{"id":134978,"date":"2013-04-09T18:10:44","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T22:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"\/gazette\/?p=134978"},"modified":"2019-05-21T14:07:08","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T18:07:08","slug":"jobs-einstein-and-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/04\/jobs-einstein-and-franklin\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"\"

The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Walter Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d During a talk at Radcliffe, Isaacson explored the genius of three transformative men \u2014 Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs \u2014 unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. <\/p>

Kris Snibbe\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tArts & Culture\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tJobs, Einstein, and Franklin\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\tColleen Walsh\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tIsaacson deconstructs their genius and dedication to larger goals\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\t\t

In the spring of 1974, Walter Isaacson<\/a> sat in Harvard\u2019s Memorial Church and listened to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes offer graduating seniors his parting words of wisdom.<\/p>\n

The address, recalled Isaacson, a history and literature concentrator and now a best-selling biographer, was titled \u201cWhat We Forgot to Tell You.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not all about you,\u201d Gomes told the students, Isaacson recalled. \u201cIn the end, you are going to figure out it\u2019s about being part of something larger than yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

That understanding that they were part of a wider world was paramount for three famous men about whom Isaacson went on to write books: founding father Benjamin Franklin, physicist Albert Einstein, and, most recently, Apple guru Steve Jobs. On Monday at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Isaacson explored the genius of the three transformative men, unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. Isaacson\u2019s talk, the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, was sponsored by Harvard\u2019s Department of the History of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2011, when Jobs finally knew he wasn\u2019t going to beat the pancreatic cancer he had suffered with for years, Jobs told Isaacson he had come to realize that history, the history of creativity, the history of technology, is like a river from which you can take things. But in the end, what\u2019s most important, Jobs said, \u201cis what you put back.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Jobs gave back to the world was a revolutionary new way to engage with it: sleek personal computers, phones, and media players that made music, photos, and the Internet available with the touch of a finger. Jobs\u2019 genius, said Isaacson, lay in his meticulous eye, his passion for perfection, and his abiding belief that beauty and technology weren\u2019t mutually exclusive, but inherently intertwined.<\/p>\n

Isaacson, who also heads the Aspen Institute, conducted close to 50 interviews with Jobs over two years, and spoke with both the entrepreneur\u2019s devotees and detractors for his book. He heard how Jobs convinced his company to delay the release of Apple\u2019s Macintosh personal computer so the employees could rework its circuit board, a concealed part that users would never lay eyes on. The fault, Jobs said, was that \u201cit wasn\u2019t beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came time to sheath the iPhone, Jobs didn\u2019t want plastic, he wanted a smooth, silky, strong, and scratch-resistant glass. After an exhaustive search, he enlisted Corning to make its famed Gorilla Glass, which until then had existed only as a concept and a formula.<\/p>\n

Jobs, said Isaacson, was the \u201cAmerican creation myth writ large, somebody who had created a company in his parents\u2019 garage in a middle-class suburb with a chubby kid from down the street, and transformed it into the most valuable company in the history of the world; and he did it by believing beauty and design matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In search of that beauty, Jobs endlessly frustrated his employees, but he also drove them to \u201cdo things they never realized that they were able to do,\u201d added Isaacson.<\/p>\n

While exploring Henry Kissinger\u2019s adherence to realpolitik for a 1992 biography about the former secretary of state, Isaacson said he began to look for the roots of realism in American foreign policy and \u201cstumbled across Benjamin Franklin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franklin, renowned in part for his groundbreaking work on electricity, possessed an insatiable curiosity, an \u201cintuitive feel for the spirit and the laws of the universe,\u201d and a joy in the beauty of science, but he also possessed something else: an appreciation of the \u201cutility of science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar to Jobs, Franklin wanted to find ways to put his discoveries to use to help better the world, Isaacson said. But Franklin, in addition to shaping the course of history with his science experiments, helped to change the world in his capacity as a skilled and savvy statesman, relying on his grounding in scientific method to bridge political divides. Isaacson explained Franklin\u2019s thinking in \u201cBenjamin Franklin: An American Life\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that at the root of Franklin\u2019s creativity and this notion of balance,\u201d said Isaacson, \u201cwas an appreciation of science.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was because, whenever there was a dispute in the colonial period that he was involved in,\u201d he added, \u201cFranklin would say, \u2018Let\u2019s look at the evidence, let\u2019s be driven by the facts.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Another great man obsessed by empirical evidence was Albert Einstein, the subject of Isaacson\u2019s biography \u201cEinstein: His Life and Universe\u201d (2007).<\/p>\n

Isaacson wanted to make Einstein accessible to the public and convey not just his brilliance, \u201cbut the beauty of his creativity.\u201d Isaacson said that beauty manifested itself in Einstein\u2019s \u201cvisual thought experiments,\u201d his ability to visualize complicated concepts. Those vivid images \u201cwould make him the greatest scientist of his century,\u201d said Isaacson, particularly when he \u201ctried to picture what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of that image ultimately led the German-born theoretical physicist, at the time a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office tasked with reviewing patent applications for methods to synchronize the country\u2019s clocks, to a groundbreaking analysis of the concept of time.<\/p>\n

Einstein thought \u201cif you are traveling really, really fast toward one of the clocks, what seems simultaneous to you will not be simultaneous to somebody who is traveling really, really fast to the other clock in the other direction. What Einstein figures out \u2026 is that, yes, the speed of light is always constant, but time is relative depending on your state of motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s just these visual thought experiments of the imagination,\u201d Isaacson said, \u201cthat lead to these great theories.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Einstein, like Jobs and Franklin, knew his work would do more than merely satisfy his own curiosity. He also understood that he was part of something greater than himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cEinstein called that \u2018a spirit manifested in the laws of the universe,\u2019 a spirit in the face of which we must be humble because we know it\u2019s so much larger than we are. And our role, he said, is to somehow touch that spirit \u2026 and get us a step closer to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacson described how Einstein scribbled down nine pages of equations as he lay on his deathbed. Finally, the handwriting trailed off to the edge of the page, \u201cas he was just writing one last line of the equations that he thought would get him \u2014 but also the rest of us, because he wasn\u2019t going to be here \u2014 one step closer to that spirit. \u2026 That\u2019s what the history of science teaches us. That\u2019s so important, especially nowadays when we live in a world in which it would be helpful to be reminded every step of the way that we are part of something so much larger and more beautiful than ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacson said his next book, devoted to the notion of what he called collaborative creativity, will focus on a group of people who helped to usher in the digital age and together created the computer. Teams of engineers, theoretical physicists, mathematicians, mechanics, and material scientists conducted the pioneering work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat notion of all these people being thrown together is, to me, the essence of true creativity, especially in the sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacson, who is also a member of Harvard\u2019s Board of Overseers, praised the University for embracing that spirit of collective creativity and for supporting efforts like undergraduate work in teams, cross-disciplinary research, and networked and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat may not be good for biographers,\u201d he added, \u201cbut it will be good for the study of history, it will be good for science, and it will be really good for Harvard students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biographer Walter Isaacson shared his insights into the minds and makeup of three of America\u2019s greatest thinkers, who helped to change the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105622744,"featured_media":135100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"gz_ga_pageviews":16,"gz_ga_lastupdated":"2019-12-18 20:09","document_color_palette":"crimson","author":"Colleen Walsh","affiliation":"Harvard Staff 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","mediaId":135100,"mediaSize":"full","mediaType":"image","mediaUrl":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040813_isaacson_187_605.jpg","poster":"","title":"Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin","subheading":"Isaacson deconstructs their genius and dedication to larger goals","centeredImage":true,"className":"is-style-full-width-text-below","mediaHeight":403,"mediaWidth":605,"backgroundFixed":false,"backgroundTone":"light","coloredBackground":false,"displayOverlay":true,"fadeInText":false,"isAmbient":false,"mediaLength":"","mediaPosition":"","posterText":"","titleAbove":false,"useUncroppedImage":false,"lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040813_isaacson_187_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Walter Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d During a talk at Radcliffe, Isaacson explored the genius of three transformative men \u2014 Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs \u2014 unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. <\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Kris Snibbe\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","innerContent":["<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040813_isaacson_187_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Walter Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d During a talk at Radcliffe, Isaacson explored the genius of three transformative men \u2014 Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs \u2014 unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. <\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Kris Snibbe\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n"],"rendered":"<header\n\tclass=\"wp-block-harvard-gazette-article-header alignfull article-header is-style-full-width-text-below centered-image\"\n\tstyle=\" \"\n>\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040813_isaacson_187_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Walter Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d During a talk at Radcliffe, Isaacson explored the genius of three transformative men \u2014 Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs \u2014 unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. <\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Kris Snibbe\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t<div class=\"article-header__content\">\n\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"article-header__category\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/arts-humanities\/\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tArts & Culture\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<h1 class=\"article-header__title wp-block-heading \">\n\t\tJobs, Einstein, and Franklin\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__meta\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-post-author\">\n\t\t\t<address class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"author wp-block-post-author__name\">\n\t\tColleen Walsh\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-post-author__byline\">\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<time class=\"article-header__date\" datetime=\"2013-04-09\">\n\t\t\tApril 9, 2013\t\t<\/time>\n\n\t\t<span class=\"article-header__reading-time\">\n\t\t\t7 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"article-header__subheading wp-block-heading\">\n\t\t\tIsaacson deconstructs their genius and dedication to larger goals\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n"},"2":{"blockName":"core\/group","attrs":{"templateLock":false,"metadata":{"name":"Article content"},"align":"wide","layout":{"type":"constrained","justifyContent":"center"},"tagName":"div","lock":[],"className":"","style":[],"backgroundColor":"","textColor":"","gradient":"","fontSize":"","fontFamily":"","borderColor":"","ariaLabel":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\t\t<p>In the spring of 1974, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspeninstitute.org\/about\/about-walter-isaacson\">Walter Isaacson<\/a> sat in Harvard\u2019s Memorial Church and listened to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes offer graduating seniors his parting words of wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>The address, recalled Isaacson, a history and literature concentrator and now a best-selling biographer, was titled \u201cWhat We Forgot to Tell You.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not all about you,\u201d Gomes told the students, Isaacson recalled. \u201cIn the end, you are going to figure out it\u2019s about being part of something larger than yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That understanding that they were part of a wider world was paramount for three famous men about whom Isaacson went on to write books: founding father Benjamin Franklin, physicist Albert Einstein, and, most recently, Apple guru Steve Jobs. On Monday at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Isaacson explored the genius of the three transformative men, unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. Isaacson\u2019s talk, the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, was sponsored by Harvard\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.harvard.edu\/~hsdept\/\">Department of the History of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, when Jobs finally knew he wasn\u2019t going to beat the pancreatic cancer he had suffered with for years, Jobs told Isaacson he had come to realize that history, the history of creativity, the history of technology, is like a river from which you can take things. But in the end, what\u2019s most important, Jobs said, \u201cis what you put back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Jobs gave back to the world was a revolutionary new way to engage with it: sleek personal computers, phones, and media players that made music, photos, and the Internet available with the touch of a finger. Jobs\u2019 genius, said Isaacson, lay in his meticulous eye, his passion for perfection, and his abiding belief that beauty and technology weren\u2019t mutually exclusive, but inherently intertwined.<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who also heads the Aspen Institute, conducted close to 50 interviews with Jobs over two years, and spoke with both the entrepreneur\u2019s devotees and detractors for his book. He heard how Jobs convinced his company to delay the release of Apple\u2019s Macintosh personal computer so the employees could rework its circuit board, a concealed part that users would never lay eyes on. The fault, Jobs said, was that \u201cit wasn\u2019t beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it came time to sheath the iPhone, Jobs didn\u2019t want plastic, he wanted a smooth, silky, strong, and scratch-resistant glass. After an exhaustive search, he enlisted Corning to make its famed Gorilla Glass, which until then had existed only as a concept and a formula.<\/p>\n<p>Jobs, said Isaacson, was the \u201cAmerican creation myth writ large, somebody who had created a company in his parents\u2019 garage in a middle-class suburb with a chubby kid from down the street, and transformed it into the most valuable company in the history of the world; and he did it by believing beauty and design matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In search of that beauty, Jobs endlessly frustrated his employees, but he also drove them to \u201cdo things they never realized that they were able to do,\u201d added Isaacson.<\/p>\n<p>While exploring Henry Kissinger\u2019s adherence to realpolitik for a 1992 biography about the former secretary of state, Isaacson said he began to look for the roots of realism in American foreign policy and \u201cstumbled across Benjamin Franklin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Franklin, renowned in part for his groundbreaking work on electricity, possessed an insatiable curiosity, an \u201cintuitive feel for the spirit and the laws of the universe,\u201d and a joy in the beauty of science, but he also possessed something else: an appreciation of the \u201cutility of science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Similar to Jobs, Franklin wanted to find ways to put his discoveries to use to help better the world, Isaacson said. But Franklin, in addition to shaping the course of history with his science experiments, helped to change the world in his capacity as a skilled and savvy statesman, relying on his grounding in scientific method to bridge political divides. Isaacson explained Franklin\u2019s thinking in \u201cBenjamin Franklin: An American Life\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realized that at the root of Franklin\u2019s creativity and this notion of balance,\u201d said Isaacson, \u201cwas an appreciation of science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was because, whenever there was a dispute in the colonial period that he was involved in,\u201d he added, \u201cFranklin would say, \u2018Let\u2019s look at the evidence, let\u2019s be driven by the facts.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another great man obsessed by empirical evidence was Albert Einstein, the subject of Isaacson\u2019s biography \u201cEinstein: His Life and Universe\u201d (2007).<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson wanted to make Einstein accessible to the public and convey not just his brilliance, \u201cbut the beauty of his creativity.\u201d Isaacson said that beauty manifested itself in Einstein\u2019s \u201cvisual thought experiments,\u201d his ability to visualize complicated concepts. Those vivid images \u201cwould make him the greatest scientist of his century,\u201d said Isaacson, particularly when he \u201ctried to picture what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A version of that image ultimately led the German-born theoretical physicist, at the time a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office tasked with reviewing patent applications for methods to synchronize the country\u2019s clocks, to a groundbreaking analysis of the concept of time.<\/p>\n<p>Einstein thought \u201cif you are traveling really, really fast toward one of the clocks, what seems simultaneous to you will not be simultaneous to somebody who is traveling really, really fast to the other clock in the other direction. What Einstein figures out \u2026 is that, yes, the speed of light is always constant, but time is relative depending on your state of motion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s just these visual thought experiments of the imagination,\u201d Isaacson said, \u201cthat lead to these great theories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Einstein, like Jobs and Franklin, knew his work would do more than merely satisfy his own curiosity. He also understood that he was part of something greater than himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEinstein called that \u2018a spirit manifested in the laws of the universe,\u2019 a spirit in the face of which we must be humble because we know it\u2019s so much larger than we are. And our role, he said, is to somehow touch that spirit \u2026 and get us a step closer to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson described how Einstein scribbled down nine pages of equations as he lay on his deathbed. Finally, the handwriting trailed off to the edge of the page, \u201cas he was just writing one last line of the equations that he thought would get him \u2014 but also the rest of us, because he wasn\u2019t going to be here \u2014 one step closer to that spirit. \u2026 That\u2019s what the history of science teaches us. That\u2019s so important, especially nowadays when we live in a world in which it would be helpful to be reminded every step of the way that we are part of something so much larger and more beautiful than ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson said his next book, devoted to the notion of what he called collaborative creativity, will focus on a group of people who helped to usher in the digital age and together created the computer. Teams of engineers, theoretical physicists, mathematicians, mechanics, and material scientists conducted the pioneering work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat notion of all these people being thrown together is, to me, the essence of true creativity, especially in the sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who is also a member of Harvard\u2019s Board of Overseers, praised the University for embracing that spirit of collective creativity and for supporting efforts like undergraduate work in teams, cross-disciplinary research, and networked and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.<\/p>\n<p>The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat may not be good for biographers,\u201d he added, \u201cbut it will be good for the study of history, it will be good for science, and it will be really good for Harvard students.\u201d<\/p>\n","innerContent":["\n\t\t<p>In the spring of 1974, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspeninstitute.org\/about\/about-walter-isaacson\">Walter Isaacson<\/a> sat in Harvard\u2019s Memorial Church and listened to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes offer graduating seniors his parting words of wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>The address, recalled Isaacson, a history and literature concentrator and now a best-selling biographer, was titled \u201cWhat We Forgot to Tell You.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not all about you,\u201d Gomes told the students, Isaacson recalled. \u201cIn the end, you are going to figure out it\u2019s about being part of something larger than yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That understanding that they were part of a wider world was paramount for three famous men about whom Isaacson went on to write books: founding father Benjamin Franklin, physicist Albert Einstein, and, most recently, Apple guru Steve Jobs. On Monday at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Isaacson explored the genius of the three transformative men, unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. Isaacson\u2019s talk, the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, was sponsored by Harvard\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.harvard.edu\/~hsdept\/\">Department of the History of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, when Jobs finally knew he wasn\u2019t going to beat the pancreatic cancer he had suffered with for years, Jobs told Isaacson he had come to realize that history, the history of creativity, the history of technology, is like a river from which you can take things. But in the end, what\u2019s most important, Jobs said, \u201cis what you put back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Jobs gave back to the world was a revolutionary new way to engage with it: sleek personal computers, phones, and media players that made music, photos, and the Internet available with the touch of a finger. Jobs\u2019 genius, said Isaacson, lay in his meticulous eye, his passion for perfection, and his abiding belief that beauty and technology weren\u2019t mutually exclusive, but inherently intertwined.<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who also heads the Aspen Institute, conducted close to 50 interviews with Jobs over two years, and spoke with both the entrepreneur\u2019s devotees and detractors for his book. He heard how Jobs convinced his company to delay the release of Apple\u2019s Macintosh personal computer so the employees could rework its circuit board, a concealed part that users would never lay eyes on. The fault, Jobs said, was that \u201cit wasn\u2019t beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it came time to sheath the iPhone, Jobs didn\u2019t want plastic, he wanted a smooth, silky, strong, and scratch-resistant glass. After an exhaustive search, he enlisted Corning to make its famed Gorilla Glass, which until then had existed only as a concept and a formula.<\/p>\n<p>Jobs, said Isaacson, was the \u201cAmerican creation myth writ large, somebody who had created a company in his parents\u2019 garage in a middle-class suburb with a chubby kid from down the street, and transformed it into the most valuable company in the history of the world; and he did it by believing beauty and design matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In search of that beauty, Jobs endlessly frustrated his employees, but he also drove them to \u201cdo things they never realized that they were able to do,\u201d added Isaacson.<\/p>\n<p>While exploring Henry Kissinger\u2019s adherence to realpolitik for a 1992 biography about the former secretary of state, Isaacson said he began to look for the roots of realism in American foreign policy and \u201cstumbled across Benjamin Franklin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Franklin, renowned in part for his groundbreaking work on electricity, possessed an insatiable curiosity, an \u201cintuitive feel for the spirit and the laws of the universe,\u201d and a joy in the beauty of science, but he also possessed something else: an appreciation of the \u201cutility of science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Similar to Jobs, Franklin wanted to find ways to put his discoveries to use to help better the world, Isaacson said. But Franklin, in addition to shaping the course of history with his science experiments, helped to change the world in his capacity as a skilled and savvy statesman, relying on his grounding in scientific method to bridge political divides. Isaacson explained Franklin\u2019s thinking in \u201cBenjamin Franklin: An American Life\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realized that at the root of Franklin\u2019s creativity and this notion of balance,\u201d said Isaacson, \u201cwas an appreciation of science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was because, whenever there was a dispute in the colonial period that he was involved in,\u201d he added, \u201cFranklin would say, \u2018Let\u2019s look at the evidence, let\u2019s be driven by the facts.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another great man obsessed by empirical evidence was Albert Einstein, the subject of Isaacson\u2019s biography \u201cEinstein: His Life and Universe\u201d (2007).<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson wanted to make Einstein accessible to the public and convey not just his brilliance, \u201cbut the beauty of his creativity.\u201d Isaacson said that beauty manifested itself in Einstein\u2019s \u201cvisual thought experiments,\u201d his ability to visualize complicated concepts. Those vivid images \u201cwould make him the greatest scientist of his century,\u201d said Isaacson, particularly when he \u201ctried to picture what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A version of that image ultimately led the German-born theoretical physicist, at the time a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office tasked with reviewing patent applications for methods to synchronize the country\u2019s clocks, to a groundbreaking analysis of the concept of time.<\/p>\n<p>Einstein thought \u201cif you are traveling really, really fast toward one of the clocks, what seems simultaneous to you will not be simultaneous to somebody who is traveling really, really fast to the other clock in the other direction. What Einstein figures out \u2026 is that, yes, the speed of light is always constant, but time is relative depending on your state of motion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s just these visual thought experiments of the imagination,\u201d Isaacson said, \u201cthat lead to these great theories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Einstein, like Jobs and Franklin, knew his work would do more than merely satisfy his own curiosity. He also understood that he was part of something greater than himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEinstein called that \u2018a spirit manifested in the laws of the universe,\u2019 a spirit in the face of which we must be humble because we know it\u2019s so much larger than we are. And our role, he said, is to somehow touch that spirit \u2026 and get us a step closer to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson described how Einstein scribbled down nine pages of equations as he lay on his deathbed. Finally, the handwriting trailed off to the edge of the page, \u201cas he was just writing one last line of the equations that he thought would get him \u2014 but also the rest of us, because he wasn\u2019t going to be here \u2014 one step closer to that spirit. \u2026 That\u2019s what the history of science teaches us. That\u2019s so important, especially nowadays when we live in a world in which it would be helpful to be reminded every step of the way that we are part of something so much larger and more beautiful than ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson said his next book, devoted to the notion of what he called collaborative creativity, will focus on a group of people who helped to usher in the digital age and together created the computer. Teams of engineers, theoretical physicists, mathematicians, mechanics, and material scientists conducted the pioneering work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat notion of all these people being thrown together is, to me, the essence of true creativity, especially in the sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who is also a member of Harvard\u2019s Board of Overseers, praised the University for embracing that spirit of collective creativity and for supporting efforts like undergraduate work in teams, cross-disciplinary research, and networked and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.<\/p>\n<p>The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat may not be good for biographers,\u201d he added, \u201cbut it will be good for the study of history, it will be good for science, and it will be really good for Harvard students.\u201d<\/p>\n"],"rendered":"\n\t\t<p>In the spring of 1974, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspeninstitute.org\/about\/about-walter-isaacson\">Walter Isaacson<\/a> sat in Harvard\u2019s Memorial Church and listened to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes offer graduating seniors his parting words of wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>The address, recalled Isaacson, a history and literature concentrator and now a best-selling biographer, was titled \u201cWhat We Forgot to Tell You.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not all about you,\u201d Gomes told the students, Isaacson recalled. \u201cIn the end, you are going to figure out it\u2019s about being part of something larger than yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That understanding that they were part of a wider world was paramount for three famous men about whom Isaacson went on to write books: founding father Benjamin Franklin, physicist Albert Einstein, and, most recently, Apple guru Steve Jobs. On Monday at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Isaacson explored the genius of the three transformative men, unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. Isaacson\u2019s talk, the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, was sponsored by Harvard\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.harvard.edu\/~hsdept\/\">Department of the History of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, when Jobs finally knew he wasn\u2019t going to beat the pancreatic cancer he had suffered with for years, Jobs told Isaacson he had come to realize that history, the history of creativity, the history of technology, is like a river from which you can take things. But in the end, what\u2019s most important, Jobs said, \u201cis what you put back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Jobs gave back to the world was a revolutionary new way to engage with it: sleek personal computers, phones, and media players that made music, photos, and the Internet available with the touch of a finger. Jobs\u2019 genius, said Isaacson, lay in his meticulous eye, his passion for perfection, and his abiding belief that beauty and technology weren\u2019t mutually exclusive, but inherently intertwined.<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who also heads the Aspen Institute, conducted close to 50 interviews with Jobs over two years, and spoke with both the entrepreneur\u2019s devotees and detractors for his book. He heard how Jobs convinced his company to delay the release of Apple\u2019s Macintosh personal computer so the employees could rework its circuit board, a concealed part that users would never lay eyes on. The fault, Jobs said, was that \u201cit wasn\u2019t beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it came time to sheath the iPhone, Jobs didn\u2019t want plastic, he wanted a smooth, silky, strong, and scratch-resistant glass. After an exhaustive search, he enlisted Corning to make its famed Gorilla Glass, which until then had existed only as a concept and a formula.<\/p>\n<p>Jobs, said Isaacson, was the \u201cAmerican creation myth writ large, somebody who had created a company in his parents\u2019 garage in a middle-class suburb with a chubby kid from down the street, and transformed it into the most valuable company in the history of the world; and he did it by believing beauty and design matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In search of that beauty, Jobs endlessly frustrated his employees, but he also drove them to \u201cdo things they never realized that they were able to do,\u201d added Isaacson.<\/p>\n<p>While exploring Henry Kissinger\u2019s adherence to realpolitik for a 1992 biography about the former secretary of state, Isaacson said he began to look for the roots of realism in American foreign policy and \u201cstumbled across Benjamin Franklin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Franklin, renowned in part for his groundbreaking work on electricity, possessed an insatiable curiosity, an \u201cintuitive feel for the spirit and the laws of the universe,\u201d and a joy in the beauty of science, but he also possessed something else: an appreciation of the \u201cutility of science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Similar to Jobs, Franklin wanted to find ways to put his discoveries to use to help better the world, Isaacson said. But Franklin, in addition to shaping the course of history with his science experiments, helped to change the world in his capacity as a skilled and savvy statesman, relying on his grounding in scientific method to bridge political divides. Isaacson explained Franklin\u2019s thinking in \u201cBenjamin Franklin: An American Life\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realized that at the root of Franklin\u2019s creativity and this notion of balance,\u201d said Isaacson, \u201cwas an appreciation of science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was because, whenever there was a dispute in the colonial period that he was involved in,\u201d he added, \u201cFranklin would say, \u2018Let\u2019s look at the evidence, let\u2019s be driven by the facts.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another great man obsessed by empirical evidence was Albert Einstein, the subject of Isaacson\u2019s biography \u201cEinstein: His Life and Universe\u201d (2007).<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson wanted to make Einstein accessible to the public and convey not just his brilliance, \u201cbut the beauty of his creativity.\u201d Isaacson said that beauty manifested itself in Einstein\u2019s \u201cvisual thought experiments,\u201d his ability to visualize complicated concepts. Those vivid images \u201cwould make him the greatest scientist of his century,\u201d said Isaacson, particularly when he \u201ctried to picture what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A version of that image ultimately led the German-born theoretical physicist, at the time a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office tasked with reviewing patent applications for methods to synchronize the country\u2019s clocks, to a groundbreaking analysis of the concept of time.<\/p>\n<p>Einstein thought \u201cif you are traveling really, really fast toward one of the clocks, what seems simultaneous to you will not be simultaneous to somebody who is traveling really, really fast to the other clock in the other direction. What Einstein figures out \u2026 is that, yes, the speed of light is always constant, but time is relative depending on your state of motion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s just these visual thought experiments of the imagination,\u201d Isaacson said, \u201cthat lead to these great theories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Einstein, like Jobs and Franklin, knew his work would do more than merely satisfy his own curiosity. He also understood that he was part of something greater than himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEinstein called that \u2018a spirit manifested in the laws of the universe,\u2019 a spirit in the face of which we must be humble because we know it\u2019s so much larger than we are. And our role, he said, is to somehow touch that spirit \u2026 and get us a step closer to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson described how Einstein scribbled down nine pages of equations as he lay on his deathbed. Finally, the handwriting trailed off to the edge of the page, \u201cas he was just writing one last line of the equations that he thought would get him \u2014 but also the rest of us, because he wasn\u2019t going to be here \u2014 one step closer to that spirit. \u2026 That\u2019s what the history of science teaches us. That\u2019s so important, especially nowadays when we live in a world in which it would be helpful to be reminded every step of the way that we are part of something so much larger and more beautiful than ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson said his next book, devoted to the notion of what he called collaborative creativity, will focus on a group of people who helped to usher in the digital age and together created the computer. Teams of engineers, theoretical physicists, mathematicians, mechanics, and material scientists conducted the pioneering work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat notion of all these people being thrown together is, to me, the essence of true creativity, especially in the sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who is also a member of Harvard\u2019s Board of Overseers, praised the University for embracing that spirit of collective creativity and for supporting efforts like undergraduate work in teams, cross-disciplinary research, and networked and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.<\/p>\n<p>The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat may not be good for biographers,\u201d he added, \u201cbut it will be good for the study of history, it will be good for science, and it will be really good for Harvard students.\u201d<\/p>\n"}],"innerHTML":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n","innerContent":["\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n","\n\n<\/div>\n"],"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide has-global-padding is-content-justification-center is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n\n\t\t<p>In the spring of 1974, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspeninstitute.org\/about\/about-walter-isaacson\">Walter Isaacson<\/a> sat in Harvard\u2019s Memorial Church and listened to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes offer graduating seniors his parting words of wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>The address, recalled Isaacson, a history and literature concentrator and now a best-selling biographer, was titled \u201cWhat We Forgot to Tell You.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not all about you,\u201d Gomes told the students, Isaacson recalled. \u201cIn the end, you are going to figure out it\u2019s about being part of something larger than yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That understanding that they were part of a wider world was paramount for three famous men about whom Isaacson went on to write books: founding father Benjamin Franklin, physicist Albert Einstein, and, most recently, Apple guru Steve Jobs. On Monday at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Isaacson explored the genius of the three transformative men, unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. Isaacson\u2019s talk, the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, was sponsored by Harvard\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.harvard.edu\/~hsdept\/\">Department of the History of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, when Jobs finally knew he wasn\u2019t going to beat the pancreatic cancer he had suffered with for years, Jobs told Isaacson he had come to realize that history, the history of creativity, the history of technology, is like a river from which you can take things. But in the end, what\u2019s most important, Jobs said, \u201cis what you put back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Jobs gave back to the world was a revolutionary new way to engage with it: sleek personal computers, phones, and media players that made music, photos, and the Internet available with the touch of a finger. Jobs\u2019 genius, said Isaacson, lay in his meticulous eye, his passion for perfection, and his abiding belief that beauty and technology weren\u2019t mutually exclusive, but inherently intertwined.<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who also heads the Aspen Institute, conducted close to 50 interviews with Jobs over two years, and spoke with both the entrepreneur\u2019s devotees and detractors for his book. He heard how Jobs convinced his company to delay the release of Apple\u2019s Macintosh personal computer so the employees could rework its circuit board, a concealed part that users would never lay eyes on. The fault, Jobs said, was that \u201cit wasn\u2019t beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it came time to sheath the iPhone, Jobs didn\u2019t want plastic, he wanted a smooth, silky, strong, and scratch-resistant glass. After an exhaustive search, he enlisted Corning to make its famed Gorilla Glass, which until then had existed only as a concept and a formula.<\/p>\n<p>Jobs, said Isaacson, was the \u201cAmerican creation myth writ large, somebody who had created a company in his parents\u2019 garage in a middle-class suburb with a chubby kid from down the street, and transformed it into the most valuable company in the history of the world; and he did it by believing beauty and design matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In search of that beauty, Jobs endlessly frustrated his employees, but he also drove them to \u201cdo things they never realized that they were able to do,\u201d added Isaacson.<\/p>\n<p>While exploring Henry Kissinger\u2019s adherence to realpolitik for a 1992 biography about the former secretary of state, Isaacson said he began to look for the roots of realism in American foreign policy and \u201cstumbled across Benjamin Franklin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Franklin, renowned in part for his groundbreaking work on electricity, possessed an insatiable curiosity, an \u201cintuitive feel for the spirit and the laws of the universe,\u201d and a joy in the beauty of science, but he also possessed something else: an appreciation of the \u201cutility of science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Similar to Jobs, Franklin wanted to find ways to put his discoveries to use to help better the world, Isaacson said. But Franklin, in addition to shaping the course of history with his science experiments, helped to change the world in his capacity as a skilled and savvy statesman, relying on his grounding in scientific method to bridge political divides. Isaacson explained Franklin\u2019s thinking in \u201cBenjamin Franklin: An American Life\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realized that at the root of Franklin\u2019s creativity and this notion of balance,\u201d said Isaacson, \u201cwas an appreciation of science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was because, whenever there was a dispute in the colonial period that he was involved in,\u201d he added, \u201cFranklin would say, \u2018Let\u2019s look at the evidence, let\u2019s be driven by the facts.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another great man obsessed by empirical evidence was Albert Einstein, the subject of Isaacson\u2019s biography \u201cEinstein: His Life and Universe\u201d (2007).<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson wanted to make Einstein accessible to the public and convey not just his brilliance, \u201cbut the beauty of his creativity.\u201d Isaacson said that beauty manifested itself in Einstein\u2019s \u201cvisual thought experiments,\u201d his ability to visualize complicated concepts. Those vivid images \u201cwould make him the greatest scientist of his century,\u201d said Isaacson, particularly when he \u201ctried to picture what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A version of that image ultimately led the German-born theoretical physicist, at the time a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office tasked with reviewing patent applications for methods to synchronize the country\u2019s clocks, to a groundbreaking analysis of the concept of time.<\/p>\n<p>Einstein thought \u201cif you are traveling really, really fast toward one of the clocks, what seems simultaneous to you will not be simultaneous to somebody who is traveling really, really fast to the other clock in the other direction. What Einstein figures out \u2026 is that, yes, the speed of light is always constant, but time is relative depending on your state of motion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s just these visual thought experiments of the imagination,\u201d Isaacson said, \u201cthat lead to these great theories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Einstein, like Jobs and Franklin, knew his work would do more than merely satisfy his own curiosity. He also understood that he was part of something greater than himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEinstein called that \u2018a spirit manifested in the laws of the universe,\u2019 a spirit in the face of which we must be humble because we know it\u2019s so much larger than we are. And our role, he said, is to somehow touch that spirit \u2026 and get us a step closer to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson described how Einstein scribbled down nine pages of equations as he lay on his deathbed. Finally, the handwriting trailed off to the edge of the page, \u201cas he was just writing one last line of the equations that he thought would get him \u2014 but also the rest of us, because he wasn\u2019t going to be here \u2014 one step closer to that spirit. \u2026 That\u2019s what the history of science teaches us. That\u2019s so important, especially nowadays when we live in a world in which it would be helpful to be reminded every step of the way that we are part of something so much larger and more beautiful than ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson said his next book, devoted to the notion of what he called collaborative creativity, will focus on a group of people who helped to usher in the digital age and together created the computer. Teams of engineers, theoretical physicists, mathematicians, mechanics, and material scientists conducted the pioneering work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat notion of all these people being thrown together is, to me, the essence of true creativity, especially in the sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Isaacson, who is also a member of Harvard\u2019s Board of Overseers, praised the University for embracing that spirit of collective creativity and for supporting efforts like undergraduate work in teams, cross-disciplinary research, and networked and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.<\/p>\n<p>The history of science in the 21st century will likely be dominated not by \u201clone geniuses,\u201d said Isaacson, but by collaboration and by \u201ccollective, applied imagineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat may not be good for biographers,\u201d he added, \u201cbut it will be good for the study of history, it will be good for science, and it will be really good for Harvard students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n"}},"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133576,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/03\/isaacson-to-deliver-rothschild-lecture\/","url_meta":{"origin":134978,"position":0},"title":"Isaacson to deliver Rothschild Lecture","author":"harvardgazette","date":"March 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Best-selling author and journalist Walter Isaacson will present the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, \u201cThe Genius of Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin,\u201d on April 8 at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.","rel":"","context":"In "Arts & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Arts & Culture","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/arts-humanities\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/092212_gov_0806_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/092212_gov_0806_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, 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https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/040813_isaacson_119_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":139598,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/05\/challenging-eureka-with-rigor\/","url_meta":{"origin":134978,"position":2},"title":"Challenging \u2018eureka\u2019 with rigor","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Renowned British biographer Richard Holmes, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, reflected on what biography can tell us about science.","rel":"","context":"In "Arts & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Arts & Culture","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/arts-humanities\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/052113_holmes_046_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/052113_holmes_046_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/052113_holmes_046_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":232745,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2017\/11\/author-walter-isaacson-profiles-the-ultimate-renaissance-man-leonardo-da-vinci\/","url_meta":{"origin":134978,"position":3},"title":"The incomparable da Vinci","author":"gazettejohnbaglione","date":"November 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Author and Harvard alumnus Walter Isaacson takes on the ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci.","rel":"","context":"In "Arts & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Arts & Culture","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/arts-humanities\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/vitruvianman_19440876_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/vitruvianman_19440876_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/vitruvianman_19440876_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":48469,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2010\/05\/haa-announces-2010-board-of-overseers-election-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":134978,"position":4},"title":"HAA announces 2010 Board of Overseers election results","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The president of the Harvard Alumni Association today (May 27) announced the results of the annual election of new members of the Harvard Board of Overseers.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":164340,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2014\/12\/she-made-her-mark\/","url_meta":{"origin":134978,"position":5},"title":"She made her mark","author":"harvardgazette","date":"December 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Journalist Walter Isaacson and College students talk about the achievements and challenges for women in the field of computer science, including pioneer Grace Hopper.","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/120614_hopper_isaacson_126_605_3.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/120614_hopper_isaacson_126_605_3.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/120614_hopper_isaacson_126_605_3.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105622744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276041,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134978\/revisions\/276041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134978"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gazette-formats?post=134978"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=134978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}