Abraham Pais
Abraham Pais (
May 19 1918 -
August 4 2000) was a
Dutch-born
physicist.
In 1946, Pais served as a personal assistant to
Niels Bohr at the Bohr's country home in Tisvilde. In
1956, he became a
naturalized citizen of the United States. His autobiography
A Tale of Two Continents (Princeton, 1997) refers to the 'esemplastic power of the imagination'.
Pais was perhaps best known for his
biography of
Albert Einstein,
Subtle is the Lord (Oxford, 1982), and its sequel,
Einstein Lived Here.
He also wrote a history of physics in the 20th century,
Inward Bound (Oxford, 1986), a biography of
Niels Bohr,
Niels Bohr's Times, In Physics, Philosophy and Polity (Oxford, 1991), and
The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (Oxford, 2000).