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Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein
Having the advantage of knowing Einstein personally during the last nine years of his life and having access to some of his 50,000 pages of letters and science papers, the author fills many gaps about what we know of Einstein's life. It deals with his interest in philosophy, his concern with
Jewish destiny, and his opinions of great figures from Newton to Freud. Also depicts the state of physics at the turn of the century and how Einstein transformed the field.
Jewish destiny, and his opinions of great figures from Newton to Freud. Also depicts the state of physics at the turn of the century and how Einstein transformed the field.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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6506 people want to read
About the author
Abraham Pais
32 books42 followersAbraham Pais was a physicist, specialising in particle physics, who became a well-known science historian later in life, having worked closely with prominent scientists such as Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
February 1, 2026
In this extremely impressive book, Abraham Pais, himself a good physicist who knew Einstein personally, sets out to write a comprehensive biography of the greatest scientist of modern times. The emphasis is very much on the science, and if you want details on who Einstein slept with you are advised to look elsewhere. I think that's absolutely right; most biographies of Lindsay Lohan are, for similar reasons, equally sketchy concerning her opinions on quantum mechanics. But if you're interested in Einstein as a scientist, the book is fantastic. Pais has read just about everything Einstein ever wrote, including tens of thousands of pages of letters, and a very large amount of material by the people he interacted with: which, given his central stature in early 20th century physics, means most of the leading physicists from about 1900 to 1935. There is no attempt whatsoever to dumb it down. Pais is writing for other scientists and presents equations whenever he thinks they will be useful, which in practice means several times on most pages.
The book contains an enormous number of interesting stories - I had not appreciated quite how many different things Einstein had worked on - but two threads stood out for me. First, there is the exposition of how he discovered General Relativity. I recently read Einstein's own book on the subject, The Meaning of Relativity, where he beautifully presents it as the logical consequence of two or three simple postulates, in particular the requirement that physical laws must be expressible in a form independent of the chosen coordinate system. I was surprised to learn that this in no way corresponded to the process by which Einstein actually discovered the theory, which involved numerous false starts and incorrect assumptions; luckily, he presented a dozen or so preliminary papers while he was working on the problem and wrote many letters to his collaborators, so it was possible for Pais to reconstruct his thoughts with unusual exactness. One detail which will be particularly startling to anyone who knows a little about the subject is that Einstein, when he presented the finished theory in 1915, still didn't know about the Bianchi identities, a set of equations that are absolutely fundamental to the mathematics and which appear in every textbook exposition. He somehow covered this hole by a clever workaround, and was only told about the right way to do it several months later.
Perhaps even more interesting was the very insightful discussion of the relationship between Einstein and the generations that preceded and followed him. When he developed Special Relativity, Einstein built on the foundations laid by Lorentz and Poincaré; their contributions were so great that Lorentz has sometimes been credited as the real inventor of the theory. I was surprised to read that, despite this, neither of these two great scientists ever really believed in relativity. They understood all the mathematics, needless to say, but somehow they couldn't accept the fundamental idea: it was just too different from the world-view they had been brought up with. Pais says that Lorentz never completely stopped believing in the aether, and was always ready to consider the idea that velocities faster than the speed of light might be physically meaningful. The astonishing thing is that the same pattern repeated a generation later. Einstein was one of the key figures in developing quantum theory, and for a long time was almost alone in arguing for the existence of the light-quantum (not yet called the photon). But when wave mechanics arrived in the mid-20s, he couldn't accept it. It was just the same as with Lorentz and Poincaré: he understood all the formal basis of the theory, but it made no intuitive sense. The universe simply couldn't be non-deterministic.
Although it is well written, the book is not at all an easy read, and I wished many times that I knew a bit more physics and mathematics. It took me well over a month to get through it. But if you are interested in these matters, it is absolutely worth the trouble. I have never come across anything quite like Pais's stunning reconstruction of the mind of a true genius.
The book contains an enormous number of interesting stories - I had not appreciated quite how many different things Einstein had worked on - but two threads stood out for me. First, there is the exposition of how he discovered General Relativity. I recently read Einstein's own book on the subject, The Meaning of Relativity, where he beautifully presents it as the logical consequence of two or three simple postulates, in particular the requirement that physical laws must be expressible in a form independent of the chosen coordinate system. I was surprised to learn that this in no way corresponded to the process by which Einstein actually discovered the theory, which involved numerous false starts and incorrect assumptions; luckily, he presented a dozen or so preliminary papers while he was working on the problem and wrote many letters to his collaborators, so it was possible for Pais to reconstruct his thoughts with unusual exactness. One detail which will be particularly startling to anyone who knows a little about the subject is that Einstein, when he presented the finished theory in 1915, still didn't know about the Bianchi identities, a set of equations that are absolutely fundamental to the mathematics and which appear in every textbook exposition. He somehow covered this hole by a clever workaround, and was only told about the right way to do it several months later.
Perhaps even more interesting was the very insightful discussion of the relationship between Einstein and the generations that preceded and followed him. When he developed Special Relativity, Einstein built on the foundations laid by Lorentz and Poincaré; their contributions were so great that Lorentz has sometimes been credited as the real inventor of the theory. I was surprised to read that, despite this, neither of these two great scientists ever really believed in relativity. They understood all the mathematics, needless to say, but somehow they couldn't accept the fundamental idea: it was just too different from the world-view they had been brought up with. Pais says that Lorentz never completely stopped believing in the aether, and was always ready to consider the idea that velocities faster than the speed of light might be physically meaningful. The astonishing thing is that the same pattern repeated a generation later. Einstein was one of the key figures in developing quantum theory, and for a long time was almost alone in arguing for the existence of the light-quantum (not yet called the photon). But when wave mechanics arrived in the mid-20s, he couldn't accept it. It was just the same as with Lorentz and Poincaré: he understood all the formal basis of the theory, but it made no intuitive sense. The universe simply couldn't be non-deterministic.
Although it is well written, the book is not at all an easy read, and I wished many times that I knew a bit more physics and mathematics. It took me well over a month to get through it. But if you are interested in these matters, it is absolutely worth the trouble. I have never come across anything quite like Pais's stunning reconstruction of the mind of a true genius.
October 12, 2023
Spinoza’s Man
Although he had a lifelong interest in philosophy, Einstein had a limited background in the subject, mainly Kant and Plato. He had even less knowledge of theology. Yet I am impressed by his intuitive understanding of the subject and its relevance to his scientific work. Quips about God and dice aside, his scientific ethos can be associated with a theology as nuanced as the quote used as the title of Païs biography: “Subtle is the Lord; but malicious He is not.”
Einstein made only a few explicit comments about religion. Perhaps his most informative was the statement: “A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation.” The phrase ‘superpersonal objects’ is important - not supernatural, or spiritual, or divine, one notices. And Païs reports him as saying in his later years: “Science without epistemology is—in so far as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled.” The phrase has explicit philosophical import - how we may connect words to things that are not words underlies all 0f human inquiry.
In line with Kantian epistemology, these objects, these things, that Einstein refers to are literally everything there is in the universe. They are unknowable for what they are in themselves. They first must be perceived by limited human sense capabilities, even capabilities enhanced by technology. Even more fundamentally, they must be expressed in language. And words are not non-words. Words have no logical foundation except in other words. And even language itself is superpersonal, that is beyond the capacity of individual human beings to comprehend entirely much less control.
So Einstein’s epistemological stance in the first instance implies an inherent uncertainty about the world, and with that a requirement for scientific humility. But humility does not imply incapacity. It is here that Einstein seems to make his theological presumption: the universe wants, or at least allows, itself to be known. It supplies what human beings need to be able to investigate it. This is one interpretation of what Enlightenment philosophers have called the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
Theologians call this principle ‘Revelation’ and study it in a sub-discipline called Fundamental Theology. This refers to essentially the same thing as the Principle of Sufficient Reason, namely the ability of human beings to receive comprehensible messages about something that is unknowable in its infinity. Typical dogmatic theology - Christian or any other sort - understands that human knowledge of the divine must be incomplete but then insists on limiting what can be known to some rather arbitrary text or interpretation, thus effectively deifying language as well as causing untold misery by attempting to enforce interpretive restrictions.
Einstein’s God is not the dogmatic God of Christianity or Orthodox Judaism. As Païs says, “If he had a God it was the God of Spinoza.” He bases this on Einstein’s admiring statement about the man: “Although he lived three hundred years before our time, the spiritual situation with which Spinoza had to cope peculiarly resembles our own. The reason for this is that he was utterly convinced of the causal dependence of all phenomena, at a time when the success accompanying the efforts to achieve a knowledge of the causal relationship of natural phenomena was still quite modest.”
I think it is interesting that for Spinoza there are two categories of things which exist, substances and modes. Substances, it seems to me, are what Kant would later call things-in-themselves; and modes are the equivalent of descriptions, that is to say, adjectival expressions, thus language. Substances generate modes, but Spinoza is not terribly specific about how this is accomplished. Modes also refer to ways in which God can be described. The modes of God are essentially everything, all the individual substances, of the universe. Thus there is but one substance, and that substance communicates continuously through people, events, molecules, galaxies, etc.
Like Spinoza, Einstein believed that ‘the universe would provide.’ Some have liked to call that belief ‘faith.’ I think that would be a terrible misconstrual. An abiding hope perhaps but not faith in the Christian sense, simply because it was a belief with no fixed content. In fact quite the opposite. Einstein as a scientist was never dogmatic about, for example, the meaning of quantum physics, although he disagreed with the interpretations of many of his colleagues. And this applied not just to scientific results but also to scientific methods for obtaining results:
In short, Einstein was a pragmatist not a dogmatist. His view that “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”is therefore not some sentimental blanket approval of theology. It is a very specific, although sparsely worked out, statement of the kind of religion that was compatible with his conception of science. Spinoza never started a church or a cult. The idea is absurd. So is the idea that Einstein had some sort of dogmatic faith, that he was even in some way an ‘anonymous Christian’ as the Jesuit Karl Rainer would have it. No, in addition to being a genius, he was also theologically thoughtful. He was Spinoza’s man.
Although he had a lifelong interest in philosophy, Einstein had a limited background in the subject, mainly Kant and Plato. He had even less knowledge of theology. Yet I am impressed by his intuitive understanding of the subject and its relevance to his scientific work. Quips about God and dice aside, his scientific ethos can be associated with a theology as nuanced as the quote used as the title of Païs biography: “Subtle is the Lord; but malicious He is not.”
Einstein made only a few explicit comments about religion. Perhaps his most informative was the statement: “A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation.” The phrase ‘superpersonal objects’ is important - not supernatural, or spiritual, or divine, one notices. And Païs reports him as saying in his later years: “Science without epistemology is—in so far as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled.” The phrase has explicit philosophical import - how we may connect words to things that are not words underlies all 0f human inquiry.
In line with Kantian epistemology, these objects, these things, that Einstein refers to are literally everything there is in the universe. They are unknowable for what they are in themselves. They first must be perceived by limited human sense capabilities, even capabilities enhanced by technology. Even more fundamentally, they must be expressed in language. And words are not non-words. Words have no logical foundation except in other words. And even language itself is superpersonal, that is beyond the capacity of individual human beings to comprehend entirely much less control.
So Einstein’s epistemological stance in the first instance implies an inherent uncertainty about the world, and with that a requirement for scientific humility. But humility does not imply incapacity. It is here that Einstein seems to make his theological presumption: the universe wants, or at least allows, itself to be known. It supplies what human beings need to be able to investigate it. This is one interpretation of what Enlightenment philosophers have called the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
Theologians call this principle ‘Revelation’ and study it in a sub-discipline called Fundamental Theology. This refers to essentially the same thing as the Principle of Sufficient Reason, namely the ability of human beings to receive comprehensible messages about something that is unknowable in its infinity. Typical dogmatic theology - Christian or any other sort - understands that human knowledge of the divine must be incomplete but then insists on limiting what can be known to some rather arbitrary text or interpretation, thus effectively deifying language as well as causing untold misery by attempting to enforce interpretive restrictions.
Einstein’s God is not the dogmatic God of Christianity or Orthodox Judaism. As Païs says, “If he had a God it was the God of Spinoza.” He bases this on Einstein’s admiring statement about the man: “Although he lived three hundred years before our time, the spiritual situation with which Spinoza had to cope peculiarly resembles our own. The reason for this is that he was utterly convinced of the causal dependence of all phenomena, at a time when the success accompanying the efforts to achieve a knowledge of the causal relationship of natural phenomena was still quite modest.”
I think it is interesting that for Spinoza there are two categories of things which exist, substances and modes. Substances, it seems to me, are what Kant would later call things-in-themselves; and modes are the equivalent of descriptions, that is to say, adjectival expressions, thus language. Substances generate modes, but Spinoza is not terribly specific about how this is accomplished. Modes also refer to ways in which God can be described. The modes of God are essentially everything, all the individual substances, of the universe. Thus there is but one substance, and that substance communicates continuously through people, events, molecules, galaxies, etc.
Like Spinoza, Einstein believed that ‘the universe would provide.’ Some have liked to call that belief ‘faith.’ I think that would be a terrible misconstrual. An abiding hope perhaps but not faith in the Christian sense, simply because it was a belief with no fixed content. In fact quite the opposite. Einstein as a scientist was never dogmatic about, for example, the meaning of quantum physics, although he disagreed with the interpretations of many of his colleagues. And this applied not just to scientific results but also to scientific methods for obtaining results:
“He [the scientist] must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist in so far as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; an idealist in so far as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist in so far as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as a Platonist or Pythagorean in so far as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research”
In short, Einstein was a pragmatist not a dogmatist. His view that “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”is therefore not some sentimental blanket approval of theology. It is a very specific, although sparsely worked out, statement of the kind of religion that was compatible with his conception of science. Spinoza never started a church or a cult. The idea is absurd. So is the idea that Einstein had some sort of dogmatic faith, that he was even in some way an ‘anonymous Christian’ as the Jesuit Karl Rainer would have it. No, in addition to being a genius, he was also theologically thoughtful. He was Spinoza’s man.
October 3, 2022
Astonishingly good as a biography of a person, of a set of ideas, of a field, and of an approach to creative work. Irreplaceable.
February 10, 2014
Really illuminating and surprisingly critical on two fronts. One, Pais is critical of Einstein himself and does not write the usual hagiography of the great man, but deals with him as a working scientist who made occasional errors as all humans do. The relativity "revolution" is put in perspective as a continuation of classical physics, by comparison with the true break with the past that was occurring in quantum theory. He is also aware that Einstein's opposition to quantum theory cannot be dismissed with the usual tagline of "God does not play dice." The opposition to QM is deeper and more philosophical in nature and concerns the criteria needed for any theory to be considered an account of objective reality, a question scientists have not even begun to consider and one which Bell's theorem does not clear up at all (Bell spoke on the same issue at the end of his life in speaking about the be-ables of a theory, which do not include the wave function). Einstein knew how isolated he was in later years from the mainstream of physics but then again he was always an outsider from day one. It would be difficult if not impossible for a person like this to succeed in physics (or anywhere in academia) today, as we are much more social and prone to groupthink in our current approach to knowledge.
March 6, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in June 1998.
Subtle is the Lord... (the Einstein quote finishes "...but he is not malicious") is an excellent biography of Albert Einstein written by an eminent physicist. A fair knowledge of physics is necessary to read this, but reading a biography of Einstein which doesn't convey the work that he did is much less interesting to those who have such a knowledge.
Pais is not uncritical of Einstein. A major theme of his book is to answer the question of why, after the major achievements of special and general relativity and his quantum mechanics papers, Einstein produced so little work of permanent value in the second half of his working life. In fact, Pais suggests that the very aspects of Einstein's character which made the earlier breakthroughs possible meant that his work became more divorced from the mainstream of twentieth century theoretical physics as time went on.
Subtle is the Lord is rather less interested in the non-physics related activities of Albert Einstein, though considerable space is given to his pacifism and Zionism. There are other biographies which concentrate on these matters, and are much more interested in Einstein's private life. Pais' work is where to come for a definitive description of the way in which Einstein's work and life fitted together.
Subtle is the Lord... (the Einstein quote finishes "...but he is not malicious") is an excellent biography of Albert Einstein written by an eminent physicist. A fair knowledge of physics is necessary to read this, but reading a biography of Einstein which doesn't convey the work that he did is much less interesting to those who have such a knowledge.
Pais is not uncritical of Einstein. A major theme of his book is to answer the question of why, after the major achievements of special and general relativity and his quantum mechanics papers, Einstein produced so little work of permanent value in the second half of his working life. In fact, Pais suggests that the very aspects of Einstein's character which made the earlier breakthroughs possible meant that his work became more divorced from the mainstream of twentieth century theoretical physics as time went on.
Subtle is the Lord is rather less interested in the non-physics related activities of Albert Einstein, though considerable space is given to his pacifism and Zionism. There are other biographies which concentrate on these matters, and are much more interested in Einstein's private life. Pais' work is where to come for a definitive description of the way in which Einstein's work and life fitted together.
Want to read
August 15, 2008Non-physicists need not apply.
This book is an intensely thorough scientific biography of Einstein and is likely a great joy to any physicist interested watching the great man work.
However, if you're simply a pop-sci fan passing through the fascinating world of physics, don't stop to gawk here. You won't comprehend a thing. Instead, mosy on over to Walter Isaacson's 'Einstein: His Life and Dreams.'
I may return to this book later, once I've got some relativity and quantum theory under my belt, in order to get a better idea of how Einstein actually did his physics.
In my scant readings of the comprehensible parts of this book, however, I did manage to learn a few interesting things about Einstein's successes and failures that any aspiring scientist might take note of. (Note: I'm purely analyzing his characteristics in their role as his effectiveness as a scientist, not as a human being. "Faults" of Einstein the scientist may very well be great virtues of Einstein the man.)
Successes:
Determination
When Einstein encountered a problem, he didn't drop it until he solved it. Special and general relativity took about a decade each, and he spent at least another three decades searching for a unified field theory. The only thing that stopped him from finding that UFT was death. Though he had a great curiosity that led him all throughout the field of physics, around the world, and in and out of international politics and music, he also had the focus to continually return to the same problems from slightly different angles and levels of maturity.
Openness to Discussion
Though Einstein disliked teaching regular courses (it forced him to divert interest away from whatever physical problem was currently vexing him), he loved discussing current problems in physics with professors and students of all levels, even undergraduates. He frequented many philosophical and literary circles as a young man as well. Although his greatest papers were independent works, I suspect his willingness to converse with others (regardless of prestige) expanded his mind greatly and likely gave him clues that assisted him on his quest for cosmic discovery.
Failures:
Maintenance of Health
Though famous for his vegetarian diet, Einstein loathed sports and avoided physical exercise. Illness plagued much of his life and I can't help but think how much more he would have discovered had he maintained his health and wits about him. (Note: I know what you're thinking. Maybe all that sick time was the very reason he was so effective since it would have given him a bit of isolation and rest with which to think deeply about physics. Not so however. Einstein's most creative period (during which he completed his work on special and general relativity and his Nobel work on particle physics) occurred as a young man, before his health declined considerably. His later years are markedly less productive.)
Distraction
Though as a younger man, Einstein eschewed teaching duties and did his best to free himself of distractions from his physics, in hist later years (beginning in the 1920s), he devoted a great deal of time to politics (particularly pacifism and Zionism), fundraising, and administrative work (pertaining to various universities and societies) and generally relinquished his style of intellectual focus and isolation. For such a change, Einstein the scientist surely suffered at the expense of Einstein the human being.
*I did not rate this book since I didn't have the qualifications to read even close to a majority of it.
This book is an intensely thorough scientific biography of Einstein and is likely a great joy to any physicist interested watching the great man work.
However, if you're simply a pop-sci fan passing through the fascinating world of physics, don't stop to gawk here. You won't comprehend a thing. Instead, mosy on over to Walter Isaacson's 'Einstein: His Life and Dreams.'
I may return to this book later, once I've got some relativity and quantum theory under my belt, in order to get a better idea of how Einstein actually did his physics.
In my scant readings of the comprehensible parts of this book, however, I did manage to learn a few interesting things about Einstein's successes and failures that any aspiring scientist might take note of. (Note: I'm purely analyzing his characteristics in their role as his effectiveness as a scientist, not as a human being. "Faults" of Einstein the scientist may very well be great virtues of Einstein the man.)
Successes:
Determination
When Einstein encountered a problem, he didn't drop it until he solved it. Special and general relativity took about a decade each, and he spent at least another three decades searching for a unified field theory. The only thing that stopped him from finding that UFT was death. Though he had a great curiosity that led him all throughout the field of physics, around the world, and in and out of international politics and music, he also had the focus to continually return to the same problems from slightly different angles and levels of maturity.
Openness to Discussion
Though Einstein disliked teaching regular courses (it forced him to divert interest away from whatever physical problem was currently vexing him), he loved discussing current problems in physics with professors and students of all levels, even undergraduates. He frequented many philosophical and literary circles as a young man as well. Although his greatest papers were independent works, I suspect his willingness to converse with others (regardless of prestige) expanded his mind greatly and likely gave him clues that assisted him on his quest for cosmic discovery.
Failures:
Maintenance of Health
Though famous for his vegetarian diet, Einstein loathed sports and avoided physical exercise. Illness plagued much of his life and I can't help but think how much more he would have discovered had he maintained his health and wits about him. (Note: I know what you're thinking. Maybe all that sick time was the very reason he was so effective since it would have given him a bit of isolation and rest with which to think deeply about physics. Not so however. Einstein's most creative period (during which he completed his work on special and general relativity and his Nobel work on particle physics) occurred as a young man, before his health declined considerably. His later years are markedly less productive.)
Distraction
Though as a younger man, Einstein eschewed teaching duties and did his best to free himself of distractions from his physics, in hist later years (beginning in the 1920s), he devoted a great deal of time to politics (particularly pacifism and Zionism), fundraising, and administrative work (pertaining to various universities and societies) and generally relinquished his style of intellectual focus and isolation. For such a change, Einstein the scientist surely suffered at the expense of Einstein the human being.
*I did not rate this book since I didn't have the qualifications to read even close to a majority of it.
May 1, 2013
This is probably the BEST of all the Einstein biographies on the market. It is not only a bio of Einstein himself, but also of his science. With a combination of life story and physics Pais weaves a detailed tapestry of the history of the birth of modern Physics. This book is not for the faint of heart, it takes dedication and patience to work through. The result, wether you understand all the math or not, is a deeper understanding of Einstein's dedication to the pursuit of the greatest of miracles - the human mind's ability to make sense out of nature.
May 12, 2016
Hmmm... well I think this book should have been called:
" The SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE of Albert Einstein (with a tiny bit of context about his life)"
This is a book by a physicist, for physicists. (I am in no way a physicist.) To his credit, the author makes clear in the introduction that the purpose of the book is to cover Einstein's work, and he even highlights in the contents the (very few) sections in the book which deal with Einstein's life rather than work.
Despite knowing that, I made an attempt to read through the book hoping to stretch my brain on the topic of physics. Pretty much every page has at least a couple of formulas, which I skipped straight over, and much of the content is discussing either the details of the most recent formula or how it was arrived at and inspired by others. For a layperson, these parts are sometimes very interesting and sometimes unintelligible. The start and end of the chapters usually provided some (scientific) background on the papers and periods of Einstein's career, and these served to form an interesting history of physics over the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I did learn a lot of things. I learnt about the old, mistaken concept of an aether. I read the material about special relativity slow enough to grasp most of it and to be able to explain it to others in laymen's terms. As for general relativity, I understood very little except that Einstein managed to solve the age old riddle of what caused gravity and predicted a few other related phenomena, such as the bending of light around the sun, which were later confirmed to great fanfare. I saw how Einstein worked mostly alone, especially in his early years, having very little knowledge of what else was going on in the world of physics, even re-discovering some phenomena by his own derivation because he wasn't widely read. I was looking forward to reading about his involvement in the development of the atom bomb, but came to learn that all he did was write a letter urging the US to get to work on it. I saw how theoretical physics is so, so, so coupled with complex mathematics; Einstein in fact teamed up with gifted mathematicians in order to solve some of his biggest challenges. Most surprisingly for me, I learnt that, aside from relativity, Einstein made massive contributions to quantum physics, and that he spent a large part of his career on that issue and on trying to unify it with relativity. And finally, I learnt that, without his make-up on, Charlie Chaplin looks like this.
I struggled my way through to the half way point trying to read every page, but had grown very tired by that point, so I made a resolution to only read pages with no formulae on them and I sped through the rest quite quickly without feeling like I was missing much.
tl;dr - If you're a physicist, you'll probably love this book. If you're not, you probably won't, but you might learn some interesting stuff by reading it.
" The SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE of Albert Einstein (with a tiny bit of context about his life)"
This is a book by a physicist, for physicists. (I am in no way a physicist.) To his credit, the author makes clear in the introduction that the purpose of the book is to cover Einstein's work, and he even highlights in the contents the (very few) sections in the book which deal with Einstein's life rather than work.
Despite knowing that, I made an attempt to read through the book hoping to stretch my brain on the topic of physics. Pretty much every page has at least a couple of formulas, which I skipped straight over, and much of the content is discussing either the details of the most recent formula or how it was arrived at and inspired by others. For a layperson, these parts are sometimes very interesting and sometimes unintelligible. The start and end of the chapters usually provided some (scientific) background on the papers and periods of Einstein's career, and these served to form an interesting history of physics over the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I did learn a lot of things. I learnt about the old, mistaken concept of an aether. I read the material about special relativity slow enough to grasp most of it and to be able to explain it to others in laymen's terms. As for general relativity, I understood very little except that Einstein managed to solve the age old riddle of what caused gravity and predicted a few other related phenomena, such as the bending of light around the sun, which were later confirmed to great fanfare. I saw how Einstein worked mostly alone, especially in his early years, having very little knowledge of what else was going on in the world of physics, even re-discovering some phenomena by his own derivation because he wasn't widely read. I was looking forward to reading about his involvement in the development of the atom bomb, but came to learn that all he did was write a letter urging the US to get to work on it. I saw how theoretical physics is so, so, so coupled with complex mathematics; Einstein in fact teamed up with gifted mathematicians in order to solve some of his biggest challenges. Most surprisingly for me, I learnt that, aside from relativity, Einstein made massive contributions to quantum physics, and that he spent a large part of his career on that issue and on trying to unify it with relativity. And finally, I learnt that, without his make-up on, Charlie Chaplin looks like this.
I struggled my way through to the half way point trying to read every page, but had grown very tired by that point, so I made a resolution to only read pages with no formulae on them and I sped through the rest quite quickly without feeling like I was missing much.
tl;dr - If you're a physicist, you'll probably love this book. If you're not, you probably won't, but you might learn some interesting stuff by reading it.
February 7, 2017
“The aspiration of truth is more precious than its assured possession”. Those were Albert Einstein’s words from his autobiographical note written about a month prior he took his last breath. The spirit with which he wrote bears the seed of the pursuit of an unified field theory from which all the attributes of the Nature will pop out. This is an active field of research in theoretical physics of our present time to search for a theory that unifies the quantum and the classical domains. Such were many of Einstein’s work which he did and it opened doors to uncharted territories of the laws of Nature which got unraveled during his time. It has been over a century that the theories given by him on quantum mechanics and relativity holds remarkable consistency with experiments. The latest of which is the detection of gravitational waves by LIGO experiments(USA) on September 2015 upon merger of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago from now, affecting detectors in a way persistent with the prediction obtained from Einstein's theoretical work. Mathematician & physicist Henri Poincaré was the first person to mention about the existence of gravitational waves and with stupendous effort in formulating General Theory of Relativity from which the equations of gravitational waves was found by Einstein. Although we realize the need of revising his extremely elegant theories owing to the concepts of high gravitational field regime like singularities in black holes, his zeal for the unified theory still stays put.
In his book, author Abraham Pais sketches a biography of Albert Einstein which ponders in Einstein’s work in much of technical depth and also paints an excellent picture of the progress of late 19th to mid 20th century physics. This beautifully written book will help readers to appreciate the Genius of Einstein and how his ideas and work perpetuated during his lifetime. The author does justice in focusing on contribution of many other scientists those who had very crucial contribution in raising apt and subtle questions that led to revolutionary ideas in physics.
I will highly wish the readership of the book to be extended more and more for everyone to have an understanding of how the modern science had humble beginnings in very subtle questions and ideas. It is very important to know through Einstein’s life as an example how a human being is potent of imagining great heights and human abilities of extreme determination to remain fixated on fundamental queries that can unleash the answers to how all of Nature works. One would not fail to notice the ideas Einstein never renounced even though the success was no where close and the majority, including finest of physicists, walked on different paths. Einstein’s dedication, tenacity and strength remind me of the song written by Bengali poet & First Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore: "Jodi tor daak shune keu na ashe, tobey ekla cholo re". (Should no one come to your call, then walk alone). Walked alone he did for the last three decades of his life in the pursuit of unified field theory, a theory which paved the foundation for modern theories aiming to unite all the forces of Nature. Such a theory he foresaw, should be of simplistic structure being pregnant with all the attributes of our reality that we perceive. Einstein’s life runs parallel with a majestic revolution in laws of physics of which he was one of the pioneers and learning about the ways he adopted and the intellect he possessed is one of the bliss of knowledge in itself.
In his book, author Abraham Pais sketches a biography of Albert Einstein which ponders in Einstein’s work in much of technical depth and also paints an excellent picture of the progress of late 19th to mid 20th century physics. This beautifully written book will help readers to appreciate the Genius of Einstein and how his ideas and work perpetuated during his lifetime. The author does justice in focusing on contribution of many other scientists those who had very crucial contribution in raising apt and subtle questions that led to revolutionary ideas in physics.
I will highly wish the readership of the book to be extended more and more for everyone to have an understanding of how the modern science had humble beginnings in very subtle questions and ideas. It is very important to know through Einstein’s life as an example how a human being is potent of imagining great heights and human abilities of extreme determination to remain fixated on fundamental queries that can unleash the answers to how all of Nature works. One would not fail to notice the ideas Einstein never renounced even though the success was no where close and the majority, including finest of physicists, walked on different paths. Einstein’s dedication, tenacity and strength remind me of the song written by Bengali poet & First Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore: "Jodi tor daak shune keu na ashe, tobey ekla cholo re". (Should no one come to your call, then walk alone). Walked alone he did for the last three decades of his life in the pursuit of unified field theory, a theory which paved the foundation for modern theories aiming to unite all the forces of Nature. Such a theory he foresaw, should be of simplistic structure being pregnant with all the attributes of our reality that we perceive. Einstein’s life runs parallel with a majestic revolution in laws of physics of which he was one of the pioneers and learning about the ways he adopted and the intellect he possessed is one of the bliss of knowledge in itself.
August 15, 2012
There's a saying from "A Brief History of Time" by Steven Hawking to the effect that "For every equation in the book the readership would be halved...". Clearly that doesn't hold in the limit, because by rough estimate this book has 300 or so equations, implying that even if the original readership with no equations were the entire earth's population of seven billion, as published it would be 7 X 10^9 X 2^(-300). So I could not have read the book, but I did.
I have advanced degrees in mathematics and engineering and have studied my share of physics (30 or so years ago). But this was still a hard read for me. Although I did make my way through some fraction of the equations I can't claim to have fully understood 1/2 of them. Nevertheless it was a fascinating read, made all the more so by the equations. I'm glad that Pias did not shy away from outlining the technical details of the half starts and final conclusions of the subjects of Einsteins study.
I gave it a score of 4 because 3 is too low, but I really thought it was a 3.5. I did not care for some aspeccts of Pais' writing style, and I would have prefered a "popular" introduction to or summary of each concept. But all in all I enjoyed the book because it gave me an insight into the physics of the first half of last century and the nature of the genius behind the name "Albert Einstein".
I have advanced degrees in mathematics and engineering and have studied my share of physics (30 or so years ago). But this was still a hard read for me. Although I did make my way through some fraction of the equations I can't claim to have fully understood 1/2 of them. Nevertheless it was a fascinating read, made all the more so by the equations. I'm glad that Pias did not shy away from outlining the technical details of the half starts and final conclusions of the subjects of Einsteins study.
I gave it a score of 4 because 3 is too low, but I really thought it was a 3.5. I did not care for some aspeccts of Pais' writing style, and I would have prefered a "popular" introduction to or summary of each concept. But all in all I enjoyed the book because it gave me an insight into the physics of the first half of last century and the nature of the genius behind the name "Albert Einstein".
December 23, 2012
Terrifically clear exposition of Einstein's development as a thinker....Not for those intimidated by equations; but from Brownian motion to Einstein-Bose condensate, one comes away with how his supple mind fit things together. Far more respectful of science - and the scientifically interested reader - than any of the other more superficial biographies of Einstein I've read...
September 22, 2025
O livro é bom, fala de política, física e da vida do Albert Einstein e apesar de ser um homem brilhante mostra seus defeitos como um humano qualquer. Apesar de tudo o livro é um pouco inconsistente com seus capítulos. Não é um livro para ser lido rapido e precisa de um pouco de preparo então pode ser meio pesado para algumas pessoas.
September 23, 2017
Subtle is the Lord is a biography of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais. It brilliantly tells the story of Einstein and his development into a world-renowned Physicist. While covering his life, the book also covers the work that Einstein did in Physics. Starting with his youth and childhood, Subtle is the Lord addresses the theories of Einstein being bad in school by presenting his report card. Although it is true that Einstein didn’t particularly like the authoritative atmosphere of his school, he did not get terrible marks. He taught himself Differential and Integral Calculus by the time he was 16 or so and was wonderful at math.
While Einstein might have had some professional stumbling blocks, most people can agree that 1905 was the year for Einstein. He published six papers that year, with one of them gaining him the Nobel Prize and the others firmly planting him in the upper echelons of physicists. The six papers are:
(1. The light-quantum and the Photoelectric Effect. This one led to the Nobel Prize and was completed on March 17.
(2. A new determination of molecular dimensions, completed April 30. This one became his doctoral thesis and was quoted quite often.
(3. Brownian Motion, received May 11. A direct outgrowth of his thesis work.
(4. The first paper on Special Relativity, received June 30.
(5. The second paper on Special Relativity, containing E = mc^2 received September 27.
(6. The second paper on Brownian Motion, received December 19.
I particularly like the book because it doesn’t shy away from the Mathematics of Einstein’s theories. It discusses the ideas behind the things he developed and shows the state of affairs for each thing beforehand. For instance, before 1905 Einstein published some papers that he felt were lacking once he discovered the works of Gibbs and Boltzmann. It talks about his work on Brownian Motion, his work on the Photoelectric Effect, Special and General Relativity and many of the other things that he had a hand in. With Pais being a Physicist himself, he is able to explain the equations and what they mean.
This particular copy of Subtle is the Lord was printed in 1982, so it does not have further developments on Einstein’s theories and how they are accepted or denied now.
While Einstein might have had some professional stumbling blocks, most people can agree that 1905 was the year for Einstein. He published six papers that year, with one of them gaining him the Nobel Prize and the others firmly planting him in the upper echelons of physicists. The six papers are:
(1. The light-quantum and the Photoelectric Effect. This one led to the Nobel Prize and was completed on March 17.
(2. A new determination of molecular dimensions, completed April 30. This one became his doctoral thesis and was quoted quite often.
(3. Brownian Motion, received May 11. A direct outgrowth of his thesis work.
(4. The first paper on Special Relativity, received June 30.
(5. The second paper on Special Relativity, containing E = mc^2 received September 27.
(6. The second paper on Brownian Motion, received December 19.
I particularly like the book because it doesn’t shy away from the Mathematics of Einstein’s theories. It discusses the ideas behind the things he developed and shows the state of affairs for each thing beforehand. For instance, before 1905 Einstein published some papers that he felt were lacking once he discovered the works of Gibbs and Boltzmann. It talks about his work on Brownian Motion, his work on the Photoelectric Effect, Special and General Relativity and many of the other things that he had a hand in. With Pais being a Physicist himself, he is able to explain the equations and what they mean.
This particular copy of Subtle is the Lord was printed in 1982, so it does not have further developments on Einstein’s theories and how they are accepted or denied now.
August 15, 2017
This has been on my bookshelf for many years and has been read and reread several times.
OK, you probably need to be a physicist or a mathematician to really understand the technical detail, because this is quite definitely a history of the intellectual development of Einstein rather than a personal biography. For those able to cope with that it is by far the best history of Relativity and Einstein's love-hate relationship with quantum mechanics that is available.
OK, you probably need to be a physicist or a mathematician to really understand the technical detail, because this is quite definitely a history of the intellectual development of Einstein rather than a personal biography. For those able to cope with that it is by far the best history of Relativity and Einstein's love-hate relationship with quantum mechanics that is available.
February 20, 2018
This is not just a biography of Einstein but a detailed scientific exposition of his theories from mass energy equivalence to relativity to his thoughts on quantum mechanics. This biography is for physicists and for those who love physics.
April 17, 2021
Fascinating!
July 8, 2025
This is seriously one of the most intellectually satisfying biographies I've ever read on Einstein. If you're looking for a book that goes beyond the usual surface-level storytelling and dives deep into both the science and the person behind it, this is it.
What stood out to me the most was how well Abraham Pais, being a physicist himself, explains Einstein’s work from a scientist’s perspective. He doesn’t just skim over the big ideas like special and general relativity, but walks you through the logic, the context, and the mathematical foundations of Einstein’s ideas. It’s challenging at times, but incredibly rewarding if you’re curious enough to push through.
At the same time, the book doesn’t ignore Einstein the human being. It covers his personal life, his relationships, his political views, and his unique way of thinking in a way that feels grounded in who he was as a scientist. Pais doesn’t try to overly romanticize Einstein or turn him into a caricature of a genius. Instead, he paints a picture of a man who was deeply committed to understanding the universe, even when it meant going against the grain.
It’s definitely a more technical and serious read than other Einstein biographies (like Isaacson’s). But if you’ve already read a bit about Einstein or have some background in physics, this book hits a perfect balance. It respects the reader’s intelligence without becoming inaccessible.
Overall, this book deepened my appreciation for both Einstein’s mind and his impact on modern science. It’s not just a biography, it’s a kind of intellectual journey through the 20th century’s greatest ideas, led by one of the few people who understood what made Einstein so unique.Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein
What stood out to me the most was how well Abraham Pais, being a physicist himself, explains Einstein’s work from a scientist’s perspective. He doesn’t just skim over the big ideas like special and general relativity, but walks you through the logic, the context, and the mathematical foundations of Einstein’s ideas. It’s challenging at times, but incredibly rewarding if you’re curious enough to push through.
At the same time, the book doesn’t ignore Einstein the human being. It covers his personal life, his relationships, his political views, and his unique way of thinking in a way that feels grounded in who he was as a scientist. Pais doesn’t try to overly romanticize Einstein or turn him into a caricature of a genius. Instead, he paints a picture of a man who was deeply committed to understanding the universe, even when it meant going against the grain.
It’s definitely a more technical and serious read than other Einstein biographies (like Isaacson’s). But if you’ve already read a bit about Einstein or have some background in physics, this book hits a perfect balance. It respects the reader’s intelligence without becoming inaccessible.
Overall, this book deepened my appreciation for both Einstein’s mind and his impact on modern science. It’s not just a biography, it’s a kind of intellectual journey through the 20th century’s greatest ideas, led by one of the few people who understood what made Einstein so unique.Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein
March 21, 2021
There is one target audience and one target audience only that this book is meant for and that is serious physicists who are at home with GR/QM mathematics who would like an up close and personal account of the history behind Einstein's breakthroughs. There is no effort to make the book accessible in any way to amateur physics enthusiasts. I still took away a few things from the book. For instance, I had always imagined that Einstein spent an intense couple of years to formulate GR which was then born as a full fledged theory in one fell swoop - while this image is true for special relativity, I was surprised to learn that Einstein had many false starts before finally fleshing out GR. Other learnings were on just how revolutionary his photoelectric effect paper was, how he was pretty much the sole champion of the physical reality of the light quanta for many years and about how there are quantum mechanical effects exhibited in room temperature (specific heat of diamonds) that he was the first to explain. Despite all this, look elsewhere unless Lorentz groups and Bianchi identities are second nature to you!!!
January 15, 2023
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 30 June 2022
I bought this book because I wanted to better understand how Einstein developed his theory of general relativity. It exceeded my expectations. I’ve read a lot of popular science books that explain relativity at a high level and talk about Einstein’s contributions, but this book goes way deeper and covers a lot more ground. It is quite scholarly in style and has lots of equations (there will be some sections you might want to skip over). It doesn’t cover as much as Einsteins personal life as other books, but if you want to understand the science and why Einstein truly was a genius, this is THE book to get. I only take off a star because in some sections it is almost too thorough and highly technical, which makes it harder work to persist. But if you do persist, it is worth it.
I bought this book because I wanted to better understand how Einstein developed his theory of general relativity. It exceeded my expectations. I’ve read a lot of popular science books that explain relativity at a high level and talk about Einstein’s contributions, but this book goes way deeper and covers a lot more ground. It is quite scholarly in style and has lots of equations (there will be some sections you might want to skip over). It doesn’t cover as much as Einsteins personal life as other books, but if you want to understand the science and why Einstein truly was a genius, this is THE book to get. I only take off a star because in some sections it is almost too thorough and highly technical, which makes it harder work to persist. But if you do persist, it is worth it.
January 16, 2024
Un libro complesso, che combina una ricerca storica e bibliografica sulla vita e sulla produzione scientifica di Einstein con un livello di dettaglio che assume una conoscenza della fisica a livello post-universitario. Come ogni libro di fisica che si rispetti, rimuovendo gli "ovviamente", i "chiaramente", i "ne segue immediatamente" si riduce ogni capitolo di circa 10 pagine. Pur potendo apprezzare solo parzialmente i contenuti tecnici, la mole di informazioni e la capacità di collocarle nel periodo storico valgono la lettura. Bellissime le appendici, che spaziano dalla storia delle proposte per assegnare il premio Nobel ad Einstein ad una biografia di tutti i suoi collaboratori.
July 25, 2024
The book is not for ordinary readers. The reader needs a good understanding of physics and non-euclidian geometry to understand many chapters of the book. The writer may have condensed some chapters on his papers and their background and may focus on the man himself. I would like to know more about Einsteins's interaction with Max Planck, Neil Bohr, and his sons and stepdaughters. The most surprising thing for me to find the book has so little focus on Elsa - his wife and Helen Dukas - his secretary
April 22, 2019
A surprising collection of physical formulas and biographical notes. Interesting but the different subjects do not really bland into a biographical story. For me not a nice read but the very interesting contents compensate a lot.
January 8, 2022
I read this 3 decades ago now as an undergraduate student, and can safely say this inspired me to pursue a career in science. Am trying to find a used copy of this book for my library, I am sure I will..
December 19, 2021
Amazing technical detail and historical context.
March 31, 2024
If you can't read equations, just jump them and you will still learn a lot about the work of Einstein
July 7, 2024
Gostei muito de ter lido esse livro, apesar dele claramente ser direcionado a físicos. Temos ciência apresentada em nível extremamente técnico/matemático, e um tanto da vida do gênio também.
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February 12, 2025Cited in Berends “Coming to Life,” p 83
March 20, 2017
I read the Chinese version.
August 14, 2019
This history is so great.
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