JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
There is a reminder on our refrigerator for class pictures being made for our younger daughter's elementary school this Friday. It never fails to remind me of simpler times for not-so-simple people, time that would soon be overtaken by the complex time of the rest-of-their-lives. One of my favorite images of this impending wave of life is this:
This shows Albert Einstein in Munich at the Luitpold Gymnasium in 1889, when he was 10. (The source for his image, Ronald Clark's illustrated biography of Einstein, says that it is from the 1890's, which is just wrong. Einstein is third from right, front row. In many reproductions of this photographs the boy on the far right of the front row is usually lopped off--I've imagiend a rich life for him from time to time, excised as he was from one of the most famous schoolboy photographs of the last 125 years.)
It was a fiction or fairy tale that Einstein was an average student when he was young--he was in fact a prodigy, and tested out so long as he was somewhat interested, tested out in all areas save one: French. Latin and Greek were good. French, not so. It was a main stumbling block for him throughout his young academic career. And that's a pity. More so, really, when you consider the amount of interest French scientific publications gave to Einstein in the early years, 1905-1908; and conversely, how much time and effort Einstein gave to the French, which was very little, and almost no attention at all when the greatest mathematician of the day, Henri Poincare, especially whe the great man died (in 1911). It has little to do with the actual language part--but that's another story.)
It was a time of big discovery for the little man, though not so much of that discovery took place in school, and the school itself was a trial. But at least right at this point, when this photo was made, he looked happy.
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