A gentle wizard

An entertaining and personal introduction to Einstein’s universe. Starting with a walk through Bern in 1905 and ending with the recent discovery of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, this book exposes the theory of Relativity in a readable style. Supported by insightful and zany illustrations, this is a great science story for everyone and anyone.

As a young boy, Jack is sent to deliver a set of pictures to a house on Princeton’s Mercer Street. The house is quite ordinary, but the man who lives there is not. Far from it. It is Albert Einstein, perhaps the smartest man in the world. The man that bent space and warped time.

The first chance meeting leads to an unexpected friendship. Jack becomes a regular visitor to the famous professor’s home. Together they set out on a journey that explores the professor’s ideas about space, time and gravity. The journey takes them to the edge of reality, where clocks grind to a halt and stars collapse onto themselves to form holes that aren’t quite holes.

This is a blend of fact and fiction. The science is very much real. So are most of the characters; including Einstein himself, his assistant Helen Dukas, Robert Oppenheimer and John Wheeler. The story builds on things that actually happened, although perhaps not in this particular order or involving precisely these individuals. Jack is entirely fictional. He had to be.

Great fun. Great science. A compelling story for everyone.

Professor Ray d'Inverno, author of Introducing Einstein’s relativity