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Produktbeschreibung

A Brain Scientist''s Personal Journey
Erscheinungsjahr: 2009
w. figs.
Gewicht: 130 gr / Abmessung: 20 cm
Von Taylor, Jill Bolte

Die Autorin, selbst Neurolgin, erlitt im Dezember 1996 einen schweren Schlaganfall.
Gefangen in ihrem Körper aber über die Prozesse in ihrem Gehirn wissend, begann ein langer Heilungsprozess.

Amazon.com

As a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. --Anne Bartholomew

Read "The Light-Beam Rider," the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe.

Five Questions for Walter Isaacson

Amazon.com: What kind of scientific education did you have to give yourself to be able to understand and explain Einstein's ideas?

Isaacson: I've always loved science, and I had a group of great physicists--such as Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and Murray Gell-Mann--who tutored me, helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions of my book. I also learned the tensor calculus underlying general relativity, but tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book. I wanted to capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientific leaps, but I hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the science will read Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, Jeremy Bernstein, Brian Greene, and others.

Amazon.com: That Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when he revolutionized our understanding of the physical world has often been treated as ironic or even absurd. But you argue that in many ways his time there fostered his discoveries. Could you explain?

Isaacson: I think he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving as an acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teach the conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize the physical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss who told him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galison shows in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, many of the patent applications involved synchronizing clocks using signals that traveled at the speed of light. So with his office-mate Michele Besso as a sounding board, he was primed to make the leap to special relativity.

Amazon.com: That time in the patent office makes him sound far more like a practical scientist and tinkerer than the usual image of the wild-haired professor, and more like your previous biographical subject, the multitalented but eminently earthly Benjamin Franklin. Did you see connections between them?

Isaacson: I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einstein shared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin was a more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was the opposite in that regard.

Amazon.com: Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what did you find to be least true? Most true?

Isaacson: The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He was actually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knew they were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example, he could look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be like to ride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's equations about radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that light was a particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how rebellious and defiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics, his personal life, and his science.

Amazon.com: At Time and CNN and the Aspen Institute, you've worked with many of the leading thinkers and leaders of the day. Now that you've had the chance to get to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone from our day who shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?

Isaacson: There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, who wrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was editor of Time. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the same creative imagination and ability to think differently that distinguished Einstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity. I wish I knew politicians who had the creativity and human instincts of Einstein, or for that matter the wise feel for our common values of Benjamin Franklin.

More to Explore

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Kissinger: A Biography

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

Aus der Amazon.de-Redaktion

Menschen in der ganzen Welt fühlten sich von der Geschichte Lance Armstrongs inspiriert -- ein Weltklassesportler, der fast seiner Krebserkrankung erlag, um sich dann wieder völlig zu erholen und die Tour de France zu gewinnen, jenes mehrtägige Fahrradrennen, das für seine äußerst strapaziöse Intensität berühmt ist. Der Texaner Armstrong ist ein Sportler durch und durch, und die Veränderungen, die seine Krankheit in seinem Leben bewirkt hat, sind erstaunlich und beeindruckend. Dennoch ist er nicht daran interessiert, als Held aufzutreten.

Auch wenn sein Vokabular ein wenig machohaft daherkommt, seine Aktionen sind dazu geeignet, die abgebrühtesten Seelen dahinschmelzen zu lassen: eine Krebsstiftung und ein Benefiz-Radrennen, sein erstaunliches Engagement beim Training, das ihn unzählige Hürden überwinden ließ, seine Treue den Menschen und Unternehmen gegenüber, die nie den Glauben an ihn verloren hatten. Das Buch geht sehr ins medizinische Detail, was für empfindliche Seelen möglicherweise zu viel des Guten sein könnte. Von der Chemotherapie über chirurgische Eingriffe bis hin zur künstlichen Befruchtung seiner Frau -- Ihnen wird kein Röntgenbild, kein Infusionsapparat und keine unangenehme Nebenwirkung erspart.

Sportler und Trainer auf der ganzen Welt werden bei den Ausführungen über seine Trainingsmühen vom gleichen Detailreichtum profitieren -- jede schmerzende Sehne, jeder verregnete Nachmittag und jeder noch so kleine Triumph während seiner langen Erholungsphase wird hier lebhaft beschrieben. It's Not About the Bike ist der perfekte Titel für dieses Buch über Leben, Tod, Krankheit, Familie, Rückschläge und Triumphe (und eben nicht unbedingt über das Fahrrad). --Jill Lightner

Amazon.co.uk

People around the world have found inspiration in the story of Lance Armstrong--a world-class athlete nearly struck down by cancer, only to recover and win the Tour de France, the multiday bicycle race famous for its gruelling intensity. Armstrong is a thoroughgoing Texan jock, and the changes brought to his life by his illness are startling and powerful, but he's just not interested in wearing a hero suit. While his vocabulary is a bit on the he-man side (highest compliment to his wife: "she's a stud"), his actions will melt the most hard-bitten souls: a cancer foundation and benefit bike ride, his astonishing commitment to training that got him past countless hurdles, loyalty to the people and corporations that never gave up on him. There's serious medical detail here, which may not be for the faint of heart; from chemo to surgical procedures to his wife's in vitro fertilization, you won't be spared a single x-ray, IV drip, or unfortunate side effect. Athletes and coaches everywhere will benefit from the same extraordinary detail provided about training sessions--every aching tendon, every rainy afternoon, and every small triumph during his long recovery is here in living colour. It's Not About the Bike is the perfect title for this book about life, death, illness, family, setbacks, and triumphs, but not especially about the bike. --Jill Lightner, Amazon.com

Amazon.com

People around the world have found inspiration in the story of Lance Armstrong--a world-class athlete nearly struck down by cancer, only to recover and win the Tour de France, the multiday bicycle race famous for its grueling intensity. Armstrong is a thoroughgoing Texan jock, and the changes brought to his life by his illness are startling and powerful, but he's just not interested in wearing a hero suit. While his vocabulary is a bit on the he-man side (highest compliment to his wife: "she's a stud"), his actions will melt the most hard-bitten souls: a cancer foundation and benefit bike ride, his astonishing commitment to training that got him past countless hurdles, loyalty to the people and corporations that never gave up on him. There's serious medical detail here, which may not be for the faint of heart; from chemo to surgical procedures to his wife's in vitro fertilization, you won't be spared a single x-ray, IV drip, or unfortunate side effect. Athletes and coaches everywhere will benefit from the same extraordinary detail provided about his training sessions--every aching tendon, every rainy afternoon, and every small triumph during his long recovery is here in living color. It's Not About the Bike is the perfect title for this book about life, death, illness, family, setbacks, and triumphs, but not especially about the bike. --Jill Lightner