Walter Isaacson is the CEO of the Aspen Institute, a bipartisan think tank “dedicated to fostering enlightened leadership.” He has served as Chairman of CNN and managing editor of Time magazine. His previous books include The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (co-author, 1986), Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003). His latest book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, like his others, is a bestseller. He was the first writer to have full access to Einstein’s personal papers after their release in 2006. Read an Etude review of Isaacson's book, Einstein.

What in your mind are the greatest myths held in popular culture about Einstein?

I think we look upon Einstein as an aloof, distracted scientist when in fact he was a passionate, engaged human being who had very hot-blooded relationships with his family, with his work and with his politics.

The letters that were released this past year that I used as a foundation for my book show how his rebellious, non-conformist passion was reflected in his politics, his public life, and his scientific work.

You show in your book how that rebelliousness seemed to be the seed to his genius, being non-conformist gave him his ability to think creatively.

Yes. His genius was not that he was a more powerful analyst than other scientists but that he was more imaginative and creative. He could think out of a box, partly due to his rebellious nature. He could look at statement that everyone had accepted for centuries, such as Newton’s premise that time marches along absolutely independent of our observations of it, and question that premise.

His willingness to question authority and defy conventional thinking is what made him not only a genius but also somebody we can all relate to and admire.

He referred to a blind beetle walking along a branch and not realizing it was curved and Einstein says he was able to imagine what the blind beetle didn’t see. And he realized that gravity is simply the curving of space. No one had thought of that before.

Although you already had a grasp on Einstein’s life after having named him as Time’s Person of the Century while you were managing editor of that publication, were you surprised by anything you learned during your research for the book?

How imaginative, fun, and human he was. Einstein seems very intimidating to most people. In fact, he had great sensitivity, great humor; he was quite delightful in describing his theories. His theories were easily visualized, which is his strength. It delighted me.

Also, what he was like as a human being, which we didn’t know much before all his letters became public. The fact that he had an illegitimate child. The fact that he had a love-hate relationship with his first wife that was intertwined with her helping him with his first paper on relativity.

To understand the human side of Einstein and his political thinking as well as his scientific thinking, revealed how rich of a topic it was.

For example, before [his private papers were made public in 2006], we had letters from his son but now we can see what he wrote back to his son. It was nice to see more sides of Einstein.

You seem to balance giving some depth to the explanations of Einstein’s theories without getting overly bogged down in intricacies—enough to satisfy a physics professor and just enough to get the layperson wet to the knees. What parameters did you give yourself for writing these sections?

First of all, I wanted to understand the math and the physics as well as I could. I took intensive classes like calculus and tutors helped me with various aspects of his science. Then I wanted to try to avoid putting the complexities into the book. The book is for the lay reader. I aimed it at a person who hasn’t taken physics since high school. I even had some high school teachers read it to make sure that it was easily understandable.

I also tried to give the theories visually rather than using the math.

How do you build a fully dimensional character based on documentary research?

I think that when you get letters that the person wrote, and then the letters people wrote about him, and then the diary entries of people who spent time with him, you start developing a full picture. The good thing about Einstein is that he was extraordinarily famous after 1919 and so anyone who ever had any encounter with him tended to write letters about it or diary entries about it. So you get a good sense of what he was doing almost every day and what people thought of him.

In writing such exhaustive biographies of complex individuals, how do you organize your research?

I have one simple philosophy that Einstein may have disagreed with, which is: do it chronologically. I organize everything I have in an extremely long timeline so that I can do the narrative in a way that adheres as closely as possible to a chronology.

I try to learn from the Bible which begins with: In the beginning, comma ... and tell a story that is in chronological order.

Do you write chronologically as well?

Yes. The book begins with him being born and ends with him dying, which many biographers don’t do but it seems logical to me.

My editor, Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, on my very first book, gave me one mantra, which was: all things in good time. In other words, don’t get ahead of your story or behind your story.

Much is discussed about Einstein’s political views and philosophies. How has your background studying politics informed your writing?

One interesting aspect was that people thought that Einstein’s political beliefs were naive. At that time, to have international arms control was a naive idea. His pacifist beliefs in the 1920’s were naive. But the more I read Einstein and the more I reflected on history, I realized that he was a cold-eyed realist compared to others.

They once asked him how he thought World War III would be fought. He said, ‘I don’t know. But I know how World War IV will be fought if we don’t change our way of thinking: with sticks and rocks.’

Many of Einstein’s views on the state of the world after World War II resonate with issues facing us today—some seem even prophetic. What insights do you think should be gleaned from his understanding of world politics?

I think he was able to think out of the box on world politics and say that a global system based on competing nation-states with their own militaries and autonomy may have worked well for the past 400 years, but it did not make sense in an era in which there are nuclear weapons and issues ranging from the environment to health that cross national boundaries.

What do these figures—the six policymakers in The Wise Men, Benjamin Franklin, Kissinger, and Einstein—have in common that inspired you to write about them?

Creativity. The theme I like to explore is how the mind works and how people come up with creative ideas. Sometimes they are good; sometimes they are bad. But whether it is The Wise Men after World War II creating a new global system with institutions like NATO and the Marshall Plan, or whether it is Benjamin Franklin trying to create the institutions of a middle class republic—as well as all of his inventions—my goal is to look at the sources of imagination and creativity.

You used the six Wise Men as inspiration to propose your own creative institution: MATO (Mideast Antiterrorism Organization). Where do you think Einstein might fall on that?

The Wise Men who created the institutions at the beginning of the Cold War would have created a whole new set of institutions to deal with the global struggles we now face. And I also believe Einstein wanted us to think more creatively about what kinds of new institutions we need in a world of global threats and nuclear weapons.

The lack of creativity in our policymakers in creating new institutions and approaches to global problems is appalling to me.

Can you tell us what your next project is?

I’m considering a biography of Louis Armstrong. I want to look at creativity and race and growing up in New Orleans and music and entertainment.

I’m always curious, what are you reading now?

A biography of Condoleezza Rice by Elisabeth Bumiller.