From Publishers Weekly
"When I'm back in Zurich, the first thing we'll do is climb the Utliberg. . . . And then we'll start in on Hemholtz's electromagnetic theory of light." So wrote the 20-year-old Einstein to fellow physics student Maric. Of these 54 short letters, written from 1897 to 1903, the year they wed, all but three have been included by Renn and Schulman in the publisher's Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1. The letters reveal the disdain of Einstein's bourgeois family for his ambitious, slightly older Serbian lover "Dollie," who would bear his child Lieserl. The baby is referred to in only a couple of letters, and her fate remains a mystery. The editors' brief introduction and explanatory endnotes do little to illuminate the letters' many scholarly and scientific references. While Maric (who wrote only 11 letters) remains a shadowy figure, Einstein, whom she addresses as "Johnnie," touches on issues and sources in the field of physics that occupy his thinking. These references, however, will be of interest mainly to readers familiar with the theories he would later develop.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
From Library Journal
When personal letters of well-known people are published, readers expect either new intimate details of the correspondents' lives or developments in the writers' personalities, ideas, and relationships or both. In this collection, readers will find information about a few topics that excited Einstein in his youth and how he interacted with his professors. They will even find that Maric, who was Einstein's first wife, read the same books and had interests and intellectual abilities similar to Einstein's. Unfortunately, none of this is really new information nor is it exciting to read. The letters provide neither intriguing details about Einstein and Maric's personal lives nor much background information that will help us better understand Einstein. The greatest problem with this book is that 51 of the 54 letters were already published in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein , Vol. 1: The Early Years: 1879-1902 (Princeton Univ. Pr., 1987), which also includes other works that help put the letters in a different perspective. As the full collected works are a better choice, this volume is not recommended.
- Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., Chicago
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
- Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., Chicago
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
