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.
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.
It's almost exactly 100 years since Albert Einstein completed General Relativity; his curved space theory for gravity. Successful early tests of the theory made Einstein a worldwide celebrity, and more recent (much more precise) experiments have confirmed that General Relativity really does describe how things work. Some of the ideas are truly fascinating. Stars explode in supernovae and collapse to form enigmatic black holes. Changes in gravity move as waves, which have proved tricky to catch. The universe itself exploded into being in the big bang and seems to be expanding faster and faster. Trying to understand why this should be, basically explain what we call the “dark energy”, is one of the greatest science puzzles of today.
Because of all this, there have been countless books written about Einstein and his theory. Many of them are really good and you can learn all sorts of things from them (some of our favourites are listed on the library page). You may argue that the world doesn't need another Einstein book... but we have still written one of our own.
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Professor NILS ANDERSSON, an expert on Einstein’s relativity, teamed up with the talented illustrator OLIVER DEAN to bring you a personal journey through Einstein's universe. A gentle wizard is now available as e-book and paperback.
Nils explains: The book 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. |
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The story may be a bit unusual.
It started as a vague idea. Nils thought it would be nice to write something to celebrate the 100th birthday of Einstein’s theory of gravity. This might not make sense to most people – you don’t just wake up one morning thinking this would be a great plan – but if you have spent nearly three decades working on problems involving the famous professor’s brainchild, your mind might be just a little bit warped. But as soon as he started thinking about it he realised it was going to be tricky. Eventually, Einstein himself provided the inspiration. He once wrote in the foreword of one of his countless biographies; “What has perhaps been overlooked is the irrational, the inconsistent, the droll, even the insane, which nature, inexhaustively operative, implants in a individual, seemingly for her own amusement.” After a lot of reading, the book was written with this quote in mind. The book is an attempt to tell the story of Einstein and his theory through dialogue and anecdotes, making as much use of actual quotes as possible. The idea was to let the human aspects take centre stage and explain the science as the story developed. This turned out to be a real challenge. Piecing things together, trying to make sense of the science and at the same time not losing the human side, required a lot of hard work. Of course, it was also enormous fun. |
Ollie Dean's book "Permanent Barker" is available from all decent bookshops.
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A gentle wizard would not have been the same without Ollie Dean's fabulous illustrations. Or, indeed, his feedback during the long editing process.
When he is not drawing Einstein, Ollie produces live-performance artwork and public participation projects. His clientele are as diverse as his work having collaborated with businesses, charities and educators. He has also authored, illustrated and self-published two picture books for children. |
A gentle wizard was released in January 2017. It has already received good reviews and should be suitably for - just about - anyone and everyone. The style may work particularly well for young teenagers, but the science explanations should work for anyone interested in Einstein and his ideas. There is also a very human story about friendship hidden somewhere.
The long term plan is to use the book - and the illustrations - as basis for an engagement project with schools. If you know someone that would be interested in this, please get in touch.
The long term plan is to use the book - and the illustrations - as basis for an engagement project with schools. If you know someone that would be interested in this, please get in touch.
Nils Andersson has also written four children's books about the ever-so-slightly confused Professor Kompressor. The stories are inspired by science, but bend reality just a little.
A gentle wizard is available from a range of online bookstores. Here are some useful links in case you are interested:
Visit (and like!) the Facebook page for this project: www.facebok.com/TheEinsteinProject
Get the book for the Kindle or as paperback from Amazon (a multi-region link that should automatically take you to the right Amazon store):
http://authl.it/B01N574B99
Get the book in the e-pub format (iBooks, nook, kobo etc - this link should take you to a list of options):
https://www.books2read.com/u/bMGAok
If you want to know more about Nils Andersson, here's a link to his homepage: http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/nils
If you want to see more of Ollie Dean’s great illustrations, here's a link to his website: www.olidean.com
Visit (and like!) the Facebook page for this project: www.facebok.com/TheEinsteinProject
Get the book for the Kindle or as paperback from Amazon (a multi-region link that should automatically take you to the right Amazon store):
http://authl.it/B01N574B99
Get the book in the e-pub format (iBooks, nook, kobo etc - this link should take you to a list of options):
https://www.books2read.com/u/bMGAok
If you want to know more about Nils Andersson, here's a link to his homepage: http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/nils
If you want to see more of Ollie Dean’s great illustrations, here's a link to his website: www.olidean.com
