英语翻译
Einstein's parents sometimes took Albert to parties.No babysitter was required:Albert sat on the couch,totally absorbed,quietly doing math problems while others danced around him.Pencil and paper were Albert's GameBoy!
He had impressive powers of concentration.Einstein's sister,Maja,recalled "...even when there was a lot of noise,he could lie down on the sofa,pick up a pen and paper,precariously balance an inkwell on the backrest and engross himself in a problem so much that the background noise stimulated rather than disturbed him."
Einstein was clearly intelligent,but not outlandishly more so than his peers."I have no special talents," he claimed,"I am only passionately curious." And again:"The contrast between the popular assessment of my powers ...and the reality is simply grotesque." Einstein credited his discoveries to imagination and pesky questioning more so than orthodox intelligence.
Later in life,it should be remembered,he struggled mightily to produce a unified field theory,combining gravity with other forces of nature.He failed.Einstein's brainpower was not limitless.
Neither was Einstein's brain.It was removed without permission by Dr.Thomas Harvey in 1955 when Einstein died.He probably expected to find something extraordinary:Einstein's mother Pauline had famously worried that baby Einstein's head was lopsided.(Einstein's grandmother had a different concern:"Much too fat!") But Einstein's brain looked much like any other,gray,crinkly,and,if anything,a trifle smaller than average.
Detailed studies of Einstein's brain are few and recent.In 1985,for instance,Prof.Marian Diamond of UC Berkeley reported an above-average number of glial cells (which nourish neurons) in areas of the left hemisphere thought to control math skills.In 1999,neuroscientist Sandra Witelson reported that Einstein's inferior parietal lobe,an area related to mathematical reasoning,was 15 percent wider than normal.Furthermore,she found,the Slyvian fissure,a groove that normally extends from the front of the brain to the back,did not go all the way in Einstein's case.Might this have allowed greater connectivity among different parts of Einstein's brain?
No one knows.
Not knowing.It makes some researchers feel uncomfortable.It exhilarated Einstein:"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious," he said."It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
It's the fundamental emotion that Einstein felt,walking to work,awake with the baby,sitting at the dinner table.Wonder beat exhaustion,every day.