In 1921, during a seemingly endless reception in his honor in Washington, Albert Einstein said to the diplomat next to him, "I've just developed a new theory of eternity." That quip came to mind after two new Einstein biographies, which together total more than 1,000 pages, thudded on my doorstep.
Walter Isaacson, a biographer and former executive at CNN and Time, and Jürgen Neffe, a German science journalist, resemble guests who show up, clutching Champagne bottles, for a party that has just ended. At least a dozen books on Einstein were published in 2005, the 100th anniversary of his five revolutionary papers on relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics. Einstein's "miraculous year" was also celebrated in countless conferences, museum exhibits, and articles in magazines, journals, and newspapers. I contributed a couple of essays to The New York Times and spoke at an event about relativity at my institution.
This is cache, read story here