The Einstein Project - Acting Edition - Paul D'Andrea, Paperback

• Release Date   1/1/2005
• ISBN-13   9780822220251 | 978-0-8222-2025-1
• ISBN   0822220253 | 0-8222-2025-3
• Format   Paperback
• Author(s)   Paul D'Andrea Paul D'Andrea, John Klein
• The Einstein Project, a play written by Paul D'Andrea and Jon Klein, reveals how easily scientists can become so absorbed into the problems of quantum mechanics and special relativity that they forget to eat, sleep and value what time they have with their wives and children. The play paints a portrait of Albert Einstein and his contemporaries during the period from 1920 to 1945 when the secrets of the atom, gravity, electromagnetism, and light were first being described scientifically. We open with the 1919 solar eclipse (which proved Einstein's Relativity theory) then jump forward to the birth of the Atomic Bomb, than back to the Patent Office where Einstein worked. We come to respect the man for being unaffected by the politics swirling all around him while decisions by the other scientists are less objective. Nevertheless, given the Second World War and the Nazis, Einstein writes to President Roosevelt urging him to look into creating an atomic bomb to have it before the Germans. His famous letter to the President was followed, a decade and a half later by another letter, this time to President Eisenhower, urging nuclear disarmament, signed by a handful of the leading thinkers of the time. Einstein was humble, and at the end of the play he explains how he did not "discover" special relativity, but simply gave the already existing phenomenon a name and explanation. The most dramatic moments in the play come during the exchanges between Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The clashes of the two great minds are all too brief but provide insights into the earliest days of trying to reconcile Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. The Uranium Club, of which Einstein was a member, debated both the makeup of the atoms and its potential use in a weapon. The other scientists portrayed include Fritz Haber, Max Von Laue, Otto Hahn, and Walter Gerlach. In the end, this is a play about war, politics and the choices we make in life.