Walter Isaacson offers a look into the personal side of the 20th century's greatest scientist, Albert Einstein, to kick off the revived Direction Lecture Series. Behind him is student Jacob Segall, chair of the Direction series.

Delivering the first presentation of the revived Direction Lecture Series on Thursday (March 15), Walter Isaacson offered a Tulane audience an intimate account of the life of Albert Einstein, the subject of Isaacson's forthcoming biography. Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon and Schuster) will be available on April 10.

Isaacson, who also has written on the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, emphasized that it was Einstein's creativity and rebelliousness -- even more than his brilliance -- that led him to become perhaps the greatest and certainly the most well-known scientist of the 20th century.

"Einstein was no Einstein when he was a kid, either," quipped Isaacson, who painted the picture of young Albert who, as a child, was slow in learning to talk, often mumbling to himself and even labeled by a family maid as "the dopey one."

While debunking the commonly held belief that Einstein failed math in school -- he was actually quite good in math -- Isaacson noted that Einstein's rebellious nature often put him at odds with his teachers. One headmaster "amused history by pronouncing -- unfortunately on paper for him -- that 'Mr. Einstein will never amount to much.' "

Isaacson said the seeds of Einstein's genius can been seen in his ongoing conflict with authority, combined with the scientist's early poor verbal ability. "His slow ability to learn how to talk meant he thought in pictures. He thought in images. He thought imaginatively. All the great Einstein breakthroughs are not done by really hard applications of hard mathematical equations but by imaginative thought experiments."

Isaacson recalled an account of the 5-year-old Albert marveling over a compass he received from his father. "He looks at the compass, and the needle is pointing north and he totally marvels at it. He is trying to figure out what makes the needle move. Nothing is pushing it. No force on it. No mechanical reason."

The same curiosity and imagination would lead to other "thought experiments" such as contemplating what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam, or wondering if a passenger in a moving train would perceive the concurrent strike of two bolts of lighting on either side of the train as a simultaneous event. These ideas would be integral in Einstein's developing his specific and general theories of relativity.

Isaacson proves himself an exciting speaker, as well as writer, for the enthusiastic Tulane audience. (Photos by Paula Burch-Celentano)

After touching on four seminal scientific papers produced by Einstein in 1905, Isaacson shared his observations on other aspects of Einstein's life, including his marriage to and eventual divorce from his first wife, Mileva Maric. As he did throughout his talk, Isaacson used gemlike details to enliven the account of Einstein's personal life. For instance, in exchange for Maric's agreement to a divorce, Einstein offered her the prize money from the Nobel Award he anticipated one day receiving. Calculating the odds, Maric agreed to the deal. In 1922, Einstein won the award and, said Isaacson, "she gets the money, she buys three apartment buildings in Zurich and he marries his first cousin."

Einstein, whose phenomenal popularity ushered in "a new age of celebrity," leveraged his renown to advocate for a number of passionately held causes, said Isaacson. These included encouraging the United States to beat Nazi Germany in developing an atomic weapon, later leading an international effort to control atomic development, and resisting political persecution by the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Following his talk, Isaacson, who is the chief executive office for the Aspen Institute and vice chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, held a brief session in which he answered questions pertaining to both the life of Einstein and progress of LRA's Road Home program.

The Direction Lecture Series will bring to campus author Michael Lewis on March 29 and political strategist and pundit James Carville on April 19.