Einstein: A Life in Science and Music

by Foster, Brian

• ISBN13: 9780198794875
• ISBN10: 0198794878
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2026-03-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Albert Einstein had two lifelong passions, physics and music: this is the story of Einstein's life told through these twin lenses.

Thoughtfully and rigorously illustrating the ways in which Einstein's musical life and personal and scientific life were mutually influenced, this book illuminates new and different aspects of his complex personality. Throughout Eistein's life, music became an escape both from the intellectual demands of revolutionising twentieth-century science and from the social obligations and commitments in his personal life.

Although the central theme of the book is Einstein's musical life, descriptions of his main contributions to physics, the special and general theories of relativity, are also given in terms understandable to those with no prior knowledge of physics or mathematics. Tracing his life through his formative years in Germany, his flight to Italy, and then education in Switzerland, the book goes on to cover his rise to eminence through the four papers written in his annus mirabilis of 1905 and the eclipse observations in 1919 which propelled him to world fame.

Through the examination of Einstein's relationship with music, this book throws new light onto the personal and professional life of arguably the greatest of all scientists.

Author Biography

Brian Foster, Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics, University of Oxford

Brian Foster obtained his D. Phil from Oxford in 1978. He then went on to lead the particle physics group at Bristol until 2003, subsequently returning to Oxford as head of Particle Physics from 2004 to 2011. In 2010 Foster was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Hamburg/DESY. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Society and was its Vice-President in 2018. In 2003, he won the Max Born Medal and was appointed OBE. He is Donald H. Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics at Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College.