How can someone resist procrastinating when stumbling on an article like this? Dennis Overbye's profile of Xu Liangying, the foremost translator of Einstein's works in China, and a communist revolutionary turned dissident. From humble beginnings:
The love affair between Dr. Xu, who was born in Linhai, Zhejiang, in 1920, and Einstein began when Dr. Xu was in secondary school and read a collection of Einstein’s essays called “The World as I See It.” The book had as much politics as science. In one passage that the young Xu underlined, Einstein wrote: “The state is made for man, not man for the state. I regard the chief duty of the state to protect the individual and give him the opportunity to develop into a creative personality.”
Dr. Xu said, “I wanted to be such a person.”
Einstein's outlook on intellectual freedom developed into a source of political philosophy that got Xu into more trouble than not. Definitely worth a few wasted minutes at work.
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