Einstein's War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I

by Matthew Stanley

Overview

Winner of the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize

"Stanley is a storyteller par excellence."—The Washington Post

The birth of a world-changing idea in the middle of a bloodbath

Einstein’s War is a riveting exploration of both the beauty of scientific creativity and enduring horrors of human nature. These two great forces battle in a story that culminates with a victory now a century old, the mind bending theory of general relativity.
 
Few recognize how the Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Einstein’s life and work. While Einstein never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity blockaded in Berlin, literally starving.  He lost 50 pounds in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues. Some of those colleagues fought against rabid nationalism; others were busy inventing chemical warfare—being a scientist trapped you in the power plays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct. This was, after all, the first complete revision of our conception of the universe since Isaac Newton, and its victory was far from sure.
 
Scientists seeking to confirm Einstein’s ideas were arrested as spies. Technical journals were banned as enemy propaganda. Colleagues died in the trenches. Einstein was separated from his most crucial ally by barbed wire and U-boats. This ally was the Quaker astronomer and Cambridge don A.S. Eddington who would go on to convince the world of the truth of relativity and the greatness of Einstein.
 
In May of 1919, when Europe was still in chaos from the war, Eddington led a globe-spanning expedition to catch a fleeting solar eclipse for a rare opportunity to confirm Einstein’s bold prediction that light has weight. It was the result of this expedition—the proof of relativity, as many saw it—that put Einstein on front pages around the world. Matthew Stanley’s epic tale is a celebration of how bigotry and nationalism can be defeated, and of what science can offer when they are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524745424
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	412,419
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Matthew Stanley is a professor of the history of science at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He holds degrees in history, astronomy, physics, and religion. He has published two academic books and has written for Physics Today, Physics World, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He explains physics to non-scientists in his podcast What the If?!? and has appeared in documentaries on the History Channel, BBC, and NPR.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 The World of Science Before the War 7

Chapter 2 Science Across Nations 38

Chapter 3 The Wars Begin 63

Chapter 4 Increasing Isolation 93

Chapter 5 The Collapse of International Science 112

Chapter 6 A Vital Victory 133

Chapter 7 To Cross the Trenches 155

Chapter 8 The Borders of the Universe 174

Chapter 9 The Resistance to Relativity 195

Chapter 10 Angels of the Revolution 224

Chapter 11 The Test 252

Chapter 12 The Relativity Circus 296

Epilogue: The Legacy of Einstein and Eddington 321

Acknowledgments 335

Notes 339

Index 381

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Einstein’s War
"Few books about events a century ago carry as relevant a message for today’s world of resurgent nationalism... Stanley is a storyteller par excellence…[his] riveting, blow-by-blow account of Einstein’s struggle… is an unusually reader-friendly journey into relativity theory... Einstein and Eddington would have liked it."
—The Washington Post

"A thrilling history of the development of the theory of relativity...a superb account of Einstein's and Eddington’s spectacularly successful struggles to work and survive under miserable wartime conditions."
—Kirkus, starred review

"Dissecting the debate over whether philosophical attraction to Einstein's views caused Eddington to skew his Principe data, Stanley affirms both the empirical integrity and the political bravery of this Briton's confirmation of a German's theory. The international human drama in epoch-making science."
—Booklist, starred review

"Impressive work of popular science...  Well told... delivers a wider, and still relevant, message that how science is performed is inextricable from other aspects of people's lives."
—Publisher's Weekly, starred review

"[Stanley’s] book is simultaneously a brisk biography of two great scientists, a brief introduction to relativity, and a potted history of the first world war. But it is punchy and well-written, and full of signposts for readers who might want to delve more deeply into the fascinating subjects it explores."
—The Economist

"Detailed and readable…It is especially revealing about Einstein’s scientific work and private life leading up to the momentous events of 1919."
—Nature

"Lively chronicle of the development, spread and ultimate acceptance of general relativity."
—The Wall Street Journal

"Fast moving and engaging."
—New York Journal of Books 

"Fans of popular science, Einstein, physics, and World War I will find this to be entertaining and informative."
—Library Journal

"[Stanley] skillfully interweaves the lives on Einstein and Eddington into a readable narrative."
—Science 

"[Stanley] succeeds in wrapping up the global, national and scientific politics of an era in a compelling story of one man’s wild theory, lucidly sketched, and its experimental confirmation in the unlikeliest and most exotic circumstances."
—Spectator

"This beautifully written, moving account captures the heady thrills and crushing setbacks of one of the great intellectual adventures of modern times."
—David Kaiser, MIT, author of How the Hippies Saved Physics
 
"Profoundly absorbing… One of the greatest epics of scientific history—the grueling intellectual labor of Albert Einstein in Berlin, on one side of the dividing line that the First World War had drawn across Europe… and, on the other side of it, the efforts of Arthur Eddington in Cambridge, one of Einstein’s few supporters...  It was Eddington’s achievement that at last established Einstein’s for the world at large; and all this… amidst the intellectual indifference and near-universal xenophobia of their fellow-scientists on both sides.   An amazing story."
—Michael Frayn, author of the Tony Award winning play Copenhagen
 
"Einstein, at 35, was living and working in the heart of Berlin when the guns of World War I began firing.  The bloody, seemingly endless conflict provoked everything he detested: violence, nationalism, and the herd-thinking that drove individuals into nothing. Matt Stanley gives us the scientist-philosopher and activist during these bloody years, tacking back and forth so effectively between the development of general relativity, plans to test it, and the lopsided battle Einstein fought with the majority of German intellectuals who lined up happily behind the battle lines.  A great read about Einstein and the War that Made More Wars."
—Peter Galison, Harvard University, author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps
 
"Even if you know a lot about the history of relativity—even if you know the old stories about Sir Arthur Eddington's voyage in 1919 to try to prove Albert Einstein's theories correct—you probably haven't pondered just how unlikely the Einstein/Eddington pairing really was. At a time where the mere hint of fraternization with the enemy could land you in jail as a spy, a Briton embraced the ideas of an enemy scientist, and helped launch the legend of arguably the greatest physicist of modern times. A fascinating story."
—Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
 
"How an obscure German physicist became the first superstar of science… Stanley lets us share that excitement a hundred years later in this entertaining and gripping book. It’s a must read if you ever wondered how Einstein became ‘Einstein’."
—Manjit Kumar, author of Quantum

From the Publisher

★ 03/25/2019

Stanley (Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon), an NYU science history professor, places Einstein’s theory of relativity in valuable historical context in this impressive work of popular science. A century after its formulation, the theory stands as “one of the essential pillars” of modern scientific knowledge; but initially, Stanley explains, it went largely unnoticed. Thanks to the closed borders and national hatreds of WWI, it was blocked from wide dissemination outside Germany, particularly in Britain, where all things German were regarded with suspicion. Stanley dramatically relates how, by chance, in 1916, a summary of Einstein’s examination of time and space was received by one of the few British scientists both capable of and open to weighing the theory on its own merits, astronomer Stanley Eddington, who, like Einstein, was a pacifist and internationalist convinced that scientific discovery had no borders. He became the theory’s champion, and in 1919 performed an experiment during a solar eclipse to verify that, as Einstein thought, light has weight. Stanley’s well-told and impressively readable chronicle delivers a wider, and still relevant, message that how science is performed is inextricable from other aspects of people’s lives. Agent: Jeff Shreve, the Science Factory. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Matthew Stanley narrates his own audiobook on Albert Einstein with a gentle, didactic manner that sounds much like an extended academic lecture. Stanley's work provides a thoughtful analysis of Einstein’s development of his theory of relativity and the battle he faced in getting his theory accepted in the academic world. Listeners will find Stanley's history fascinating, as the physicist's struggles included the challenge of working with the pervasive nationalism so common during WWI. Stanley's voice takes on the lilt characteristic of an established professor. His confident and engaging delivery makes the complex science and complicated wartime history accessible. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

Matthew Stanley narrates his own audiobook on Albert Einstein with a gentle, didactic manner that sounds much like an extended academic lecture. Stanley's work provides a thoughtful analysis of Einstein’s development of his theory of relativity and the battle he faced in getting his theory accepted in the academic world. Listeners will find Stanley's history fascinating, as the physicist's struggles included the challenge of working with the pervasive nationalism so common during WWI. Stanley's voice takes on the lilt characteristic of an established professor. His confident and engaging delivery makes the complex science and complicated wartime history accessible. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

★ 2019-03-03

A thrilling history of the development of the theory of relativity, "one of the essential pillars upholding our understanding of the universe."

Despite Einstein's sole billing, this outstanding history/biography gives equal billing to Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), the British astronomer who championed relativity. This year is the 100th anniversary of the year when proof of his theory, largely engineered by Eddington, made Einstein (1879-1955) a scientific superstar. In his first book for a general audience, Stanley (History of Science/New York Univ. Gallatin School of Individualized Study; Huxley's Church and Maxwell's Demon: From Theistic Science to Naturalistic Science, 2014, etc.) chronicles the creation and acceptance of relativity against a background of the nasty nationalism of World War I. The author reminds readers that in 1905, Einstein described special relativity, a brilliant explanation of space, time, and motion. However, it did not explain accelerated motion, which includes gravity. Fixing that required years of labor, but Einstein succeeded in 1915 with general relativity. Einstein was a rare scientist among the warring nations who rejected often hateful patriotism. Eddington was another. Born a Quaker, he was a prodigy who studied at Cambridge and became a distinguished astronomer. As conscientious objectors, British Quakers suffered vicious persecution during the war, and it was only through the efforts of his superiors that he was spared. Eddington learned about relativity through a Dutch astronomer; intrigued, he became its leading British advocate. Few colleagues showed interest in theories of an obscure enemy scientist, but this did not prevent Eddington from initiating plans, even as the war raged, for the famous 1919 eclipse expedition. The author excels in explaining its surprisingly complex details, the tedious work required to tease out the minuscule bending of starlight that obeyed Einstein's prediction, and the still stunning explosion of adulation that resulted when results were announced.

Stanley gives history priority over science. His explanation of general relativity will be a stretch for readers unfamiliar with college physics, but he delivers a superb account of Edison's and Eddington's spectacularly successful struggles to work and survive under miserable wartime conditions.

Kirkus Reviews