Part I  Listening Task

Script for the recording:

FLATOW: This is TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. I’m Ira Flatow. Joining me now to talk more about Einstein is the author, Walter Isaacson, of Einstein: His Life and Universe. Thanks for being with us today, Walter.

Mr. WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you very much, Ira. I’m a big fan of you and your show, so it’s an honor.

FLATOW: Thank you. You know, you hit upon two of my most favorite scientists. Now, Dudley Herschbach, who won the Pulitzer Prize in Chemistry, called Ben Franklin probably the best American scientist – best scientist America had to offer. And then you have Albert Einstein.

Mr. ISAACSON: They were both so creative.

FLATOW: Yeah.

Mr. ISAACSON: You know, I was writing about Franklin when I realized —through Dudley Herschbach, who is a truly wonderful individual — that Franklin was a great scientist and that educated people in Franklin’s time loved science. And so I decided that— that’s what turned me on to trying to do something like Einstein.

FLATOW: Anything similar between the two?

Mr. ISAACSON: They’re very different, in most ways, on the surface because Franklin was a great experimentalist. He loved doing those electricity experiments. Now, we think flying the kite in the rain—he was some doddering old guy. But those were serious experiments about the single fluid theory of electricity. But he didn’t really care that much for the theory. He said you don’t really need to understand Newton’s theory to realize if you let go of your crockery, it will fall to the earth and break.

Einstein, on the other hand, was a pretty bad experimentalist. He hated being in the lab. But he was a great theorist. So it’s a way to look at theory versus experimentalism and how our minds work creatively in both fields.

FLATOW: All right. We have to go. Stay with us. We’ll be right back after this break and talk more with Walter Isaacson about “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” Stay with us.

After Listening

1. Franklin ; Einstein

2. experimentalist; the theory; theorist; in the lab.

3. creative