What instruments, if any, did Einstein use in his work?
The most sophisticated instrument we have: a human brain. Also a pencil, paper, and trash can. I’m sure that if computers had been available, Einstein would have used them to help with calculations. Q: At the end of his life Einstein became isolated from the scientific community. Why? A: Einstein went into a kind of self-imposed intellectual exile, starting long before the end of his life. In his early middle age he developed some very strong intuitions – or, you could say, prejudices – about the sorts of things he should work on, and the sort of approach he should take, that were out of touch with the way physics was developing. He hoped to achieve a comprehensive unified field theory, something like a “Theory of Everything” in today’s idiom, by building up from the classical field theories of gravity (i.e., general relativity) and electromagnetism. Einstein didn’t like the way quantum theory developed after 1925, and he didn’t pay much attention to nuclear physics, as I already menti
