Be Einstein

He is the genius, the absent-minded professor Albert Einstein, the owner of the theory of relativity, and the famous figure that forever imprinted in all our minds; with his rebellious hair, his shoes worn without socks, his wide coat, his pipe, and his distraction from his surroundings. Einstein is considered one of the greatest scientists in all of human history, and his contributions make him a towering scientific figure comparable to Isaac Newton. For this historic stature, there are many reasons that compel us to rediscover his life story. The first of these reasons is that his theories are profound and insightful enough that even the predictions he made decades ago still headline newspapers. Therefore, it is important to try to understand the roots of these theories. The second reason that motivates us to review his life story is that physicists today are re-evaluating what he left us, especially his way of thinking. Einstein always believed that any new theory must be based on a physical image simple enough for a small child to understand; otherwise, it is likely of no value. For this reason, in this book, we will use these images, which are the product of Einstein’s scientific imagination, as a primary reference through which we describe his greatest scientific achievements and his method of thinking. The first part of the book discusses the image Einstein first imagined when he was sixteen years old: how a ray of light might appear if a runner beside it could catch up, an image inspired by one of the children’s books he read. The second part presents another image, in which Einstein imagined planets as marbles rolling over a curved surface centered in the heart of the Sun, in an attempt to explain the idea that gravity results from the curvature of space and time. The third part does not involve any images but focuses more on Einstein’s failure to develop a vision leading to his "Unified Field Theory," a concept that would have allowed Einstein to culminate his research on the laws of matter and energy, which extended over two millennia.