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Print Price: $72.50

Format:
Paperback
576 pp.
8 pp halftone plates, 156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780192806727

Publication date:
September 2005

Imprint: OUP UK

Subtle is the Lord

The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

Abraham Pais

Subtle is the Lord is widely recognized as the definitive scientific biography of Albert Einstein. The late Abraham Pais was a distinguished physicist turned historian who knew Einstein both professionally and personally in the last years of his life. His biography combines a profound understanding of Einstein's work with personal recollections from their years of acquaintance, illuminating the man through the development of his scientific thought.

Pais examines the formulation of Einstein's theories of relativity, his work on Brownian motion, and his response to quantum theory with authority and precision. The profound transformation Einstein's ideas effected on the physics of the turn of the century is here laid out for the serious reader. Pais also fills many gaps in what we know of Einstein's life - his interest in philosophy, his concern with Jewish destiny, and his opinions of great figures from Newton to Freud. This remarkable volume, written by a physicist who mingled in Einstein's scientific circle, forms a timeless and classic biography of the towering figure of twentieth-century science.

Readership : Students of physics and the history of science, and general readers of biography and popular science.

Reviews

Review from previous edition `A really superb biography of Einstein and all his work. Here, surely, is the biography that Einstein would have wanted. .' Roger Penrose, Times Higher Education Supplement
`The definitive life of Einstein.' Brian Pippard, Times Literary Supplement
`A coherent account of almost everything of scientific significance that Einstein did...Unique and indispensable.' Science
`By far the most important study of both the man and the scientist.' Paul Davies, New Scientist
`An outstanding biography of Albert Einstein that one finds oneself reading with sheer pleasure.' Physics Today
`A sympathetic but clear-eyed view of his life and work...examined mainly in his own plentiful papers, supplemented by a remarkably wide list of unusual sources...a fine book.' Scientific Amrican
`'the best biography of Einstein''
Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal

Introductory
Statistical Physics
Relativity, the Special Theory
Relativity, the General Theory
The Later Journey
The Quantum Theory
Journey's End
Appendices

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Abraham Pais (1918-2000) was an award-winning physicist and biographer. Gaining his PhD from Utrecht, he went on to work closely with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen before joining the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and leading the Theoretical Physics Group at Rockefeller University. His work brought him into close professional, and personal, contact with the 20th century's leading physicists - Dirac, Pauli, Gell-Man, and Einstein. He retired in 1978 to write widely respected scientific biographies, and was awarded the Oppenheimer Prize in 1979.

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Special Features

The most authoritative guide available to the life and thought of the 20th century's most famous scientist.
The author is uniquely placed to cast light on Einstein's life and thought: A leading particle physicist himself, who knew Einstein personally and had access to some of his 50,000 pages of letters and science papers after his death.
No other biography of Einstein is as scientifically authoritative. Subtle is the Lord has, since publication, been widely acclaimed as the classic biography in this regard.