Bending Light

Today, NPR posted an interview with Walter Isaacson, author of a new biography about Albert Einstein.  Isaacson makes the case that it was Einstein's creativity and imagination, more than his mathematical genius, that led him to his great discoveries. 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11786053

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world." 

An excerpt from Chapter 1, "The Light-Beam Rider" discusses how Einstein thought in pictures, and visualization was an important part of his creativity.  When he was a 16 year old boy, he imagined what it would be like to chase after a light beam.  With that mental experiment in 1895, he began his work on special relativity.


Isaacson also points out that Einstein's vision was not limited to scientific discoveries, but expansive in his hopes for humanity. He held a lifelong commitment to battle racism, what he called "America's worst disease."  In 1937, the great contralto Marion Anderson performed to standing-room-only audiences in Princeton, NJ, but she was turned away from the segregated Nassau Inn.  Einstein, a lover of music, went to see Anderson and invited  her to stay at his home in Princeton.  Anderson and singer/actor/social activist Paul Robeson were frequent guests at Einstein's home, and Einstein worked to improve race relations thoroughout his life.


In 1939, 75,000 people gathered to hear Marion Anderson sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's first integrated concert.  Harold Ickes, President Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, introduced Anderson with these words... "In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free. When God gave us this wonderful outdoors, and the sun, the moon, and the stars, he made no distinction of race or creed or color." 


Forever the visionary, riding on a beam of light, Albert Einstein was ahead of his time. “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”