hen I was 11 years old, I stood with my brother outside the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton waiting for Albert Einstein to come to work so that I could take his picture. My father, a professor of physics at the University of Helsinki, was spending a sabbatical at the Institute. There was Einstein, on the picture that still hangs in my office in Dresden, with his umbrella as always, even though the sun is shining.
I saw several famous physicists in our home in Helsinki. My dream was to become a physicist myself. But fortunately my father, a farmer’s son, was a practical man and when I asked him for advice concerning my career choice, he pointed out to me “Kai, I think you are not up to it. Why don’t you study medicine instead? Then you can do research and if you don’t like it, you at ...
