"Albert Einstein - The World As I See It" - читать интересную книгу автора (Einstein Albert)

There is, however, another side to his personality. It is revealed in the
addresses, letters, and occasional writings brought together in this book.
These fragments form a mosaic portrait of Einstein the man. Each one is, in a
sense, complete in itself; it presents his views on some aspect of progress,
education, peace, war, liberty, or other problems of universal interest. Their
combined effect is to demonstrate that the Einstein we can all understand is no
less great than the Einstein we take on trust.

Einstein has asked nothing more from life than the freedom to pursue his
researches into the mechanism of the universe. His nature is of rare simplicity
and sincerity; he always has been, and he remains, genuinely indifferent to
wealth and fame and the other prizes so dear to ambition. At the same time he
is no recluse, shutting himself off from the sorrows and agitations of the world
around him. Himself familiar from early years with the handicap of poverty
and with some of the worst forms of man's inhumanity to man, he has never
spared himself in defence of the weak and the oppressed. Nothing could be
more unwelcome to his sensitive and retiring character than the glare of the
platform and the heat of public controversy, yet he has never hesitated when
he felt that his voice or influence would help to redress a wrong. History,
surely, has few parallels with this introspective mathematical genius who
laboured unceasingly as an eager champion of the rights of man.

Albert Einstein was born in 1879 at Ulm. When he was four years old his
father, who owned an electrochemical works, moved to Munich, and two
years later the boy went to school, experiencing a rigid, almost military, type
of discipline and also the isolation of a shy and contemplative Jewish child
among Roman Catholics-- factors which made a deep and enduring
impression. From the point of view of his teachers he was an unsatisfactory
pupil, apparently incapable of progress in languages, history, geography, and
other primary subjects. His interest in mathematics was roused, not by his
instructors, but by a Jewish medical student, Max Talmey, who gave him a
book on geometry, and so set him upon a course of enthusiastic study which
made him, at the age of fourteen, a better mathematician than his masters. At
this stage also he began the study of philosophy, reading and re-reading the
words of Kant and other metaphysicians.

Business reverses led the elder Einstein to make a fresh start in Milan, thus
introducing Albert to the joys of a freer, sunnier life than had been possible in
Germany. Necessity, however, made this holiday a brief one, and after a few
months of freedom the preparation for a career began. It opened with an
effort, backed by a certificate of mathematical proficiency given by a teacher
in the Gymnasium at Munich, to obtain admission to the Polytechnic Academy
at Zurich. A year passed in the study of necessary subjects which he had
neglected for mathematics, but once admitted, the young Einstein became
absorbed in the pursuit of science and philosophy and made astonishing
progress. After five distinguished years at the Polytechnic he hoped to step
into the post of assistant professor, but found that the kindly words of the
professors who had stimulated the hope did not materialize.