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Albert Einstein did not become brilliant in a vacuum. Here are 5 of his favorite books.
Some books had a profound influence on Einstein's thinking and theories.

- Einstein had a large library and was a voracious reader.
- The famous physicist admitted that some books influenced his thinking.
- The books he preferred were mostly philosophical and scientific in nature.
Undoubtedly considered one of the brightest individuals who ever lived, Albert Einstein did not become so accomplished in a vacuum. The physicist learned from the best minds of history, as is evidenced by his voracious appetite for reading and his extensive personal book collection.
In "Einstein for the 21st Century," the authors describe the famous scientist's library. It contained "much of the canon of the time," write the editors Peter Galison, Gerald J.Holton, and Silvan S. Schweber, referring to the great collection of German books. Among these were such names as Boltzmann, Buchner, Friedrich Hebbel, two editions of the works of Heine, Helmholtz and von Humboldt. There were also many books by the philosophers Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Lessing, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer.
But what were Einstein's favorite books? Perhaps there's no one simple answer to that but we do know which works the creator of the theory of general relativity seemed to come back to over and over.
Here are his 5 favorite books and writers, as we know it.
5. “Analysis of Sensations” by Ernst Mach
Einstein's development of the theory of relativity was by his own admission influenced by the work of Ernst Mach – a 19th-century Austrian philosopher and physicist. In his Analysis of Sensations," Mach wrote about the elusive nature of the human senses and the mutability of the ego.
Mach's work also included criticism of Newton's theories of time and space – another source of inspiration for Einstein's own ideas. In fact, Einstein named a hypothesis that he derived from Mach as 'Mach's Principle' – the idea that inertia is originated in an interaction between bodies, which was an idea Einstein himself saw as instrumental.
In a 1915 letter he wrote to Moritz Schlick, Einstein explained what writers influenced his thinking in coming up with the theory of relativity, saying:
"You have also correctly seen that this trend of thought [positivism] was of great influence on my efforts, and specifically E. Mach and still much more Hume, whose treatise on understanding I studied with fervor and admiration shortly before the discovery of the theory of relativity. It is very well possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have arrived at the solution."
While he revealed in this letter that the work of Ernst Mach and David Hume inspired his thinking, it is known also that in later years Einstein came to repudiate Mach's work and positivism in particular – the logic-centered philosophy that rejects theology and metaphysics, maintaining that every rational assertion can be scientifically verified and that "positive" knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties.
Ernst Mach.
Photo by H. F. Jütte. 1902.
4. “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes
Leopold Infeld, who worked with Einstein, wrote in his autobiography "The Quest" about how much Einstein loved Cervantes's classic tale of the chivalrous knight Don Quixote:
"Einstein lay in bed without shirt or pajamas, with Don Quixote on his night table. It is the book which he enjoys most and likes to read for relaxation…"
3. “Ethics” by Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza was a 17th-century Jewish-Dutch philosopher whose writings provided the groundwork for the Enlightenment and contemporary biblical criticism. Spinoza's "Ethics" is one of the fundamental works of Western thinking, describing full cosmology and a picture of reality, while providing instruction for leading an ethical life. The book describes God as the natural order, with humans being the "modes" of God. Everything that happens, per Spinoza's thinking, follows from the nature of God.
This "pantheism" of Spinoza was part of Einstein's own spiritual view of the world, as he told to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein:
"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
Check out this video on Spinoza's philosophy:
The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza
2. “A Treatise of Human Nature” by David Hume
By his own admission, this book by an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, that looked to understand the link between science and human nature, had a big influence on Einstein. Hume's accomplishment of articulating a scientifically moral philosophy appealed to the physicist as did the book's call to move from metaphysical speculation towards facts you can observe. There was also an important caveat to this, according to Hume, that observation alone cannot grasp the laws of nature. This implication had a profound impact on the development of Einstein's counter-intuitive ideas.
1. Johann von Goethe’s oeuvre
Johann Goethe.
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Perhaps the most sizable part of Einstein's large collection of books belonged to the German author Johann von Goethe. The physicist owned the collected works of the author in a 36-volume edition, along with an additional 12 volumes as well as 2 volumes of the "Optics" (including a letter exchange between Goethe and Schiller), and another volume of "Faust".
Einstein kept a bust of Goethe and was known to quote the writer to his German-speaking assistants. In a 1932 letter to Leopold Casper, Einstein wrote that he admired Goethe as "a poet without peer, and as one of the smartest and wisest men of all time." He added that "even his scholarly ideas deserve to be held in high esteem, and his faults are those of any great man."
If you're looking for more great books enjoyed by the world-changing scientist, it is known that he also loved "The Brother Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and "Isis Unveiled" – a mystical tract by the theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.
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How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
The value of forecasting
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTA0Njk2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzM2NDQzOH0.rid9regiDaKczCCKBsu7wrHkNQ64Vz_XcOEZIzAhzgM/img.jpg?width=980" id="2bb93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="31345afbdf2bd408fd3e9f31520c445a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1546" data-height="1056" />Northwell emergency departments use the dashboard to monitor in real time.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota
"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
Excavation of a triceratops skull in South Dakota.
- The triceratops skull was first discovered in 2019, but was excavated over the summer of 2020.
- It was discovered in the South Dakota Badlands, an area where the Triceratops roamed some 66 million years ago.
- Studying dinosaurs helps scientists better understand the evolution of all life on Earth.
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We had to be really careful," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "We couldn't disturb anything at all, because at that point, it was under law enforcement investigation. They were telling us, 'Don't even make footprints,' and I was thinking, 'How are we supposed to do that?'"</p><p>Another difficulty was the mammoth size of the skull: about 7 feet long and more than 3,000 pounds. (For context, the largest triceratops skull ever unearthed was about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.483632" target="_blank">8.2 feet long</a>.) The skull of Schmidt's dinosaur was likely a <em>Triceratops prorsus, </em>one of two species of triceratops that roamed what's now North America about 66 million years ago.</p>Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p>The triceratops was an herbivore, but it was also a favorite meal of the T<em>yrannosaurus rex</em>. That probably explains why the Dakotas contain many scattered triceratops bone fragments, and, less commonly, complete bones and skulls. In summer 2019, for example, a separate team on a dig in North Dakota made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">headlines</a> after unearthing a complete triceratops skull that measured five feet in length.</p><p>Michael Kjelland, a biology professor who participated in that excavation, said digging up the dinosaur was like completing a "multi-piece, 3-D jigsaw puzzle" that required "engineering that rivaled SpaceX," he jokingly told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p>Morrison Formation in Colorado
James St. John via Flickr
Triceratops illustration
Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons |
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The incredible physics behind quantum computing
Can computers do calculations in multiple universes? Scientists are working on it. Step into the world of quantum computing.
- While today's computers—referred to as classical computers—continue to become more and more powerful, there is a ceiling to their advancement due to the physical limits of the materials used to make them. Quantum computing allows physicists and researchers to exponentially increase computation power, harnessing potential parallel realities to do so.
- Quantum computer chips are astoundingly small, about the size of a fingernail. Scientists have to not only build the computer itself but also the ultra-protected environment in which they operate. Total isolation is required to eliminate vibrations and other external influences on synchronized atoms; if the atoms become 'decoherent' the quantum computer cannot function.
- "You need to create a very quiet, clean, cold environment for these chips to work in," says quantum computing expert Vern Brownell. The coldest temperature possible in physics is -273.15 degrees C. The rooms required for quantum computing are -273.14 degrees C, which is 150 times colder than outer space. It is complex and mind-boggling work, but the potential for computation that harnesses the power of parallel universes is worth the chase.
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