Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait, by Reiser Anton published by Albert & Charles Boni, New York, 1930 - First edition. English.
Biography of the life of Albert Einstein by Anton Reiser, pen name of Rudolf Kaiser - German historian and literary man, husband of Einstein's stepdaughter. One of the first biographies dealing with the life of the great scientist from a personal aspect, while he was still in Germany, to which Einstein himself gave his "consent". At the beginning of the book, Einstein writes about the author: " The author of this book is one who knows me intimately in my actions, thoughts, beliefs, slippers in the bedroom" and testifies that he read the book written about him: "I read it to satisfy my curiosity. What interested me was not the desire to know what I looked like, but a side view of how I looked. I found the facts of the book to be adequately accurate...".
Kaiser, gives for the first time an intimate account of the life of one of the greatest physicists who ever lived. The book is divided into six chapters: Childhood and youth, self-support, formulation of the theory of relativity, during and after World War I, Fame, and Einstein today. The book contains seven plates of photographs from different stages of Einstein's life, starting from his youth.
In the introduction, the author discusses one of the wonders of Einstein's personality - the incomprehensible gap between his humble personality and his own lifestyle and the worldwide fame and popularity he gained so early in his career following the breakthrough he brought to the world of science and physics. "His personality and global reputation are a miracle... With Einstein, almost nothing but humility is expressed" he writes. He states on the fact that Einstein did not see himself as a world-renowned "scientist" at all, and that his attitude toward science was the same as the artist's attitude toward his craft. He adds: "Einstein is undoubtedly the perfect man... There is no human and intellectual field that does not interest him. He is interested in all the values and happenings concerning the mind". The author describes the young Einstein as a shy and closed introvert, who most of the time preferred loneliness above the society, with a deep "religious" feeling, who was not really interested in school studies, and who only began to be interested in mathematics at the age of 13 following a book he received from his uncle. And already at the age of 14 he was considered a genius in mathematics and geometry. However, in those years Einstein was more interested in classical German music than in mathematics. All this until his breakthrough with his obtaining Swiss citizenship in 1901, when Einstein began working at the government patent office in Bern, the capital, as a third-rate technical expert. He then began studying the speed of light, and quickly became famous for four articles in the physics annual Annalen der Physik, the most important scientific journal of physics at the time. These articles are considered cornerstones of modern physics, which changed the accepted perceptions until then regarding the connections between space, time and material, and they brought Einstein his first fame in the world of science. However, the uniqueness of the biography before us is that it deals mainly with Einstein's personality and less with his scientific work, as the author explains at length at the beginning of the third chapter.
This biography was published in 1930, three years before Einstein was forced to flee Germany, due to Adolf Hitler's rise to power and new laws prohibiting Jews from holding official positions. Shortly after he escaped, Einstein's books were burned at the stake in the public burning of Jewish books by the Nazis, a reward of 5,000 Reichsmark was placed on his head, and the Nazi government stole his home and sailboat (pictured in the book). Rudolf Kaiser, the author, was also forced to leave Germany in 1935 because of his Jewish heritage.
225 p. Hardcover with the original cloth cover. Light stains on the last pages. Lightly faded spine. Condition Good.
