"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

writer of a work on mathematics: here was a man who had written an entire
book of which Mark could not understand a single sentence. Einstein,
therefore, is great in the public eye partly because he has made
revolutionary discoveries which cannot be translated into the common tongue.
We stand in proper awe of a man whose thoughts move on heights far beyond
our range, whose achievements can be measured only by the few who are able
to follow his reasoning and challenge his conclusions.

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