Biographies of Albert Einstein -- Mastermind of Theoretical Physics

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the sources and reliability of Einstein's biographies, emphasizing that documentary evidence does not always guarantee accuracy, and discusses the distinctions between different biography types.

Contribution

It categorizes Einstein biographies into documentary and non-documentary types, highlighting the complexities in assessing their reliability based on primary sources.

Findings

Documentary biographies are written by those who knew Einstein personally.

Reliability of biographies varies regardless of primary source usage.

Biographies written during Einstein's lifetime differ in reliability.

Abstract

Over the years many have written biographies of Einstein. They all based their biographies on primary sources, archival material: memories and letters of people who were in contact with Einstein, Einstein's own recollections; interviews that Einstein had given over the years, and letters of Einstein to his friends - youth friends like Marcel Grossman and Michele Besso and later friends and colleagues like Heinrich Zangger; and especially his love letters with Mileva Mari\'c. One can demarcate between two types of biographies, namely, Documentary biographies, and, Non-documentary biographies. Non-documentary biographies were written by people who based themselves on documentary biographies and on other non-documentary biographies. Documentary biographies were written by people who knew Einstein personally, and received information from him and from other people who were in personal contact with him. This type can be further divided into two subgroups: books that were written while Einstein was still alive, and books that were written after his death. Among the first group there were some biographies that Einstein considered to be more reliable, others he thought were less reliable, and still other biographies which he considered to be almost pure imagination. I will demonstrate that relying on primary sources and "documentary" does not necessarily mean "reliable".