"This parallel biography of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso as young men focuses on their greatest achievements: Einstein's special theory of relativity and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the painting that brought art into the twentieth century. When they produced these astonishing breakthroughs, Einstein and Picasso were not the distinguished figures that later became so familiar: They were in their twenties, unknown, feisty, dirt-poor, and prone to getting into trouble.

For a while, Picasso even carried the playwright Alfred Jarry's pistol - loaded with blanks - with which he would shoot people who struck him as overly dull or earnest.".

"Einstein, Picasso is filled with revelations about how these young geniuses lived and worked. Picasso's discovery of cubism, while firmly grounded in artistic tradition, also partook liberally of the artist's everyday life and the intellectual milieu of turn-of-the-century Paris. The influences of photography, cinema, the cutting-edge science of the day, and the ideas of the philosopher-scientist Henri Poincare all make their appearance in Les Demoiselles.

Einstein, having so alienated his college teachers that none would recommend him for a university position, was forced to take a job in the Swiss Federal Patent Office. There he found himself immersed in technological problems. Two of these problems, having to do with the design of electric dynamos and the coordination of train schedules, played pivotal roles in the invention of relativity."--BOOK JACKET.