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Michael Gordin - Five Way Interview

Michael D. Gordin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and Dean of the College at Princeton University. A specialist in the history of modern science, he has published books on nuclear weapons, Albert Einstein, and debates over pseudoscience. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is a member of the Leopoldina, the National Academy of Sciences of Germany. Along with Diana Buchwald he is co-author of Free Creations of the Human Mind.

Why science?

Science is one of humanity’s most impressive activities, and like all human activities it has a history. Both Diana and I entered the field of the history of science through sustained fascination with physical sciences.

Why this book?

Einstein is the subject of so many studies that one might reasonably ask why there needs to be another book on him. There were two main features we found lacking in the extant biographical literature. First, they are mostly composed by scientists, many of whom are terrific writers. They do not, however, as a rule approach the material with a full integration into the social and political (and personal!) context that is characteristic of trained historians of science and is especially useful for someone as richly documented as Albert Einstein. We wanted to add this perspective, which means we also made very thorough use of Einstein’s archival materials, which Diana and her team are editing into the ongoing Collected Papers project. The second feature is that most Einstein biographies are long. He lived a full, active life, and every corner of it is fascinating. We felt there was a need for a book that would serve as an entry point, one which could show the range of Einstein’s science and life and guide those interested in learning more.

Why do think 70 years after his death there is still such a fascination with Einstein?

Honestly, this remains a mystery. Historians have developed a reasonable set of explanations for why Einstein became so famous in 1919, but the persistence of that fame after his death is a complex problem and resists a single account. Surely the range of his commitments in the political and philosophical sphere, alongside the truly exceptional import of his contributions to almost every area of fundamental physics, plays a role. It seems hard to deny that Einstein’s charisma — he was photogenic and a master of the quotable line — continues to exert a strong appeal.

What’s next?

There are so many areas of Einstein scholarship that remain to be deepened or explored for the first time. Just to pick one such topic, understanding Einstein’s time in the United States (from the early 1930s to his death in 1955) remains very open. We are each continuing our own research projects. For example, Diana is continuing to edit volume 18 of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, which takes the scientist into the early 1930s.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

Personally, I am working on a number of research projects alongside my day job as Dean of the College at Princeton. Primary among those is a history of what happened to Soviet science after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

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