Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius | 
| Author: Hans C. Ohanian
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 20523
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 0393062937
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.09
EAN: 9780393062939
ASIN: 0393062937
Publication Date: September 8, 2008
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Product Description
Fresh insights into aspects of Einstein we don't usually consider: his mistakes and the role they played in the discovery of his theories.
Although Einstein was the greatest genius of the 20th century, many of his ground-breaking discoveries were blighted by mistakes, ranging from serious misconceptions in physics to blatant errors in mathematics. For instance, Einstein's first theoretical proof of the famous formula E = mc was incomplete and only approximately valid; he struggled with this problem for many years, but he never found a complete proof (better mathematicians did). In this provocative forensic biography, Hans Ohanian dissects this and other mistakes and places them in the context of Einstein's turbulent life and times. Einstein was often navigating in a fog of irrational and mystical inspirations, but his profound intuition about physics permitted him to reach his goal despite—and sometimes because of-the mistakes he made along the way. Einstein's uncanny ability to use his mistakes subconsciously as stepping-stones toward his revolutionary theories was one hallmark of his genius. 25 illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 A distorted view of Einstein's work November 5, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
First, I confess that I haven't read most of the book. However, I
have read enough of it to decide that I don't want to waste any more
of my time by reading the rest of it.
Einstein, being human, undoubtedly made mistakes. However, in the
portions of the book that I have read, most of the alleged mistakes
actually are cases where Einstein merely made the sort of
approximations that physicists often make in order to simplify a
problem, or the author Ohanian misunderstood what Einstein said, or
the mistake in physics was made by Ohanian, not Einstein.
For brevity, I will discuss only one example, chosen because Ohanian
mentions it first and emphasizes it in several places as supposedly
driving Donald Crowhurst into madness. Ohanian objects to the
stipulation that light travels (in a vacuum) at the same speed in
opposite directions. However, it is necessary to stipulate something
about the equivalence of opposite directions (for the speed of signals
or the effect of motion on clocks) in order to define simultaneity.
Otherwise, the statement that two events at different locations are
simultaneous would be meaningless, and the one-way speed of light
would be undefined. (The round-trip speed of light is well defined.
Ohanian ignores the distinction here.) Ohanian claims that
simultaneity can be determined unambiguously by transporting clocks,
but he ignores the fact that one of the results of relativity is that
any measurement of time is affected by motion.
In the above case, Einstein was proposing a method of defining
simultaneity. He then showed that it did not produce a definition of
absolute simultaneity, but one that depended on the relative motion of
observers, if the speed of light is the same for all observers. This
relativity of simultaneity is an important part of special relativity.
It's amazing that Ohanian ignores it.
 Something for everyone November 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was worried that I'd need to brush up on my long-forgotten college math and physics to understand this book, but the book is itself a bit of a brush-up course. And what's especially remarkable is that it's understandable, at different levels, by people with almost any scientific background, or none at all. People who understand tensor calculus (or who know what it is!) would, I'm sure, get more out of the book than I did, but with only a layman's concept of relativity, I was able to follow a good many of the points he makes about Einstein's mistakes (such as his failure to consider tidal effects in the Equivalence Principle).
Except for E=mc squared (and Newton's F=ma), there's hardly an equation in sight. And a lot of the book is totally non-technical: many of Einstein's mistakes involved women, rather than math or physics, and this aspect of his life is not slighted. The book examines the "Einstein phenomenon" and how Einstein managed his well-deserved reputation as the scientist of the century. And (unless it's a hat) the author has the most marvelous haircut I've ever seen on a physicist!
 Interesting material hampered by attack-dog presentation October 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The text presents a mix of light biography, theory explanation, and analysis of errors in a blend appropriate to support the major thesis--that Einstein made mistakes. The text is well written, generally balanced in structure, and enjoyable. Early chapters develop Einstein's career in the greater field of physics, first presenting the advances of Galileo, Newton, Lorentz, and others. Einstein is then presented as a young man working as a patent clerk and desiring a university posting--a posting beyond his grasp due to mediocre grades, poor personal hygiene, and challenged interpersonal skills. The book then follows his entire career. The included biography however is spotty and highlights anecdotes, but does not attempt to explain the man in notable detail--though the text is not intended as a comprehensive biography. Throughout, Einstein is presented as self-promoting, prone to foibles, a lousy mathematician, excessively proud, human--and also intelligent in the arena of physics. The author clearly does not hold Einstein in the same fabled light favored by conventional wisdom, for example presenting Einstein's initial forays into general relatively as "a performance worthy of Elmer Fudd" (p. 196) and suggesting that many of Einstein's theoretical advances were either proposed earlier by others, co-discovered but not co-attributed, or were invalid in detail while only accidentally correct in the general case. These various issues form the bulk of what the text terms Einstein's mistakes, noting "Einstein made so many mistakes in his scientific work that it is hard to keep track of them" (p. 327). The text does not claim to discover any mistakes--they are all attributed to other sources in the two-dozen pages of endnotes. The text argues that Einstein's reputation remains untarnished not for lack of faults but because of professional courtesy: "...he did not label Einstein's mistake as such. This restraint has also been observed by later writers..." (p. 96).
The text presents most material in a roughly chronological order, considering theories and papers in the order they were published. It is apparent from the material included that Einstein's interests were wide and that he had a fundamental grasp on the significant questions of physics during his lifetime. However, Einstein is presented as, at best, a bumbling mathematician. Most of the chronicled mistakes are mathematical errors. Much of science typically works in a stepwise fashion, with theories being offered and then either modified or withdrawn. Einstein was no exception to this and many of his published theories were later modified, either by himself or others. These early theoretical excursions, when not substantively correct on the first presentation, are considered serious mistakes. When Einstein did not know of significant contemporaneous developments, his ignorance is also termed a mistake. Some of Einstein's personal foibles and some of his career moves are considered mistakes.
In all, Einstein's collected papers are said to comprise "about 180 original items. Of these, about 50 contain mistakes...It's a bad scorecard" (p. 327). While the close examination of Einstein's productivity makes fascinating reading, the text's unfortunate tone borders on gloating and is not consistently objective; Einstein's mistakes "were perfectly mundane, careless, and sometimes stupid lapses in logic and mathematics" (p. 332). And in fact, the tone of the title itself captures entirely the tone of the text. The text's greatest disappointment, however, lies in the conclusion "[w]hat lessons can we extract from Einstein's mistakes? Not many" (p. 332). Surely this is wrong--studying the failings of genius, after all, helps us understand our own average failings in an entirely different light. And even if the conclusion is after all correct, that nothing can be learned by examining Einstein's mistakes, then why write the book in the first place?
A biography of Einstein by way of analyzing his failures and mistakes October 13, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
When asked by his student how he'd respond to evidence against his famous theory of relativity, Einstein maintained his belief in it against all possible empirical evidence - seemingly. His sense of humor may have outsmarted him but it also reflected his singular mind and stubborn purpose - and his reliance on intuition and inspiration over all. EINSTEIN'S MISTAKES comes from a physicist who offers a biography of Einstein by way of analyzing his failures and mistakes: as such it provides an involving survey which considers the history of physics and Einstein's mistakes as well as those of other leading scientists over the decades. An involving, moving survey.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Irritating but it's made me think October 10, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
The first of Einstein's "mistakes" discussed in this book is his stipulation that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames. Ohanion is indignant about this because he thinks that this principle is a fact about the world and not an assumption. The author is very insistant about this but he doesn't really give an argument. Now, I am a bit embarrassed to admit that, until now, I've been one of those people who goes through life not worrying very much about the speed of light being the same to all observers. This is supposed to be counterintuitive, but is it really? I mean, a light signal is not the same kind of object as a train or a plane. In fact its very different and it would be surprising if the speed of light meant the same thing as the speed of a train. I think it was Lewis Fry Richardson who pointed out that we mean different things by speed when we talk about different things. He was talking about the speed of the wind but the argument applies to other things as well.
Light is defined as something that satisfies Maxwell's equations. These equations are structured in such a way that the speed of anything that is described by them will be the same when measured in any inertial framework. Einstein obviously understood this. Now, Maxwell's equations are not facts. They agree with the facts of electricity and magnetism but so would any number of alternative theories. Most scientists prefer Maxwell's equations because they seem them as better than the alternatives but this judgment goes beyond the facts to include some assumptions about what reality is like.
So certain assumptions in conjunction with the bare facts about electricity and magnetism lead to the choice of Maxwell's theoretical framework which implies that the speed of light is the same for all observers. Einstein is right that an assumption is involved here. But I wouldn't even be thinking about these things if I hadn't started reading this book so I guess I owe a debt of gratitude to the author. I gave the book only one star because I found something else in it that I think is unforgivably stupid. The author presents the cracked idea that Jews have a different style of doing physics than other people and leaves the reader the impression that there might be something to it.
Since writing this review, I have gotten deeper into the book which is, I have to admit, compulsively diverting and readable. It hasn't gotten any worse and it continues to be stimulating in an annoying way.
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