Einstein

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  Just finished reading another book, "EINSTEIN HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE" written by Walter Isaacson, 551 pages, published by Simon & Schuster in 2007.
  
  This biography tracks the physicist's life from his childhood fascination with compasses to his unfulfilled search for unifying physical laws linking the astronomical to the atomic.
  
  The great accomplishments in his life came early in his career while he worked as a patent officer in Switzerland. Drawn to his native Germany following is published success he eventually forsake home to avoid the wave of Nazi anti-semitism. Einstein's intellectual strength came from an ability to visualize models for thought experiments and to challenge scientific misconceptions. This scientist worked with an array of notable scientists and mathematicians, Madame Currie, Haber, Planck, deBroglie, Heisenberger, Schrodinger, Born, Bohr and Oppenheimer.
  
  Einstein came to the United States to stay in the 1930's, at that time there was no preference of the American to European countries, just the opportunities and potential pay offered by Princeton and Cal Tech. Always man who practiced freedom of speech, he came to appreciate the "self-righting capability" of US democracy, even in the face of what he considered to be an over reactive public opinion, e.g. McCarthy in the 50's.
  
  This was a man who had prophetic ability:
  
  

  Brief is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flicking conscience.

  Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

  When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity.

  This was a book I enjoyed very much, on a scale of 1 to 10, "EINSTEIN HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE" gets an 8.