The Born - Einstein Letters ─ Friendship, Politics And Physics In Uncertain Times 1916 to 1955

This classic book is a gathering of letters between the two Nobel-prize winning physicists Albert Einstein and Max Born. For the forty years of their friendship, Einstein and Born wrote to each other regularly, discussing their views and feelings on the world wars, quantum theory, music, their families, the tragic plight of Europe's Jewry, and their own roles in the tumultuous politics of the time. Fascinating historically, The Born-Einstein Letters is also highly topical: scientists continue to struggle with quantum physics, their role in wartime, and the public's misunderstanding. Now reissued for "The Year of Physics," commemorating the centennial of Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity, the book will include a new preface by Kip Thorne and Diana Buchwald.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is one of the most influential figures of the modern era. Working in Germany, Switzerland and US, he radically transformed our understanding of the universe and took an outspoken stance on the significant political and social issues of his time. He was the father of the theory of relativity and a major contributor to quantum theory yet always found time for the political causes close to his heart. Max Born (1882-1970) won the Nobel prize for Physics in 1954 for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics. He worked at the Universities of Breslau and G"ttingen before Nazism forced his family to flee to the UK, where he held chairs first at Cambridge and later at Edinburgh University. He collaborated with Pauli, Heisenberg, Fermi, Dirac, Raman, and Oppenheimer among others, while also writing and speaking frequently on the social responsibility of scientists.