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

Then followed a weary search for work, two brief interludes of teaching, and
a stable appointment as examiner at the Confederate Patent Office at Berrie.
Humdrum as the work was, it had the double advantage of providing a
competence and of leaving his mind free for the mathematical speculations
which were then taking shape in the theory of relativity. In 1905 his first
monograph on the theory was published in a Swiss scientific journal, the
Annalen der Physik. Zurich awoke to the fact that it possessed a genius in
the form of a patent office clerk, promoted him to be a lecturer at the
University and four years later--in 1909--installed him as Professor.

His next appointment was (in 1911) at the University of Prague, where he
remained for eighteen months. Following a brief return to Zurich, he went,
early in 1914, to Berlin as a professor in the Prussian Academy of Sciences
and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Theoretical Physics. The
period of the Great War was a trying time for Einstein, who could not conceal
his ardent pacifism, but he found what solace he could in his studies. Later
events brought him into the open and into many parts of the world, as an
exponent not only of pacifism but also of world-disarmament and the cause of
Jewry. To a man of such views, as passionately held as they were by Einstein,
Germany under the Nazis was patently impossible. In 1933 Einstein made his
famous declaration: "As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country
where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are
the rule." For a time he was a homeless exile; after offers had come to him
from Spain and France and Britain, he settled in Princeton as Professor of
Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, happy in his work, rejoicing in a free
environment, but haunted always by the tragedy of war and oppression.

The World As I See It, in its original form, includes essays by Einstein on
relativity and cognate subjects. For reasons indicated above, these have been
omitted in the present edition; the object of this reprint is simply to reveal to
the general reader the human side of one of the most dominating figures of our
day.

I

The World As I See It

The Meaning of Life


What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer
this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in
putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his
fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost
disqualified for life.

The World as I see it


What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a