Review: Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study by Ed Regis

The good

• Gives you a deep appreciation for the realm of research and the audacious attempt of humans to understand, well, everything! The book offers a small glimpse into the life and work of some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. I definitely found myself daydreaming about what it would be like to do what they do, and spend all day trying to unravel the underpinnings of our entire universe.

• An interesting look at some of the remarkable researchers who worked at the IaS, including, of course Albert Einstein, but also Kurt Göedel, John von Neumann, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Freeman Dyson, Thomas Kuhn, Stephen Wolfram, and many others.

• The book does a nice job of describing the research of these folks—which included complex topics like quantum physics, string theory, and cellular automata—in a way that will be accessible and interesting for most readers. It was also interesting to see that the institute focused more or less exclusively on theoretical research; no experiments or other practical work here, thank you.

• The author has a good sense of humor; I found myself laughing out loud a few times.

• You get a good glimpse into the occasional politics and ego’s that arise at such an institute. The several faculty “mutinies”; the battle over who gets credit for various findings; the dismissive attitude of one scholar towards the research of another. Academia and research are not always neat and pretty.

The not so good

• The book is oddly dismissive of researchers outside of the math and science fields.

• The book seems to optimize for breadth over depth, covering a number of researchers, but with only a short glimpse at each of them. Often, just as things started to get interesting—just as you started to get into the life of some scientist or become curious about their research—the book would move on to the next one, leaving you hanging.

Rating: 4 stars