When the question arose as how best to celebrate Einstein’s centenary, Calder answered: ‘Let’s make relativity plain.’ Forthwith, the celebrated author further responded by writing this very entertaining book -- requiring the direct consultation of some seventy physicists and astronomers in thirty institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.
 
Calder credits Albert Einstein as one who revolutionized concepts of space, time and motion, and who rewrote the theory of gravity: Calder also notes the landmarks of Einstein’s work to be Special Relativity (1905), dealing with high-speed motion, and General Relativity (1915), dealing with gravity. Subsequent investigation has shown we actually live in a universe very much like the one Einstein described, and investigators have confirmed and developed many of the ideas latent in his equations. Thus, Calder embarks on a journey through the mind, theory, and written evidence of one who could envision the relation between mass, energy, and light.
 
In 1932, two scientists split a Lithium atom by firing a Hydrogen proton at almost the speed of light; they proved Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity. In the Cambridge atom-splitting experiment, flying helium fragments together possessed, for a moment at least, exactly the same mass as the combined mass of the particles producing them. But while an infinitesimal mass was lost in the translation of measurable mass, such was changed into an energy essence. Thus, Calder honors the genius in Einstein ruminations. Intuitively, Einstein’s braininess visualized mass to possess energy, and therefore energy must have equivalence in mass. His all-encompassing E = mc2 formula permitted no loss of matter. He proposed ‘nature to keep strict accounts of energy and the total energy in the universe never changes; it can only be shuffled about.
 
In a masterstroke, Einstein deduced light to have mass; he estimated the solar fallout on earth to be about 160 tons of sunlight every day. Though this tonnage constitutes only a minute loss of Sun mass when compared with the whole, these light particles absorb into Earth mass. With this realization, we can understand fundamental energy sources to be those associated with cosmic forces: electromagnetism manifested in light, chemical reactions, living processes, sub-atomic forces responsible for nuclear reactions, and gravity.
 
From the foregoing, we can deduce 3.504 x 1014 tons or 350.4 trillion tons added to Earth’s mass since the latest estimate of primitive man’s presence at 6,000,000 B.C.
 
General Relativity deals with concepts of gravity. According to Calder’s definition of Einstein’s theory, mankind is gravitationally attracted in a more complex manner than is generally perceived, much like water climbing the sides of its container in a centrifuge: therefore, the experienced pressure on the sole of man’s feet due to Earth’s momentum. As an example, whether free-falling from a tall building or speeding in a space ship, we attain weightlessness; therein, one cannot feel gravity, but only its effect when in contact with mass motion. Too, the great one predicted ‘gravity slows down time.’ Clocks at Sun or Earth surface run less energetically than clocks further out in space, in successive shells of influence like the electron shells around an atom core. Thus, he envisioned light speed to furnish a fundamental connection between time and space: ‘as a massive body distorts time and space around it, those distortions guide movement of other objects in its vicinity. He perceived gravity to be a peculiarity of space, not of individual items in it.”
 
Surely, mass gravity is evidenced in the proclivity of electrons circling the atom core, of the Moon circling Earth, of Earth and component circling the Sun, and the Solar system traveling an invisible track -- hurtling along at 175 miles per second (630,000 m.p.h.) -- thus is it captured by a galaxy whose entire body also travels an invisible track through the Universe -- all subject to the law of particle behavior. Gravity is said to rule the universe; subject to this observation, solar bodies are greatly defined in convenient tracks through space and time.
 
Inherent in Einstein’s law of gravity is the ‘black hole’ existence now popular in astrophysics discussion. We can only briefly touch on the far-reaching influence of Einsteinian ruminations and his impact on physical science: his comparison of ‘g’ forces in a rushing space vehicle with objects responding to a rushing Earth; the relation between time and speed; bending of space and light; presence of mass in light.
 
Calder encapsulates the genius of Einstein with: “For him it was a matter of intuition; for modern physics and astronomy it is bedrock.”

​Suspended between fantasy and realism in real life and steeped in Qur’anic teachings,  protagonists in Rushdie’s book live a life of misadventure, faith, disavowal, dissipation, and tragedy. Caught in the gossamer of three cultures, Gibreel Farishta and Salahuddin Chamcha become enmeshed in a web not yielding to reason or logic, nor to entreaty, nor to pressure from those cultures at odds with conscience, nor to the rebellion instilled at pubescence.
 
The author suspends readers between idealist illusion and tangibility, a universe of nightmares, hung between secular ethos and religious ethics, both intertwined with Western sophistication; where, Islamic faith is contested by skepticism aroused in an awakening to tenet banality.
           
Successful thespians, both steeped in Indian culture and invested with Islamic religiosity, our protagonist duo board a flight in India, destined for England, eagerly anticipating the life promised in protean dissolution; notwithstanding, character dissipation entailed only a translation from brown-skinned to white-skinned perversions. Inopportunely redirected in mid-flight, their England destination is postponed by plane hijackers who take the passengers on a harrowing adventure, culminated when hijackers explode a body-bomb at high altitude. The plane disintegrates and dumps survivors into the English Channel; which Channel water miraculously coughs the actors ashore, the only survivors and never to be the same. Thereafter parted, except for brief interludes, Gibreel and Salahuddin pursue an existence half in actuality and half in fantasy. The reader is often taxed to discover which quintessence the protagonists perceive themselves: certainty or delusion.
 
Gibreel assumes angel-Gabriel identity; thusly spiritualized, he can recall Mahound’s unwholesome enterprise, along with fearsome ambience in Jahilia (Mecca): Hagar and Ishmael at the spring, Mohammed’s cave, scribes editing Mohammed utterances, the dust, richness, poverty, Kaa’ba, brothels, fairs, cruelty; it is all there in suffocating repression, exhilaration, subservience, fear, destitution, prostitution, polygamy, lust, Idolatry, monotheism, and devotion to the different god and goddess creations. Half in and half out of materiality, we intercept Gibreel’s nemesis: “<I>. . . his archangelic other self began to seem as tangible as the shifting realities he inhabits while he’s awake . . . . that he truly was nothing less than an archangel in human form, and not just any archangel, but the Angel of the Recitation, the most exalted (now that Shaitan had fallen) of them all</i>.” And Rushdie’s tribute to Mohammed’s intercourse with Gabriel, thus the bounty on his head, evolving into a quotidian reference to Mohammed’s personal habits and business expertise – this, then, the idea that destroyed his faith. Here, he refers to Mohammed’s materialistic disposition and preoccupation with profit and pleasure.
 
Dichotomous to Gibreel characterization, Saladin metamorphoses into a Satyr-like creature, hairy of limb, pseudo-hoofed, erotically disposed, and embarrassingly horned. Which metamorphosed monstrosity encapsulated United States lifestyle in prosaic disapproval, with the observation: ‘O Proper London! Truly, dull would be the soul who did not prefer the faded splendors and hot certainties of a transatlantic New Rome, with its Nazified architectural gigantism, and which employs sizable oppressions to make its human occupants feel like worms.  Reunited with Gibreel, after misadventures in their respective worlds of schizophrenic transposition, Saladin is dragged into the night; he feels the return of hatred as it fills him bottom-to-top with fresh green bile.’ Thus, diametrically opposed in psychological impression, the two become differentiated in developed existentialisms. And at last, in the window of childhood, looking out to the Arabian Sea, they contemplate the complexities of life and attraction of death.
 
Tragically, life reaps its due harvest from the emptiness accumulated, from vocation permissiveness, from Islam induced schizophrenia and cultural disenfranchisement; the duo, who left India with such high hopes, find themselves reunited in genesis roots, to entropy, to a confrontation with life and death, and to a shrunken universe.
 
Idealism and reality butt heads as Rushdie’s protagonists escape a world of poverty and metaphysical dependency and compromise lifelong indoctrination with the realities of capitalism and indifference to their former draconian existentialism.

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​According to Rosalind Franklin’s great-grandfather, she was descended from David, King of Israel, 945 B.C. Born in 1920, Franklin ascended to renown on the mid-twentieth century world scene. Biographically accredited by noted writer Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin was the real brain behind DNA structure discovery.
 
A foremost crystallographer, Rosalind originally photographed a strand of DNA, after many attempts, leading to the prestigious Nobel Prize awarded to Crick and Watson. Needless to say, they could not have succeeded without her contribution; and needless to say, they neglected to mention her contribution in their paper submission and physical model of deoxyribonucleic acid.
 
A precocious child, Rosalind never relented in the quest for knowledge and advancement beyond her peers. Always, she strived to excel in academia, in science, and in industry, and received top marks in all academic courses and scientific enterprises. Though a very handsome woman, her quest for excellence left little time for romantic bonds with the many men associated in scientific circles. While she met an impressive array of intellectuals and those with scientific (and romantic) bent, she did not marry and died alone at a young, aged 37. Many men wept at her demise, recognizing the hardships endured, the lack of recognition, and the short-lived life of an attractive and exceedingly brilliant Hebrew woman, mathematician, crystallographer, and biochemist. She advanced to excellence despite open anti-Semitism and opposition to authoritative women: growing up in a time when women were not allowed to vote, to occupy assertive positions, or to do little but brood children and housekeep.
 
Fluent in French as well as her native English, she developed intense interest in an end to the British Mandate and Israel reinstatement to sovereignty in Palestine and was incensed by French news coverage of the transition. In correspondence with her father about an article contained in <u>The Economist</u>, she demanded, “<i>Who is responsible for the article: There can now be no settlement of Palestine of any kind but force</i>.” Despite her loyalty, she was out of touch with the Middle Eastern mindset and Arab resentment to anything non-Islam; prophetically, the French article was entirely correct. Sixty years later, the Arab world continues its jihad against infidels.
 
Notwithstanding her optimism, Rosalind’s interest and expertise lay not so much in metaphysics as in physics. Well she might direct interest to the tangible; for, the intangible monotheism, as subsequently proven, cannot concurrently harmonize within the disciplines advanced among its three constituent branches. For, Judaism must condemn the Christian-Islam adoption; Christianity must condemn the Judaism-Islamic neglect to Messianic recognition; and Islam must condemn the Judeo-Christian ethics and ethos. But Rosalind was more interested in Atomic propensity and not in warring Gnostic proclivities.
 
When Rosalind Franklin arrived to King’s College in 1951, at age 31, she arrived on the heels of Schrodinger’s (prevailing enquiry at the time) question about: What Is Life? And his answer was: ‘life is animation of the inanimate.’ Not especially profound but a touchstone of the times.
 
In particle physics’ developing years, Einstein, Bohr, (and many others) lent their expertise via relativity and quantum mechanics, lending advancement to molecular science and the biochemistry industry. Forthwith, geneticists discovered twenty different protein molecules present in living things. Further, they found four proteins only to occur in DNA sequences, in varying combinations called nucleotides: two purines (adenine and guanine) and two pyrimidines (thymine and cytosine). We might produce a more clear composite should we say each of the four nucleotides contain a sugar, phosphate, and base; and we might add, these nucleotides direct every aspect of DNA (bodily) function. We give cytosine’s atomic structure as an example of constituent simplicity: C4H5N3O (the other three have C5 and variant other elements).
 
Great advances were known when Rosalind Franklin arrived to King’s College. In the 40’s, ‘atomic fission’ and ‘hydrogen fusion’ had already been perfected. In 1944, Avery wrote a paper proving the genetic message carrier was DNA and not merely protein; in 1949, Chargaff determined the frequency and propensity of nucleotide repetition. On the heels of first-half century advancements, Rosalind spent long hours perfecting x-ray diffraction techniques -- exposing her body to inordinate amounts of radiation in the process. Thus, we know in retrospect, crystallography was her life and probable cause of her death. But through unequalled spectrographic technique, she extracted DNA imagery and enabled others to race against the clock and claim the coveted Nobel Prize. Among many of her scientific advances, Rosalind’s greatest single success was DNA imagery.
 
Brenda Maddox writes a tragic but deserving story of extraordinary intelligence, unflagging dedication, and perseverance. Rosalind Franklin was one in a million. I read this book almost straight through. I could not lay it aside. 

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