APPROACHING EINSTEIN: THE WONDER OF NATURE

SCIENCE RARELY MAKES the headlines in British news- papers. But in 1919, a year after the end of the Great War, that changed decisively. On Friday, November 7, the London Times printed a headline above a report on a dramatic new development: "Revolution in Science. New Theory of the Universe. Newtonian Ideas Overthrown." Like much scientific journalism, this headline was sensationalist, suggesting that, just as in the then-recent political and social revolutions in China in 1911 and Russia in 1917, an old order had been swept away. Sir Isaac Newton — widely regarded as the greatest British scientist — had been dethroned, his ideas now discredited, lying in tatters. And who was the cause of this revolution in science? An obscure German physicist, hitherto unknown to the readership of the Times — Albert Einstein.

The Times headline propelled Einstein to international celebrity. It was an extraordinary moment. Britain and Germany had only just emerged from the most destructive and traumatic total war yet known, which had created distrust and hatred between the two nations on an unprecedented scale. Yet almost exactly one year after the end of the First World War, Britain's scientific elite had embraced Einstein, a German national and former enemy, in the common human search for an understanding of our universe. It seemed to be a symbol of hope in the bleak postwar era. Might international scientific cooperation hold the key to new understandings of our world and ourselves? Einstein found himself propelled into the limelight. A disillusioned and restless postwar generation seized on him as someone who could finally make sense of our perplexing world and our place within it.

By the early 1920s, Einstein had become a cult figure, an international icon of genius, helped to no small extent by the award of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics — and perhaps also by his distinctive appearance. Einstein made fuzzy hair a hallmark of intelligence. (At a Hollywood dinner party in the winter of 1931–32, the movie actress Marion Davies ruffled Einstein's notoriously unruly hair and quipped, "Why don't you get your hair cut?") And everyone knew the equation E = mc2, even if they didn't quite grasp what it meant. Einstein became hugely popular with the American press corps and gained an avid — and growing — popular readership. In 1930, security staff at New York's American Museum of Natural History had to deal with a near riot when four thousand people tried to see a film offering to "demystify" Einstein's ideas. In 1929, Sir Arthur Eddington — who was instrumental in confirming Einstein's theory of general relativity a decade earlier — gleefully wrote to Einstein, telling him that one of London's busiest shopping streets had been brought to a near standstill. Why? Because Selfridges, London's most prestigious department store, had displayed the text of one of Einstein's recent scientific papers in its windows, and Oxford Street was jampacked with people trying to read it. Eddington himself went on to write what remains one of the most perceptive explanations of relativity, offering a clear and reliable account of the scientific significance of these radical new ideas.

Einstein's influence continues to this day. In 2016, a team of scientists reported they had recorded two black holes colliding. This sound of a "fleeting chirp" from over a billion light-years away fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Everything points to Einstein's scientific theories being here to stay and profoundly affecting the thinking of the next generation.

But beyond his scientific discoveries, what I have come to find really interesting is Einstein's spiritual significance. I write this book as someone who both encountered Einstein's ideas and discovered the intellectual and spiritual riches of the Christian faith at Oxford University. Although I will be aiming to give as reliable and accessible an account of Einstein's views on science as possible, I will also explore his ideas on religion and how he weaves these together. Yet perhaps more importantly, from my own personal perspective, I will also consider how his approach can be used by someone who, like me, wants to hold science and faith together, respecting their distinct identities yet finding a way of allowing them to enrich each other. My views are not the same as Einstein's, yet he has been an important influence in helping me navigate my way towards what I consider a workable and meaningful account of how this strange universe works and what it — and we — might mean. Einstein opens the way to trying to develop a theory of everything that matters.

I fell in love with science at about the age of ten. My great-uncle, who was head of pathology at one of Ireland's leading teaching hospitals, gave me his old brass microscope when he retired. It turned out to be the gateway to a new world. I happily explored the small plants and cells I found in pond water through its lens. Then, having read some books about astronomy, I built myself a little telescope. On a cold, crisp winter's evening long ago, I turned it to look at the Milky Way and was overwhelmed by the number of stars I could now see. I was hooked and developed a love of nature that remains with me to this day. Einstein spoke of a sense of "rapturous amazement" at the beauty of nature. I had not read Einstein at that stage, but I would have recognized what he was talking about immediately.

My first encounter with Einstein's scientific ideas dates from about 1966. In my enthusiasm to study science, I eagerly tried to absorb scientific works that I now realize were far too advanced for me. At the age of thirteen I plucked up the courage to ask one of my teachers to explain Einstein's theory of relativity to me. He loaned me one of his books to read. As I tried to take in Einstein's thought experiment about riding beams of light — to which we shall return later — I found myself struggling to grasp the points he was making. I realized that my mind needed to expand before I could make sense of Einstein. My problem as a thirteen-year-old was that I ended up reducing reality to what I could then cope with.

Happily, I was able to study Einstein in greater depth when I went to Oxford University in 1971 to study chemistry. The Oxford chemistry curriculum required students to specialize in one of a number of...