Quantum mechanics

As a student, he met Niels Bohr in Göttingen in 1922. A fruitful collaboration developed between the two.

He invented matrix mechanics, the first formalization of quantum mechanics in 1925. His Uncertainty Principle, discovered in 1927, states that the determination of both the position and momentum of a particle necessarily contains errors, the product of these being not less than a known constant. Together with Bohr, he would go on to formulate the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

He received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1932 “for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen”.

Work during the War

Nuclear fission was discovered in Germany in 1938. Heisenberg remained in Germany during World War II, working under the Nazi regime. He led Germany’s nuclear weapon program, but the extent of his cooperation has been a subject of controversy.

He revealed the program’s existence to Bohr at a conference in Copenhagen in September 1941. After the meeting, the lifelong friendship between Bohr and Heisenberg ended abruptly. Bohr later joined the Manhattan Project. Germany did not succeed in producing an atomic bomb.

It has been speculated that Heisenberg had moral qualms and tried to slow down the project. Heisenberg himself attempted to paint this picture after the war, and Thomas Power’s book “Heisenberg’s War” and Michael Frayn’s play “Copenhagen” adopted this interpretation.

In February 2002, a letter written by Bohr to Heisenberg in 1957 (but never sent) emerged. In it, Bohr relates that Heisenberg, in their 1941 conversation, did not express any moral problems with the bomb making project, that Heisenberg had spent the past two years working almost exclusively on it, and that he was convinced that the atomic bomb would eventually decide the war.

Most historians of science take this as evidence that the previous interpretation of Heisenberg’s resistance was wrong, but some have argued that Bohr profoundly misunderstood Heisenberg’s intentions at the 1941 meeting.

Looking back

He wrote a book called “The Part and The Whole” about his life, his friendship with Bohr, and the evolution of quantum physics.

“He lies somewhere here” has been his epitaph.

According to an apocryphal story, Heisenberg was asked what he would ask God, given the opportunity. His reply was: “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.”

References

• James Glanz, “New Twist on Physicist’s Role in Nazi Bomb”. The New York Times, February 7, 2002.

Friedl Bohm believes people are allowed to make a mistake once.

“But if you make the same mistake three times over,” he says, “you’re an idiot.”

Bohm, who for the past 13 years has been head of the world-renowned NBBJ architectural and design firm, claims his biggest mistake came when he was just starting out in the architecture field.

“When you’re young, you’re so eager to make things happen,” he says. “You forget anybody has been there before.

“When you’re 18, you always think your father is the dumbest person in the world. When you turn 30, your father is the wisest person in the world. Early on in my career, I didn’t realize that. I was not listening enough to the voice of wisdom. I’m listening more these days.”

And to a lot more people. The 58-year-old civic leader readily points to several in Central Ohio who have guided him along the slippery slope to success:

• George Skestos, founder of Homewood Corp.– “The person who gave me my first architecture job.”
• John Miller, the retired owner of JM Real Estate — “He gave me my first planning job.”
• The late Mel Schottenstein, who was a founder of the Schottenstein, Zox & Dunn law firm and co-founder of M/I Schottenstein Homes — “He was always a great mentor and supporter.”
• Frank Wobst, chairman of Huntington Bancshares Inc. — One of Bohm’s nominators for Junior Achievement’s Central Ohio Hall of Fame and “one of the more fascinating individuals that I know,” Bohm says. “He’s always willing to help and advise.”
• The late Art Cullman, professor emeritus of marketing at The Ohio State University and a frequent business adviser and investor — “He was a guru of marketing at OSU and helped me in the community.”
• Jack Kessler, chairman of The New Albany Co. — “He’s helped me businesswise and also as a friend.”

In addition to this blue-chip collection of mentors, Bohm says he admires and learns from a number of other business leaders in corporate Columbus. These include John F. Wolfe, publisher and chairman of The Dispatch Printing Co., whom Bohm says he looks up to for his “laid-back stewardship” in the community; and Les Wexner, chairman of The Limited Inc. and Intimate Brands Inc., “for his incredible creativity and for his willingness to always be ahead of other people — not just in his thinking, but in his commitments.”

He also admires Dimon McFerson, retired chairman of Nationwide, “for what he’s done for the city. He really stepped up and did a lot of things for the city he didn’t have to do.”

Even within the development field, Bohm has found role models like Jeff Keeler, chairman and CEO of The Fishel Co., whom he admires “because he built an incredible national business with very, very straight-forward values,” and Bob White, chairman of The Daimler Group, “who created a very, very successful development group from nothing,” Bohm says.

Bohm’s willingness to learn from others has helped him transform the eight-member urban planning group he established roughly 30 years ago into a 900-employee, international architectural firm with projects in 20 countries and an annual construction volume of more than $3.5 billion. Notable projects in Central Ohio include Nationwide Arena, One Columbus, the Vern Riffe Center, Crowne Plaza, Three Nationwide Plaza and the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.

Although Wobst says in his nomination letter that Bohm “has concerned himself and his firm with helping to define the modern architectural character of downtown Columbus,” Wobst also notes that “perhaps one of his most important roles has been as mentor. He is known to have helped many young entrepreneurs start their own new ventures.”

These ventures include Transmap Corp., The Daimler Group and Travel Partners.

“Friedl always finds time to help friends who need his advice,” says Ken Ackerman of The K.B. Ackerman Co., who also nominated Bohm for the Hall of Fame.

Nearly all of Bohm’s other community involvements reflect a dedication to education, too. He has been a trustee and board chairman for The Wellington School in Upper Arlington, a board member at Muskingum College and currently serves as chairman of the Advisory Board of the School of Architecture at The Ohio State University.

“Education is something everybody needs and no one can take it away,” says Bohm, a Fulbright Scholar who earned two master’s degrees. “If you have an education, then everything else falls by the wayside.”

Bohm also serves on the boards of Huntington National Bank and M/I Schottenstein Homes. In addition, he gives at least 7 percent of NBBJ’s profits back to the community each year.

Bank One President David Lauer, yet another of Bohm’s nominators, calls Bohm “a family man, a true professional and a giver to his community.”

Bohm has also given of himself as a diplomat, serving on the Special Advisory Committee to the Austrian Chancellor, being named Honorary Counsul for Austria in 1993 and receiving the Grand Decoration of Honors in Silver for services to the Republic of Austria in 1995.

Bohm, the son of a Austrian politician, says his scariest moment came when he was just 4 years old and still living in a Soviet-occupied area of Austria. It was near the end of World War II and he and his brother were wandering the fields at a relative’s farm.

“A British fighter plane started using my brother and I for target practice,” Bohm recalls. “My brother pushed me down a hole.”

He’s convinced that’s the only reason he lived through the attack.

Another close call came more recently, when Bohm, father of three grown children, learned that his son had walked through Pushkin Square in Russia this summer just minutes before a bomb exploded there, killing seven people and injuring at least 50 more.

Brushes with death like that, he says, “put everything in perspective.”

“Family — that’s the most important thing,” he says. “To me, that’s the greatest accomplishment in life.”

In popular culture, Einstein has become synonymous with someone of very high intelligence. His face is also one of the most recognizable the world-over. In 1999 Einstein was named “Person of the Century” by Time Magazine.

In his honor, a unit used in photochemistry, the einstein, as well as the chemical element Einsteinium were named after him.

Biography

Early years

Youth and college

Einstein was born in 1879 at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a featherbed salesman who later ran an electrochemical works, and his wife, née Pauline Koch. Although from a non-observant Jewish family, Albert attended a Catholic elementary school and, at the insistence of his mother, was also given violin lessons during his youth. At five years of age, his father showed him a pocket compass, and he realized that something in “empty” space acted upon the needle. He built models and mechanical devices for fun, but was considered a slow learner as a child by some, possibly due to dyslexia or simply to shyness. (He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect.) He began to learn mathematics at about age twelve. There is a recurring rumor that he failed math later on in his education, but this is not true, it is caused by a change in the way grades were assigned leading to confusion years later. Two of his uncles fostered his intellectual interests during his late childhood and early adolescence by suggesting and providing books on science and math.

Following the failure of his father’s electrochemical business, in 1894 the Einsteins moved to Pavia, Italy (near Milan) from Munich. Albert remained in Munich to finish school. He completed a term by himself and then moved to Pavia to join his family. In 1895, Einstein took an exam for the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Federal Swiss Polytechnic University, in Zurich), but failed the liberal arts portion of the test. He was sent by his family to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school. In 1896, Einstein received his diploma from high school.

He subsequently enrolled at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. That same year, Einstein renounced his German citizenship, becoming stateless. In 1898, Albert met Mileva Maric, a Serbian classmate (who was also a friend of Nikola Tesla), and fell in love with her. In 1900, Einstein was granted a teaching diploma by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. He was accepted as a Swiss citizen in 1901. During this time Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Mileva. He and Mileva had an illegitimate daughter, Liserl, born in January 1902.

Work and doctorate

Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post, due mostly to the fact that his brashness as a young man had apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. There, Einstein judged the worth of inventors’ patent applications for devices that required a knowledge of physics to understand. He also learned how to discern the essence of applications despite sometimes poor descriptions, and was taught by the director how “to express myself correctly.” He occasionally rectified their design errors while evaluating the practicality of their work.

Einstein married Mileva, on January 6, 1903. Einstein’s marriage to Mileva, who was a mathematician, was both a personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred lovingly to Mileva as “a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am”. Abram Joffe, in his biography of Einstein, argues that Einstein was assisted by Mileva. This largely contradicts Ronald W. Clark who, in his biography, claims that Einstein depended on the distance that existed in his and Mileva’s marriage in order to have the solitude necessary to accomplish his work.

On May 14, 1904, Einstein’s son Hans Albert Einstein was born. In 1904, Einstein’s position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent. He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis “On a new determination of molecular dimensions” in 1905.

That same year, he wrote four articles that provided the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to refer to or many scientific colleagues to discuss the theories with. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel prizes. Only the photoelectric effect would win. This is something of an irony, in that Einstein is far better-known for relativity, but that the photoelectric effect is all quantum, and Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would take. What makes these papers remarkable is that, in each case, Einstein boldly took an idea from theoretical physics to its logical consequences and managed to explain experimental results that had baffled scientists for decades.

He submitted these papers to the “Annalen der Physik“. They are commonly referred to as the “Annus Mirabilis Papers” (from Latin: Extraordinary Year).

Brownian motion

The first article in 1905, named “On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid“, covered his study of Brownian motion. Using the then-controversial kinetic theory of fluids it established that the phenomenon—lacking a satisfactory explanation decades after being observed—provided empirical evidence for the reality of atoms. It also lent credence to statistical mechanics, which was also controversial.

Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists hotly debated the question of whether atoms were real things. Einstein’s statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school, later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to a belief in atoms by Einstein’s complete explanation of Brownian motion.

Photoelectric effect

The second paper, named “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light“, proposed the idea of “light quanta” (now called photons) and showed how they could be used to explain such phenomena as the photoelectric effect. The idea of light quanta was motivated by Max Planck’s earlier derivation of the law of blackbody radiation by assuming that luminous energy could only be absorbed or emitted in discrete amounts, called quanta. Einstein showed that, by assuming that light actually consisted of discrete packets, he could explain the mysterious photoelectric effect.

The idea of light quanta contradicted the wave theory of light that followed naturally from James Clerk Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic behavior and, more generally, the assumption of infinite divisibility of energy in physical systems. Even after experiments showed that Einstein’s equations for the photoelectric effect were accurate, his explanation was not universally accepted. However, by 1922, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and his work on photoelectricity was mentioned by name, most physicists thought that the equation was correct and light quanta were possible.

The theory of light quanta was a strong indication of wave-particle duality, the concept that physical systems can display both wave-like and particle-like properties, and that was used as a fundamental principle by the creators of quantum mechanics. A complete picture of the photoelectric effect was only obtained after the maturity of quantum mechanics.

Special relativity

Einstein’s third paper that year was called “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies“. While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to Mileva about “our work on relative motion”, and this has led some to ask whether Mileva played a part in its development. However, it is possible, and perhaps likely, that, having already mentioned this momentous work to his wife, he was simply referring to it in an endearing manner. This paper introduced the special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy (which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity). Special relativity solved the puzzle that had been apparent since the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had shown that light waves could not be travelling through any medium (other known waves travelled through media – such as water or air). The speed of light was thus fixed, and not relative to the movement of the observer. This was impossible under Newtonian classical mechanics.

It had already been conjectured by George Fitzgerald in 1894 that the Michelson-Morley result could be accounted for if moving bodies were foreshortened along the direction of their motion. And some of the paper’s core equations—the Lorentz transforms—had been introduced in 1903 by the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, giving mathematical form to Fitzgerald’s conjecture. But Einstein revealed the underlying reasons for this geometrical oddity. His explanation arose from two axioms: one was Galileo’s old idea that the laws of nature should be the same for all observers that move with constant speed relative to each other; and the other was that the speed of light is the same for every observer. Special relativity had several striking consequences because the absolute concepts of time and size are rejected. The theory came to be called the “special theory of relativity” to distinguish it from his later theory of general relativity, which considers all observers to be equivalent.

Energy equivalency

A fourth paper, titled “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”“, published late in 1905 showed one further deduction from relativity’s axioms, known as the energy-mass relation (e.g. m = L/c²). That deduction, rewritten, was the famous equation that rest energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared:

E = mc².

Einstein considered this equation to be of paramount importance because it showed that matter and energy are simply different forms of the same substance.

The equation is associated with atomic weapons and is used to explain how they produce such phenomenal amounts of energy. The exact connection between the equation and nuclear weapons is less well known, however. By measuring the mass of atomic nuclei and dividing them by their atomic number, both of which are easily measured, one can calculate the binding energy which is trapped in different atomic nuclei. This allows one to figure out which nuclear reactions will release energy and how much energy they will release. A simple calculation using the mass of the uranium nuclei and the masses of the products of nuclear fission reveals that large amounts of energy are released upon fission, and this led physicists in the 1930′s to begin to consider the possibility of a nuclear weapon.

According to Umberto Bartocci (University of Perugia historian of mathematics), the famous equation was first published two years prior by Olinto De Pretto, who was an industrialist from Vicenza, Italy. Though De Pretto introduced the formula, it was Einstein who connected it with the Theory of Relativity.

Middle years

In 1906, Einstein was promoted to technical examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was licensed in Berne, Switzerland, as a teacher and lecturer (known as a Privatdozent), who had no share in the university government. Einstein’s second son, Eduard, was born on July 28, 1910. He divorced Mileva on February 14, 1919. Einstein married his cousin Elsa Loewenthal (née Einstein: Loewenthal was the surname of her first husband, Max) on June 2, 1919. Elsa was Albert’s first cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally). She was three years older than Albert, and had nursed him to health after he had suffered a partial nervous breakdown combined with a severe stomach ailment. There were no children from this marriage.

The fate of Albert and Mileva’s first child, Liserl, is unknown: some believe she died in infancy and some believe she was given out for adoption. As for the two boys: one was institutionalized for schizophrenia and died in an asylum. The other moved to California and became a university professor, and had little interaction with his father.

In 1914, just before the start of World War I, Einstein settled in Berlin. His pacifism and Jewish origins irritated German nationalists. After he became world-famous (on November 7, 1919, when The Times reported the experimental confirmation of his gravitational theory) nationalist hatred of him grew, and, for the first time, he was the subject of an organized campaign intended to discredit his theories.

From 1914 to 1933 he served as director of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and it was during this time he received his Nobel Prize. In 1922, Einstein and his wife Elsa boarded the S.S. Kitano Maru bound for Japan. The trip also took them to other ports including Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

General relativity

In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described his theory of general relativity. The final lecture climaxed with his introduction of an equation that replaced Newton’s law of gravity. This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it was in Newton’s law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time. The theory provided the foundation for the study of cosmology and gave scientists the tools for understanding many features of the universe that were not discovered until well after Einstein’s death. General relativity becomes a method of perceiving all of physics.

Einstein’s relationship with quantum physics was quite remarkable. He was the first, even before Max Planck, the discoverer of the quantum, to say that quantum theory was revolutionary. His idea of light quanta was a landmark break with the classical understanding of physics. In 1909, Einstein presented his first paper to a gathering of physicists and told them that they must find some way to understand waves and particles together.

In the early 1920s, Einstein was the lead figure in a famous weekly physics colloquium at the University of Berlin.

Copenhagen interpretation

However, in the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new quantum mechanics, Einstein balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations because it settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical behavior. Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available, but he looked for an explanation that would be more “complete,” i.e., deterministic. His belief that physics described the laws that govern “real things” had led to his successes with atoms, photons, and gravity. He was unwilling to abandon that faith.

Einstein’s famous remark, “Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that he does not throw dice,” appeared in a 1926 letter to Max Born. It was not a rejection of probabilistic theories per se. Einstein had used statistical analysis in his work on Brownian motion and photoelectricity. In papers published before the miraculous year of 1905, he had even discovered Gibbs ensembles on his own. But he did not believe that, at bottom, physical reality behaves randomly.

Bose Einstein statistics

In 1924, Einstein received a short paper from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose, describing light as a gas of photons, and asking for Einstein’s assistance in publication. Einstein realised that the same statistics could be applied to atoms, and published an article in German (then the lingua franca of physics) which described Bose’s model and explained its implications. Bose Einstein statistics now describes any assembly of these indistinguishable particles known as bosons. Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in the development of the Quantum Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model—although he realised that this was less significant than the Bose Einstein model, and declined to have his name included on the paper.

Later years

Einstein and former student Leo Szilard co-invented a unique type of refrigerator (usually called “The Einstein Refrigerator“) in 1926. [1] [2] On November 11, 1930, patent number US1781541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard. The patent covered a thermodynamic refrigeration cycle providing cooling with no moving parts, at a constant pressure, with only heat as an input. The refrigeration cycle used ammonia, butane, and water.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, expression of nationalist hatred of Einstein reached new levels. He was accused by the National Socialist regime of creating “Jewish physics”. Nazi physicists (notably including the Nobel laureate Johannes Stark) continued the attempts to discredit his theories. Einstein fled to the United States, where he was given permanent residency. He accepted a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He became an American citizen in 1940 (though he maintained possession of his Swiss citizenship).

Einstein spent the last forty years of his life trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism, giving a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics. He was looking for a classical unification of gravity and electromagnetism.

Princeton

His work at Princeton focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he referred to as the Unified Field Theory. Einstein undertook the quest for the unification of the fundamental forces and spent his time at Princeton investigating this. He attempted to construct a model, under the appropriate conditions, which described all forces as different manifestations of a single force. His attempt was in a way doomed to failure because the strong and weak nuclear forces were not understood independently until around 1970, 15 years after Einstein’s death. Einstein’s goal survives in the current drive for unification of the forces, embodied most notably by string theory.

Generalized theory

Einstein began to form a Generalized Theory of Gravitation with the universal law of gravitation and the electromagnetic force in his first attempt to demonstrate the unification and simplification of the fundamental forces. In the 1950s, he described his work in a Scientific American article. Einstein was guided by the belief of a single statistical measure of variance for the entire set of physical laws and he investigated the smiliar properties of the electromagnetic and gravity forces, as they are infinite and obey the inverse square law.

Einstein’s Generalized theory of gravitation is a universal mathematical approach to field theory. He investigated reducing the different phenomena by the process of logic to something already known or evident. Einstein tried to unify gravity and electromagnetism in a way that also led to a new subtle understand of quantum mechanics.

Einstein assumed a structure of a four-dimensional space-time continuum expressed in axioms represented by five component vectors. Particles appear in his research as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. Einstein treated subatomic particles in this research as objects embedded in the unified field, influencing it and existing as an essential constituent of the unified field but not of it. Einstein also investigated a natural generalization of symmetrical tensor fields, treating the combination of two parts of the field as being a natural procedure of the total field and not the symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts separately. He researched a way to delineate the equations to be derived from a variational principle.

Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research over a Generalized Theory of Gravitation (being characterized as a “mad scientist” in these endeavors) and was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts at constructing a theory that would unify General Relativity and quantum mechanics.

Final years

In 1948, Einstein served on the original committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis University.

In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he take the post of second president. He declined the offer.

He died at Princeton in 1955, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. He was cremated the same day at Trenton, New Jersey on April 18, 1955. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location. His brain was preserved in a jar by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein.

Religious views

Einstein’s religious views were close to the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza: he believed in a “God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men”. Einstein wanted “to know how God created the world”: After being pressed on his religious views by Martin Buber, Einstein exclaimed “What we (physicists) strive for is just to draw His lines after Him”. He once said that among the major religions, he preferred Buddhism.

Political views

Einstein considered himself a pacifist [3] and humanitarian [4]. Einstein’s views on other issues, including socialism, McCarthyism and racism, were controversial. (Einstein on socialism)

The American FBI kept a 1,427 page file on his activities and recommended that he be barred from immigrating to the United States under the Alien Exclusion Act, alleging that Einstein “believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches a doctrine which, in a legal sense, as held by the courts in other cases, ‘would allow anarchy to stalk in unmolested’ and result in ‘government in name only’,” among other charges.

Einstein initially favored construction of the atomic bomb, in order to ensure that Hitler did not do so first, and he even sent a letter to President Roosevelt (dated August 2, 1939, before World War II broke out) encouraging him to initiate a programme to create a nuclear weapon. But after the war he lobbied for nuclear disarmament and a world government.

Albert Einstein was a supporter of Zionism, but never without reservations. He supported Jewish settlement of the ancient seat of Judaism and was active in the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to which he bequeathed his papers. However he opposed nationalism and expressed skepticism about whether a Jewish nation-state was the best solution. He may have naively imagined Jews and Arabs living peacefully in the same land. In later life he declined an offer to become the second president of the newly-created state of Israel.

Albert Einstein with Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell fought against nuclear tests and bombs. With the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Bertrand Russell he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and organized several conferences.

Einstein in entertainment

Albert Einstein has become the subject of a number of novels, films and plays including Nicolas Roeg’s film, Insignificance and Alan Lightman’s novel, Einstein’s Dreams. Einstein was even the subject of Philip Glass’s groundbreaking 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach.

Books by Albert Einstein

• Ideas & Opinions ISBN 0517003937
• World As I See It ISBN 080650711X

Biography of Einstein

• Clark, Ronald W. (1971). Einstein: The Life and Times. ISBN 0-380-44123-3

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), WALL STREET (1987)

Mentors don’t always do well in Oliver Stone movies. The hero of the autobiographical Platoon had two of them, but one of them got killed and the hero wound up having to shoot the other. The fast-talking uber-capitalist Gekko is luckier; he has a smart wardrobe to construct around his power suspenders, an Academy Award, and a famous speech that will get replayed on the nightly news every time there’s a market downturn or somebody who’s worth more than the national revenue of Venezuela gets nabbed for insider trading. Actually, Gekko’s weak link is agreeing to share his wisdom with the obnoxious little mouth-breather played by Charlie Sheen, the scowling kid from the wrong side of the tracks with the chip on his shoulder. Unable to work out his issues, Sheen screws his sensei over and then adds injury to, well, injury by setting him up and selling him out to the feds. Back when Wall Street was in theaters, it was possible to feel sorry for Gordon at the end, but since then it’s become possible to get some perspective on these things. Today, after his stay at some Club Fed, he probably has his own reality TV show. Charlie Sheen can watch it when he gets home from his job scrubbing public toilets.

Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), THE KARATE KID (1984)

I feel confident that Pat Morita’s martial-arts-instructing janitor richly deserves his place here, even though I’m actually pretty sure that I never did see The Karate Kid. (Hell, I might be less sure if I had seen it.) Consider that this is a guy who, thanks to his Oscar-nominated performance here, managed to pull off a comeback almost a decade after he’d ill-advisedly abandoned the cast of Happy Days for a starring role in the sitcom Mr. T and Tina. (Can you tell me what ever became of Tina?) And he must be really good in this, because a lot of people lined up to see the movie, and they must have had their eyes glued to him, because I did see The Outsiders, and the one thing I remember from that is that looking at Ralph Macchio will make your eyeballs bleed. True, most of his biggest later roles would be in Karate Kid sequels, and while I’m not sure that I ever saw any of them either, I’m sure that they gave him the chance to really explore the possibilities of the character, plus he got to meet Hilary Swank. Clearly he was a fellow anyone would be well advised to seek out for advice, except on the subject of which Gus Van Sant movie to appear in. Wax on, wax off, motherfucker!

W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), BARTON FINK (1991)

Lured to Hollywood with the promise of easy money and big-screen glory, Barton Fink (John Turturro) quickly reaches an impasse in his writing. So with nowhere else to turn, his producer suggests that he find an established writer to mentor him. For his troubles, he gets W.P. Mayhew. Mayhew, played by a pre-Frasier John Mahoney, is a literary legend clearly modeled after William Faulkner, one who has toiled on countless screenplays for the studio in all possible genres. Tellingly, Barton first discovers Mayhew while puking out his liquid lunch in the men’s room of the studio commissary. But Barton is so starstruck that he pursues him anyway, despite Mayhew’s reputation as a washed-up souse. Unfortunately for the would-be student, the master whose guidance he seeks is too busy drinking and ranting at his secretary/live-in lover(Judy Davis) to give him much help with his writing, and indeed, it’s Davis who’s been doing most of the writing lately anyway. Yet while Mayhew isn’t the mentor Fink bargained for, he’s nonetheless valuable to Fink, providing him an objective lesson in what can happen to even truly great writers when they’ve been swallowed up by Hollywood. The lessons he teaches aren’t pretty, but Barton isn’t likely to forget them.

Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn), DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY (2004)

The schlubby regulars at Average Joe’s gymnasium are facing difficult times. With their beloved gym struggling financially and facing takeover from a more sophisticated fitness center, they have to raise a boatload of money to keep from going under. So they do what any bunch of scrappy underdogs would do in a similar situation- they enter a nationwide dodgeball tournament, even though they’re not especially athletic and can’t compete with more experienced dodgeballers. What’s a ragtag band of self-labeled Average Joes to do? Find a coach, that’s what. Or more precisely, let a coach find them. But not just any coach, mind you. None other than Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn) a fifties-era dodgeball legend who’s now confined to a wheelchair. With a mixture of abuse and tough love, Patches whips the Joes into shape using exercises such as one founded on the theory, “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” Faster than you can say “Eye of the Tiger,” the Average Joes are national contenders. Of course, their ascent has less to do with Patches’ coaching style than it does to the demands of the plot- to say nothing of divine intervention from Lance Armstrong and Chuck Norris- but Torn is so irascibly funny in the role that it seems wrong not to include him. After all, how can you not love a guy who gets a line like, “is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No, but I do it anyway, because it’s sterile and I like the taste.”

Cole (J. T. Walsh), THE GRIFTERS (1990)

Midway through its narrative, Stephen Frears’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s seamiest pulp classic pulls the brakes on itself to fill in Myra’s (Annette Bening) back story, to show that she learned the intricacies of the con-artist’s game at the feet of the old pro Cole–played by J. T. Walsh, an actor with a blandly sturdy facade that, more often than not (Breakdown, Sling Blade, Nixon, The Last Seduction), served as the mask of a mean, sick puppy. Here, he’s onscreen just long enough to show the highs of his profession (pulling off a sweet scam and celebrating after) and the lows (he goes nuts). Maybe the filmmakers wanted to get him on and off fast so that he didn’t turn to the audience and make a bonus pitch for the United Way.

“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” — supposedly uttered by explorer Henry Morton Stanley in 1871 — is so familiar it’s easy to forget that Livingstone had a first name in addition to the title “Doctor.” He was DAVID LIVINGSTONE, a physician and Christian missionary from Scotland who explored the interior of the African continent in the middle of the 19th century.

In the 1950s, new mothers across the United States had all the advice they needed from DR. SPOCK, the author of the bestselling Baby and Child Care. Benjamin Spock was a pediatrician from Connecticut, and his book was a major influence on child-rearing in the post-war period. His famous name is the source of some confusion: for more than three decades, untold thousands of Star Trek fans have winced as nonfans have said Dr. Spock, when it’s actually Mr. Spock (the character portrayed by Leonard Nimoy).

Another doctor who liked to give advice was HENRY KISSINGER. Kissinger has been a celebrity in foreign affairs since the late 1960s, a former professor at Harvard University and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford. The world has heard the opinions of “Dr. Kissinger” for nearly forty years, but how many of us know what kind of doctor he is exactly? He reportedly has a PhD in international relations.

It’s a given that adding “doctor” to your name adds weight, even in the democratically-inclined United States. BILL COSBY was once plain ol’ Cos, the (brilliant) stand-up comedian. Then he was one of TV’s brightest stars in the 1980s on Cosby. He earned a PhD in education from the University of Massachusetts, and suddenly Dr. Bill Cosby’s take on family life meant more than just funny jokes. We laughed, but we also took him seriously.

The title adds prestige, sure, but it’s also just plain catchy. Ask DR. RUTH or DR. LAURA, advisors to America’s radio listening audience. Dr. Ruth Westheimer became a national celebrity with her straight talk about sex, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger made her name telling listeners to straighten up and fly right. Dr. Ruth has a PhD in education, Dr. Laura has a PhD in physiology.

Not only was it catchy, the nickname was true for gunfighter DOC HOLLIDAY: he was a trained dentist. Doc Holliday made his mark as a cohort of the Earps in the famous 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Inflicted with tuberculosis, Holliday’s career as a dentist lasted only a few years. On the recommendation of his physicians, he left his practice in Atlanta, Georgia and moved west, the theory being that the dry western air would prolong his life. Doc Holliday found a new career as a gambler, and his steely nerves and eager trigger finger earned him a place in wild west lore.

DOC SEVERINSEN may not have been a real doctor, but his dad was (another dentist!), and as a tyke Severinsen was known as “Little Doc” by the local townsfolk of Arlington, Oregon. Eventually that got shortened to “Doc” when Severinsen began his musical career. A trumpeter, he was the bandleader on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show from 1967-92. Doc Severinsen was legendary for his colorful outfits, and Carson used to joke that he was “the only trumpeter who dresses louder than he plays.”

Severinsen is not the only doctor in the musical house. While he was dressing up the airwaves, the folk music revivalists of the 1960s were discovering DOC WATSON. A flat-picking guitarist from North Carolina, Doc Watson began recording traditional and original bluegrass tunes at the age of 39, and is now considered one of the most influential musicians in the field.

Pop tunesmith Harry Nilsson had a drinking partner and fellow musician in DR. WINSTON O’BOOGIE, with whom he co-wrote several songs that appear on the Nilsson album Pussycats. In fact, Dr. Winston O’Boogie was the pseudonym of John Lennon of The Beatles.

Rock ‘n’ roll and bluegrass have their doctors, and so does hip-hop. In the 1980s Andre Young co-founded the rap group N.W.A., then moved on to solo records and producing. In 1999 his production of The Slim Shady LP helped make Eminem a pop star. Young is also known as DR. DRE, but as far as we know, he’s not a real doctor, even if he can make you feel good.

Another guy who made people feel good was basketball star DR. J, the nickname of Julius Erving. Dr. J was the shining star of the American Basketball Association, and when that league folded he became a box office draw for the National Basketball Association, leading the Philadelphia 76ers to a national championship in 1983.

It’s true that some famous “doctors” aren’t real doctors, and it’s true that some aren’t even real people. For years Theodore Geisel wrote and illustrated books for children under a pen name. He published nearly 50 books and was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Geisel died in 1991, but children across the United States still celebrate his birthday with their favorite DR. SEUSS books.

There have been many famous doctors on television, usually of the heroic and handsome variety. But the doctor with perhaps the most fervent following didn’t hang around emergency rooms and clinics. Instead, “the Doctor” in DR. WHO travelled the universe, battling monsters and robots in this and other dimensions. The Doctor’s close brushes with space pirates, mind robbers, dinosaurs and Daleks have kept viewers entertained since 1963.

Overview

His name in full was Pablo (or Pablito) Diego Jose Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispin Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco y Picasso Lopez. His father was José Ruiz y Blasco; his mother Maria Picasso y Lopez. In his early years he signed his name Ruiz Blasco after his father, but decided to use his mother’s name from about 1901 on.

Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain and is probably most famous as the founder, along with Georges Braque, of Cubism. However in a long life he produced a wide and varied body of work, the best-known being the Blue Period works which feature moving depictions of acrobats, harlequins, prostitutes, beggars and artists.

A young Pablo Picasso

While Picasso was primarily a painter (in fact he believed that an artist must paint in order to be considered a true artist), he also worked with medium ceramic and bronze sculptures, collage and even produced some poetry. “Je suis aussi un poète,” as he quipped to his friends.

Picasso hated to be alone when he wasn’t working. In Paris, in addition to having a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse Quarters, including Andre Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Gertrude Stein and others, he usually maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner.

Picasso’s most famous work is probably his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica, Spain. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. The painting of the picture was captured in a series of photographs by Picasso’s most famous lover, Dora Maar, a distinguished artist in her own right. A Nazi officer is supposed to have come to his door brandishing a postcard and demanding, “Did you do this?” “No,” Picasso is supposed to have replied, “you did.” The Guernica hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art for many years, and is now in Madrid — Picasso stipulated that the painting should not return to Spain until democracy was restored in that country.

As certain works, for example the Cubist pieces, tend to be associated in the public mind with Picasso, it is important to realize how talented Picasso was as a painter and draughtsman. He was capable of working with oils, watercolours, pastels, charcoal, pencil, ink, or indeed any medium with equally high facility. With his most extreme cubist works he came close to deconstructing a complex scene into just a few geometric shapes while at the same time being capable of photo-realistic pen and ink sketches of his friends. Picasso had a massive talent for almost any artistic endeavor he turned his mind to, despite limited formal academic training (he finished only one year of his course of study at the Royal Academy in Madrid), and a ferocious work-ethic.

Early Life

Picasso’s father Don José Ruiz y Blasco was himself a painter and for most of his life was a professor of art at Spanish colleges. It is from Don José that Picasso learned the basics of formal academic art training – figure drawing, and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art schools thoughout his childhood, often those his father taught at, he never finished his college level course of study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.

The Picasso Museum in Barcelona features many of Picasso’s early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso’s close friend from his Barcelona days, and for many years, Picasso’s personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father’s tutelage that clearly demonstrate his firm grounding in classical techniques, as well as rarely seen works from his old age.

Picasso and Pacifism

It is true that Picasso remained neutral during the Spanish Civil War, World War I and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Picasso never commented on this but encouraged the idea that it was because he was a pacifist. Some of his contemporaries though (including Braque) felt that this neutrality had more to do with cowardice than principle.

As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either world war. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Franco and the Fascists through his art he did not take up arms against them.

He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. No political movement seemed to compel his support to any great degree.

After the Second World War, Picasso joined the French Communist party, and even attended an international peace conference in Poland. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso’s interest in Communist politics.

Personal Life

Picasso had a long string of lovers, four children by three women, and two wives. In the early years of the 20th century, Picasso, still a struggling youth, began a long term relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is she who appears in many of the Blue and Rose period paintings. After garnering fame and some fortune, Picasso left Fernande for Marcelle Humbert, whom Picasso called Eva. When it became clear that Eva was dying, Picasso left her as well. Throughout his life, Picasso also frequented bordellos, and had numerous affairs.

In 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe. Olga introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a sometime motorcycle racer, sometime chauffeur to his father, and dissolute.

Olga’s insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s bohemian tendencies, and the two lived in a state of near constant conflict. In 1927 Picasso met the then underage (17) Marie Thérèse Walter, and began a secret affair with her. Picasso’s marriage to Olga soon ended in separation, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Olga to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Olga’s death in 1955.

Picasso carried on a long standing affair with Marie Thérèse, and fathered a daughter, Maya, with her. Marie Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and eventually hanged herself after Picasso’s death.

The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 30s and early 40s, and it was Dora who documented the painting of Guernica. Like all the women in his life, Dora was cruelly abused emotionally by the narcissistic Picasso.

After the liberation of Paris in 1945, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude, and Paloma. Uniquely among Picasso’s women, Françoise eventually left Picasso in 1953 because of his abusive treatment, and infidelities. This came as a severe blow to Picasso, who was used to submissive women who lived for whatever scraps of affection or attention he deigned to give them.

>He went through a difficult period after Françoise’s departure, coming to terms with his advancing age, and his perception that he was an old man, now in his seventies, who was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl.

Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. Jacqueline worked at the Madoura Pottery, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picasso’s life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Françoise. Françoise had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picasso’s encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children’s rights. Picasso then secretly married Jacqueline after Françoise had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.

Later Works

In his 80s and 90s, Picasso, no longer quite the energetic dynamo he had been in his youth, became more, and more reclusive. His second wife, Jacqueline Roque, screened all but the most important visitors, and closest friends, even excluding Picasso’s two children, Claude and Paloma, both by his former partner, the painter, Françoise Gilot.

This reclusive existence intensified after Picasso underwent surgery for a prostate condition in 1965. This surgery is rumored to have left Picasso largely impotent. To a man for whom sexual adventure was such an important part of life, this was a serious life change, and Picasso seems to have dealt with it by redoubling his already prolific artistic output.

Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate engravings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man, or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. One long time admirer, Douglas Cooper called them “the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man in the antechamber of death.” Only a decade later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-espressionism, and was, as usual, ahead of his time.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at Mougins, France, and was interred at Castle Vauvenargues’ park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône. Jacqueline prevented his children, Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.

At the time of his death, Picasso, by now a multi millionaire, owned a vast quantity of his own work, consisting of personal favorites which he had kept off the art market, or which he had not needed to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, like Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties, or estate tax to the French state were paid in the form of his works, and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense, and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris.

Born to parents Mikhail and Maria, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was the second of seven children. Fyodor’s mother died of an illness in 1837.

Fyodor and his brother Michael were sent to the Military Engineering Academy at St. Petersburg shortly after their mother’s death, though these plans had begun even before she became ill.

It was not long before his father, a retired military surgeon who served as a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow, also died in 1839. While not known for certain, it is believed that Mikhail Dostoyevsky was murdered by his own serfs, who reportedly became enraged during one of Mikhail’s drunken fits of violence, restrained him, and poured vodka into his mouth until he drowned.

Dostoyevsky was arrested and imprisoned in 1849 for engaging in revolutionary activity against Tsar Nicholas I. On November 16 that year he was sentenced to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group. After a mock execution in which he faced a staged firing squad, Dostoyevsky’s sentence was commuted to a number of years of exile performing hard labor at a katorga prison camp in Siberia. The incidents of epileptic seizures, to which he was predisposed, increased during this period. His sentence was completed in 1854, at which point he enrolled in the Siberian Regiment.

This was a turning point in the author’s life. Dostoyevsky abandonded his earlier radical sentiments and became deeply conservative and extremely religious. He began an affair with, and later married, Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of an acquaintance in Siberia.

In 1860, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he ran a series of unsuccessful literary journals with his older brother Mikhail. Dostoyevsky was devastated by his wife’s death in 1864, followed shortly thereafter by his brother’s death. He was financially crippled by business debts and the need to provide for his brother’s widow and children. Dostoyevsky sunk into a deep depression, frequenting gambling parlors and blithely accumulating massive losses at the tables.

To escape creditors in St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky traveled to Europe. There, he attempted to rekindle a love affair with Apollinaria (Polina) Suslova, a young university student with whom he had had an affair several years prior, but she refused his marriage proposal. Dostoyevsky was heartbroken, but soon met Anna Snitkina, a nineteen-year-old stenographer whom he married in 1867. This period resulted in the writing of his greatest books.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky died on January 28 (O.S.), 1881 and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Major works

• Netochka Nezvanova (1849)
• The Village of Stepanchikovo (or The Friend of the Family) (1859)
• The House of the Dead (1862)
• A Nasty Story (1862)
• Notes from the Underground (or Letters from the Underworld) (1864)
• Crime and Punishment (1866)
• The Gambler (1867)
• The Idiot (1868)
• The Possessed (or Demons or The Devils) (1872)
• The Raw Youth (1875)
• The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

It would seem that Alexander was a devoted reader of Homer’s great epic poems, The Odyssey and the Iliad; particularly the latter. The Iliad deals with Ancient Greek ideals of hero, warfare and glory in the context of the war against the city of Troy. Alexander, it would seem, read these stories from an early age and imagined himself to be in the same line as the classic Greek heroes of yesteryear. He was quite obsessive about this poem epic and could recite large sections of it by heart. In fact, he had a special copy made for himself and took it with him on his exploits and conquests of two million square miles of the ancient world.

In particular, his great hero was Achilles, from whom he was said to be a direct descendant through his mother. Throughout his life, Alexander engaged in a sort of rivalry with his hero and sought to outdo Achilles’ exploits by his own. He also encouraged comparison between himself and Achilles.

All of this is fascinating from a number of aspects. First and foremost, it is yet another proof – as is repeatedly evidenced by all great achievers in life – that the mind creates reality. In other words, what you dwell upon becomes your reality. Dwelling on a fictional account of heroism and conquest made one man realize that reality in his own life and conquer most of the known world. This was his role model and what he continually fantasized becoming.

Secondly, in so identifying with Achilles, he effectively made him a mentor. This is another common feature of highly successful people. They all have someone they turn to, or seek to emulate.

Usually, that person is alive. Even Bill Gates has a mentor. His name is Warren Buffett; one of the greatest living stock market investors and, like Bill Gates, a multi-billionaire. So if you seek excellence in a particular field, the first thing to do is to try to find someone who already excels in it and try to make their acquaintance and ask that person to be your mentor. If that person is inaccessible (for now), then read their writings, watch their videos and imagine yourself doing the same. Ask yourself what that person would do in each situation. Imagine being that person.

However, if you have no living mentor who will do, you can create one in your imagination as Alexander must have done with Achilles. You can imagine your mentor performing at the level of excellence you desire and then, as Alexander the Great must have done, step into that person’s shoes and imagine it is you excelling and leaving the rest of the world behind.

It is so striking that all highly successful people do a huge amount of imagining and daydreaming. Most of us do not because we feel it is a waste of time and achieves nothing. Strangely, enough, it could be the most important thing we ever do. Without it, all our other “practical” efforts could go for nothing.

In conclusion, (a) seek a mentor in your field of choice – either living, dead or imagined – and seek to emulate that person’s excellence; (b) imagine and visualize your future vividly and continually. Imagine even the utterly impossible, as Alexander the Great did. If you do, who knows what might happen? Your vision of what is possible might just have to expand a lot to fit a much grander design!