visited the famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane in England, and his daughter fainted dead away at the sight of him.

The public may not have really understood much about Einstein's new ideas--light having weight, space actually being curved, and so on--but all that mattered was that Einstein understood it. He was the prophet of a new world order and would revolutionize our understanding of reality with his unique genius, and the public was practically giddy as a schoolgirl about Einstein as a result.

There are many other interesting and funny stories about the lives of these emminent thinkers in the book, but I'll leave the rest for you to read for yourself. This book is definitely worth your time and money.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating story of the incredible men at IAS
Review: There is little I can understand about theoretical physics or much else that is pondered by the geniuses at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. However, Ed Regis does a great job of bringing these intellectual heroes down to a level that an average person can enjoy and understand. This was just a great bedtime read- Regis has the intellect to appreciate and understand these folks while able to tweak at their pettinesses and jealousies.

Rating:
Summary: interesting book, but the author's crassness shows...
Review: Who Got Einstein's Office offers an interesting look at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study, the famous people that work(ed) there, as well as their work. The book seems to suggest that the tenured researchers at the Institute of Advanced Study have done their best work before they joined; That somehow at the Institute, they were isolated from a vibrant academic life, from contact with other researchers and students in their field, etc. As such, the book is definitely worth reading.

Having said that much, I feel that I should voice my indignation at the way the author depicted and presented one of the greatest lights of this century, the logician Kurt Goedel.

It's almost embarrassing to me to mention this, since Goedel's work -- profound and deep and beautiful, is what most people that remember Goedel at all remember him for. But Goedel apparently had some difficulties of an emotional and mental nature that effected his life -- from adolescence to adulthood, difficulties that the author, Ed Regis, finds the generousity to mock. In describing Goedel's relationship with his mother and the influence it had on his romantic life, Regis refers to Goedel as "Kurtele" -- a diminutive of Goedel's first name -- like turning a "Richard" into "little Dicky"... This is but an example. Regis goes to greater length to belittle Goedel and the appreciation of his work. This is beneath contempt. However bizzare and eccentric and troubled Goedel's life was, Goedel himself was its only victim. Goedel left the world precious gems of thought and changed the world of logic and mathematics forever. I think he deserves quite a bit more respect and compassion than Ed Regis afforded him.

It certainly doesn't have to be the case that if you don't respect someone you also don't understand his work. It's just ironic that the author, who refers to Goedel mockingly as "The Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler", fails to understand even the most basic things about Goedel's work: The incompleteness result is described as "... the mathematical equivalent of the assertion that 'This statement is unprovable.'" What could be simpler? Add to this Goedel's own self-doubts, and the author now begins to wonder whether the incompleteness theorem isn't in fact a rather obvious and straightforward result.

But as the saying goes, "God is in the detail", and the author doesn't even begin to see the subtleties involved: Mathematics "talking about itself" -- Goedel numbering as a mechanism for mathematics to encode sentences about methematics, a mathematical proposition "refering to itself" -- indexicals, expessing "this" in thematics... As a consequence of "mathematics talking about itself" -- the effective computability of the provability predicate -- What Goedel did in fact is write a scanner, parser and interpreter in type theory -- all in 1931 -- twenty-something years before there were computers around, and people could write canners, parsers and interpreters for programming languages. And Goedel got them all right -- scanner, parser and interpreter -- written maticulously as recursive and primitive recursive functions. Merely envisioning these back in 1931 is a tramendous intellectual achievement.

Not having appreciated the depth of Goedel's contributions to logic, it's no wonder Regis doesn't appreciate Goedel's admirers: In describing a meeting between Rudolf Rucker and Kurt Goedel, Regis qoutes Rucker's words of appreciation of Goedel's understanding and insight into the problems he raised during their meeting: "perfect understanding", "informative laghter", ... to which Regis has to contribute: "Of course! Why not? We're not talking about talking about a man, after all, a mere mortal. We're talking about the Emperor of the Forms, the Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler."

Well, shame on you Ed Regis!

Rating:
Summary: interesting book, but the author's crassness shows...
Review: Who Got Einstein's Office offers an interesting look at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study, the famous people that work(ed) there, as well as their work. The book seems to suggest that the tenured researchers at the Institute of Advanced Study have done their best work before they joined; That somehow at the Institute, they were isolated from a vibrant academic life, from contact with other researchers and students in their field, etc. As such, the book is definitely worth reading.

Having said that much, I feel that I should voice my indignation at the way the author depicted and presented one of the greatest lights of this century, the logician Kurt Goedel.

It's almost embarrassing to me to mention this, since Goedel's work -- profound and deep and beautiful, is what most people that remember Goedel at all remember him for. But Goedel apparently had some difficulties of an emotional and mental nature that effected his life -- from adolescence to adulthood, difficulties that the author, Ed Regis, finds the generousity to mock. In describing Goedel's relationship with his mother and the influence it had on his romantic life, Regis refers to Goedel as "Kurtele" -- a diminutive of Goedel's first name -- like turning a "Richard" into "little Dicky"... This is but an example. Regis goes to greater length to belittle Goedel and the appreciation of his work. This is beneath contempt. However bizzare and eccentric and troubled Goedel's life was, Goedel himself was its only victim. Goedel left the world precious gems of thought and changed the world of logic and mathematics forever. I think he deserves quite a bit more respect and compassion than Ed Regis afforded him.

It certainly doesn't have to be the case that if you don't respect someone you also don't understand his work. It's just ironic that the author, who refers to Goedel mockingly as "The Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler", fails to understand even the most basic things about Goedel's work: The incompleteness result is described as "... the mathematical equivalent of the assertion that 'This statement is unprovable.'" What could be simpler? Add to this Goedel's own self-doubts, and the author now begins to wonder whether the incompleteness theorem isn't in fact a rather obvious and straightforward result.

But as the saying goes, "God is in the detail", and the author doesn't even begin to see the subtleties involved: Mathematics "talking about itself" -- Goedel numbering as a mechanism for mathematics to encode sentences about methematics, a mathematical proposition "refering to itself" -- indexicals, expessing "this" in thematics... As a consequence of "mathematics talking about itself" -- the effective computability of the provability predicate -- What Goedel did in fact is write a scanner, parser and interpreter in type theory -- all in 1931 -- twenty-something years before there were computers around, and people could write canners, parsers and interpreters for programming languages. And Goedel got them all right -- scanner, parser and interpreter -- written maticulously as recursive and primitive recursive functions. Merely envisioning these back in 1931 is a tramendous intellectual achievement.

Not having appreciated the depth of Goedel's contributions to logic, it's no wonder Regis doesn't appreciate Goedel's admirers: In describing a meeting between Rudolf Rucker and Kurt Goedel, Regis qoutes Rucker's words of appreciation of Goedel's understanding and insight into the problems he raised during their meeting: "perfect understanding", "informative laghter", ... to which Regis has to contribute: "Of course! Why not? We're not talking about talking about a man, after all, a mere mortal. We're talking about the Emperor of the Forms, the Grand High Exalted Mystical Ruler."

Well, shame on you Ed Regis!