This splendid biography of one of the world's greatest scientists is the absorbing story of a boy who hated school because he could not ask "why" and of a man, who when asked to explain his theory of relativity, offered to play the violin which he felt sure his questioner would appreciate much more and understand much better.

While he was working as a clerk in the Patent Office in Switzerland, Albert Einstein began writing the scientific essays which later were to bring him world fame. But it was his paper on relativity — his astonishing new formula that gave to the world the fourth dimension and explained why the sun could send out light and heat for billions of years without burning itself out, that won him the greatest acclaim, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Forty years later the world was stunned by the enormous results of his theory — scientists following other clues of atomic energy, learned to transform the uranium atom into energy — and made the atom bomb.

Hitler burned Einstein's essays, along with Heine's great lyrics and books by Helen Keller and Jack London; offered $5000 to anyone who would assassinate him; and confiscated his lovely home and his bank account. But the rest of the world honored him above all men.

Mrs. Levinger's portrayal of Einstein the man and Einstein the patient, painstaking scientist will find a wide audience not only among young people with a scientific bent but many older readers will find it an excellent introduction of the basic principle of his theories.

From the dust jacket