Xll TO THE READER
with the caption, 'The science and the life of Albert Einstein.' This picture with
its entries and its arrows represents my most concise summary of Einstein's great-
ness, his vision, and his frailty. This book is largely an attempt to explain this
cryptic description of the skeletal drawing. Toward the end of the book, the draw-
ing will return.
The generosity, wisdom, knowledge, and criticism of many have been invalu-
able to me in preparing this work. To all of them I express my deep gratitude.
No one helped me more than Helen Dukas, more familiar than anyone else at
this time with Einstein's life, trusted guide through the Einstein Archives in
Princeton. Dear Helen, thank you; it was wonderful. I have benefited importantly
from discussions with Res Jost, Sam Treiman, and George Uhlenbeck, each of
whom read nearly the whole manuscript, made many suggestions for improve-
ment, and gave me much encouragement. I also gratefully record discussions on
particular subjects: with Valentin Bargmann, Banesh Hoffmann, and Ernst
Straus on Einstein's life, on general relativity, and on unified field theory; with
Robert Dicke, Peter Havas, Malcolm Perry, Dennis Sciama, and John Stachel on
relativity; with Armand Borel on Poincare; with Eddie Cohen, Mark Kac, and
Martin Klein on statistical physics; with Anne Kox on Lorentz; and with Harold
Cherniss and Felix Gilbert on topics ranging from Greek atomism to the Weimar
Republic. Special thanks go to Beat Glaus from the ETH and Gunther Rasche
from the University of Zurich for helping me find my way in archives in Zurich.
To all of them as well as to those numerous others who answered questions and
inspired with comments: thank you again.
This book was completed at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. I
thank Harry Woolf for his hospitality and for support from the Director's Fund.
I am greatly beholden to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for an important grant
that helped me in many phases of preparation. For permission to quote from
unpublished material, I express my deep appreciation to the Einstein Estate, the
Pauli Estate, the Rijksarchief in the Hague (Lorentz correspondence), and the
Boerhaave Museum in Leiden (Ehrenfest correspondence). I also thank the K.
Vetenskapsakademiens Nobel Kommitteer in Stockholm, and in particular Bengt
Nagel, for making available to me the documentation regarding Einstein's Nobel
Prize.
I have left the text of this Preface as it was written before the death of Helen
Dukas on February 10, 1982.