Abraham Pais

Abraham Pais was a physicist and historian who wrote a marvellous biography of Albert Einstein entitled Subtle is the Lord. The subtitle of this book, 'The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein', indicates what makes it remarkable: It manages to describe Einstein's contributions to physics as well as the events of his life. The work is an outstanding contribution to the scientific biography genre and can be used to learn about early-20th-century physics from an historical perspective. (My copy of this book was given to me by a glaciologist friend who tells me that when he attended ETH in Zurich he received better grades than Einstein.  I imagine that since Einstein's grades were poor, a good strategy might be to try and do worse.)



Pais led a very interesting life; once he received his PhD at the age of 22 he was obliged to then survive World War II in Holland.

Placeholder remarks on Pais' work in physics.

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