Albert Einstein is probably the best known scientist of the 20th Century. Most people know of his theory of relativity and that famous little equation E=mc². Yet it's not for this or quantum physics that Einstein inspires me. It was his ability to think outside the square and to apply great creativity and imagination to science. He opened the boundaries of his mind and didn't accept reality as it presented itself.
Albert Einstein may have looked like the stereotypical mad inventor with wild hair and an intense look, but he was not the mono-dimensional scientist which is the other great cliché of science. He was definitely a well rounded individual - he embraced philosophy from an early age and was into art. At university he could be seen hanging out in cafes and bars, discussing physics with other students.
Einstein was a bit of a rebel, and not too good with authority figures. One of his earlier teachers accused him of sitting in the back row and smiling (a familiar sounding accusation - not that I'd want to compare myself with Einstein). He always felt better if he could reject authority rather than it rejecting him. And one or the other happened on many occasions!
Contrary to what many people think, Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project - that infamous undertaking to develop the world's first nuclear weapon. Even back in the 1930s Einstein was well known as a pacifist. He did not work on the Project and he was not present at any nuclear tests. Yet he is linked to the bomb's development - E=mc² was essential to the physics behind the bomb. Einstein also wrote to President Roosevelt to alert him to the possiblity of the development of a nuclear weapon by the Nazis. In any case, his limited association with the development of the atomic bomb was a source of great sadness for Einstein.
Had Einstein wanted to work on the Manhattan Project, he probably would have been prevented because of the fears of the FBI, who by 1940 had a 1500 page dossier on Einstein. Albert Einstein was a member of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence. He had left-wing politics and he was a foreign scientist living in the United States. The FBI, paranoid and searching for communist sympathisers, thought one of the world's greatest minds an "extreme radical" and a security risk.
Interestingly, when he was younger, Einstein thought that he lacked imagination. In high school he wrote - "My disposition for abstract and mathematical thought, [and my] lack of imagination and ability" as his reasons for becoming a teacher in physics and mathematics. Not so later on in life, when Einstein had played with our perception of the world and re-negotiated it, he then said "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world". A poet as well!
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