As we marvel at science’s latest extraordinary breakthrough, it’s also an opportunity to ponder what kind of thinker Albert Einstein was.
Born two decades before the beginning of the 20th century, what kind of mind was his that could come up with ideas that would have to wait until the second decade of the 21st century to be proven correct?
The man responsible for predicting the existence of gravitational waves as the last brick in his theory of general relativity is so often reduced to a tongue-poking electric-hair-shock caricature: the slightly mad but cuddly genius who is just different to everybody else.
The true picture is perhaps less colorful; Einstein was the product of a well-rounded education that, importantly, very much included the arts and humanities.
