Genius

Genius: a Photobiography of Albert Einstein	National Geographic
Written by Marfé Ferguson Delano	2005
Biography	64 pages
Reading Level ages 9-12

Summary

Albert was a good student in his studies but didn’t pay attention to subjects that seemed boring to him. He learned mostly on his own, reading math books at increasingly harder levels. He was left in Germany to continue school while his family moved for business. He dropped out before he was seventeen. He hated the military structure and rote memorization and didn’t want to be drafted into the army once he was old enough. He enrolled in a university and took math classes and many physics. He was engaging and entertained his friends with his violin and deep thoughtful questions. He almost didn’t pass the tests because he didn’t attend classes believing that science isn’t dull theories that have been proven for years. He believed it to be living aspect of life. He married and had two sons, who he called his little bears. He eventually became withdrawn from his family, leading into a divorce. He gave his Nobel Prize money to his wife and children as promised years before he ever received it. He wrote four papers that changed the thinking of science. The first was photoelectric, theorizing that light has the same protons that are within element’s atoms. The second was the mathematical formula for the movement of the atoms in a zigzag motion solidified the Brownian motion theory. The third was a question he had been pondering for years, relativity of light from the perspective of the light. He found that energy is the same as the mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. The last major paper was the combination of space and time, where light bended around objects. Scientists measured the positions of stars behind the sun and proved his theory correct. He was seen as a science celebrity and spent a lot of his time traveling, speaking in conferences and signing autographs. He died from an appendix rupture at the age of 76 on April 18, 1955.

Reaction

I loved reading more into the personal life of Einstein. I learned many things I didn’t know. The photographs added to the book as well as the quotes from his wife, friends, and his own words. It was fascinating to see the political side and how passionate he was against fighting and the German acts against the Jews.

Potential Problems

There are some complex theories that were difficult to follow even when they were translated to be easier understood.

Recommendations

I would recommend this book to students who look up to Einstein and his works and interested in modern applications of his theories and laws.