Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin
In the spring of 1974, Walter Isaacson sat in Harvard’s Memorial Church and listened to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes offer graduating seniors his parting words of wisdom. The address, recalled Isaacson, a history and literature concentrator and now a best-selling biographer, was titled “What We Forgot to Tell You.” “It’s not all about you,” Gomes told the students, Isaacson recalled. “In the end, you are going to figure out it’s about being part of something larger than yourself.” That understanding that they were part of a wider world was paramount for three famous men about whom Isaacson went on to write books: founding father Benjamin Franklin, physicist Albert Einstein, and, most recently, Apple guru Steve Jobs. On Monday at the Radcliffe Gymnasium, Isaacson explored the genius of the three transformative men, unraveling both their intellectual brilliance and their common desire to help change the world. Isaacson’s talk, the 2013 Maurine and...