einstein

His office in Bern’s new Postal and Telegraph Building was near the world-famous clock tower over the old city gate (see p. 107). As he turned
left out of his apartment on his way to work, Einstein walked past it every day. The clock was originally built shortly after the city was founded in
1191, and an astronomical contraption featuring the positions of the planets was added in 1530. Every hour, the clock would put on its show: out
would come a dancing jester ringing bells, then a parade of bears, a crowing rooster, and an armored knight, followed by Father Time with his
scepter and hourglass.
The clock was the official timekeeper for the nearby train station, the one from which all of the other clocks that lined the platform were
synchronized. The moving trains arriving from other cities, where the local time was not always standardized, would reset their own clocks by
looking up at the Bern clock tower as they sped into town. 67
So it was that Albert Einstein would end up spending the most creative seven years of his life—even after he had written the papers that
reoriented physics—arriving at work at 8 a.m., six days a week, and examining patent applications. “I am frightfully busy,” he wrote a friend a few
months later. “Every day I spend eight hours at the office and at least one hour of private lessons, and then, in addition, I do some scientific work.”
Yet it would be wrong to think that poring over applications for patents was drudgery. “I enjoy my work at the office very much, because it is
uncommonly diversified.” 68
He soon learned that he could work on the patent applications so quickly that it left time for him to sneak in his own scientific thinking during the
day. “I was able to do a full day’s work in only two or three hours,” he recalled. “The remaining part of the day, I would work out my own ideas.” His
boss, Friedrich Haller, was a man of good-natured, growling skepticism and genial humor who graciously ignored the sheets of paper that cluttered
Einstein’s desk and vanished into his drawer when people came to see him. “Whenever anybody would come by, I would cram my notes into my
desk drawer and pretend to work on my office work.” 69
Indeed, we should not feel sorry for Einstein that he found himself exiled from the cloisters of academe. He came to believe that it was a benefit
to his science, rather than a burden, to work instead in “that worldly cloister where I hatched my most beautiful ideas.” 70
Every day, he would do thought experiments based on theoretical premises, sniffing out the underlying realities. Focusing on real-life questions,
he later said,“stimulated me to see the physical ramifications of theoretical concepts.” 71 Among the ideas that he had to consider for patents were
dozens of new methods for synchronizing clocks and coordinating time through signals sent at the speed of light. 72
In addition, his boss Haller had a credo that was as useful for a creative and rebellious theorist as it was for a patent examiner: “You have to
remain critically vigilant.” Question every premise, challenge conventional wisdom, and never accept the truth of something merely because
everyone else views it as obvious. Resist being credulous. “When you pick up an application,” Haller instructed, “think that everything the inventor
says is wrong.” 73
Einstein had grown up in a family that created patents and tried to apply them in business, and he found the process to be fulfilling. It reinforced
one of his ingenious talents: the ability to conduct thought experiments in which he could visualize how a theory would play out in practice. It also
helped him peel off the irrelevant facts that surrounded a problem. 74
Had he been consigned instead to the job of an assistant to a professor, he might have felt compelled to churn out safe publications and be
overly cautious in challenging accepted notions. As he later noted, originality and creativity were not prime assets for climbing academic ladders,
especially in the German-speaking world, and he would have felt pressure to conform to the prejudices or prevailing wisdom of his patrons. “An
academic career in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts creates a danger of intellectual superficiality,” he
said. 75
As a result, the happenstance that landed him on a stool at the Swiss Patent Office, rather than as an acolyte in academia, likely reinforced some
of the traits destined to make him successful: a merry skepticism about what appeared on the pages in front of him and an independence of
judgment that allowed him to challenge basic assumptions. There were no pressures or incentives among the patent examiners to behave
otherwise.
The Olympia Academy
Maurice Solovine, a Romanian studying philosophy at the University of Bern, bought a newspaper while on a stroll one day during Easter
vacation of 1902 and noticed Einstein’s advertisement offering tutorials in physics (“trial lessons free”). A dapper dilettante with close-cropped hair
and a raffish goatee, Solovine was four years older than Einstein, but he had yet to decide whether he wanted to be a philosopher, a physicist, or
something else. So he went to the address, rang the bell, and a moment later a loud voice thundered “In here!” Einstein made an immediate
impression. “I was struck by the extraordinary brilliance of his large eyes,” Solovine recalled. 76
Their first discussion lasted almost two hours, after which Einstein followed Solovine into the street, where they talked for a half-hour more. They
agreed to meet the next day. At the third session, Einstein announced that conversing freely was more fun than tutoring for pay. “You don’t have to
be tutored in physics,” he said. “Just come see me when you want and I will be glad to talk with you.” They decided to read the great thinkers
together and then discuss their ideas.
Their sessions were joined by Conrad Habicht, a banker’s son and former student of mathematics at the Zurich Polytechnic. Poking a little fun at
pompous scholarly societies, they dubbed themselves the Olympia Academy. Einstein, even though he was the youngest, was designated the
president, and Solovine prepared a certificate with a drawing of an Einstein bust in profile beneath a string of sausages. “A man perfectly and
clearly erudite, imbued with exquisite, subtle and elegant knowledge, steeped in the revolutionary science of the cosmos,” the dedication
declared. 77
Generally their dinners were frugal repasts of sausage, Gruyère cheese, fruit, and tea. But for Einstein’s birthday, Solovine and Habicht decided
to surprise him by putting three plates of caviar on the table. Einstein was engrossed in analyzing Galileo’s principle of inertia, and as he talked he
took mouthful after mouthful of his caviar without seeming to notice. Habicht and Solovine exchanged furtive glances. “Do you realize what you’ve
been eating?” Solovine finally asked.
“For goodness’ sake,” Einstein exclaimed. “So that was the famous caviar!” He paused for a moment, then added, “Well, if you offer gourmet
food to peasants like me, you know they won’t appreciate it.”
After their discussions, which could last all night, Einstein would sometimes play the violin and, in the summertime, they occasionally climbed a
mountain on the outskirts of Bern to watch the sunrise. “The sight of the twinkling stars made a strong impression on us and led to discussions of
astronomy,” Solovine recalled. “We would marvel at the sun as it came slowly toward the horizon and finally appeared in all of its splendor to bathe
the Alps in a mystic rose.” Then they would wait for the mountain café to open so they could drink dark coffee before hiking down to start work.
Solovine once skipped a session scheduled for his apartment because he was enticed instead to a concert by a Czech quartet. As a peace