[5] Pais, renowned for his work in theoretical particle physics, was a friend of Einstein's at the Institute for Advanced Study in his early career.

[10] The Quantum Theory portion of the book was previously published, in similar form, in a 1979 article Pais coauthored in Reviews of Modern Physics.

The quote is inscribed in stone at Princeton University, where Einstein made the statement during a 1921 visit to deliver the lectures that would later be published as The Meaning of Relativity.

[9][13] Though there were several well-known biographies of Einstein prior to the book's publication, this was the first which focused on his scientific research, as opposed to his life as a popular figure.

The book received critical acclaim upon its initial release and was subsequently translated into fifteen languages, establishing Pais as an internationally renowned scholar in the subject.

[6] There were many reviews of the book, including articles published in magazines including Scientific American,[10] The Christian Science Monitor,[19] and The New York Review of Books,[16] as well as newspaper articles published in The New York Times,[5] The Los Angeles Times,[20] The Leader-Post,[21] The Observer,[17] The Age,[22] The Philadelphia Inquirer,[23] The Santa Cruz Sentinel,[13] and The Arizona Republic.

[9] He closed the review by saying the book would "serve not only as a source of profound insight and pleasure to many readers but as a further spur to the current renaissance of Einstein studies".

"[5] Another newspaper review, by Peter Mason stated that the book blending of a popular biography into a technical account of Einstein's scientific work was "so skillfully done that the flavor of the complicated arguments can generally be savored by those with little mathematical background.

[11] Redhead noted one "significant omission", relating to Erich Kretschmann's critique of universal covariance, but went on to close the review by writing "I wholeheartedly recommend anyone interested in the history of modern physics to read Pais's extraordinarily able book".

[33] Among other 1984 reviews,[34][35] one stated that it was a "monumental biography" and that it "does full justice to the title, the Science and the Life of Einstein" that was written with "tremendous erudition and sensibility".

[9] In reference to the biography sections, he went on to state that "[t]he only issue on which I would seriously disagree is his effort to play down or even deny the rebellious element in Einstein's personality.

[9] In a critical 1984 review, Paul Forman wrote that much of the information in the biography sections of the book was previously unpublished and that Pais gave a better account of Einstein's childhood than had previously been available, but that by "allotting so little space to so large a life, Pais perforce omits far more than he includes, and these few pages, dense with ill-considered detail, fail to convey any sense of the man and his situation".

[18] He went on to note that the book does not include any details on Einstein's experimental and technological designs, outside of a single recount of a 1915 experiment with Wander Johannes de Haas.

In that book, Whittaker claimed that Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz developed the theory of special relativity before Albert Einstein.

[38] In a chapter titled "the edge of history", Pais stated that Whittaker's treatment shows "how well the author's lack of physical insight matches his ignorance of the literature".

[39] One reviewer wrote, in agreement with the statement, that "Pais correctly dismisses" Whittaker's point of view in the "controversy concerning priority" with an "apt sentence".

[36] Another reviewer, William Hunter McCrea in 1983, stated that the dismissal was put "in terms that can only be called scurrilous" and that "[t]o one who knew Whittaker and his regard for historical accuracy the opinion is lamentable.

[9][5][30] The contested assertions included Pais' claim that the Michelson–Morley experiment did not play a major role in Einstein's development of the special theory as evidence for the charge.

[9][5] Noting the potential controversies, Timothy Ferris wrote that Pais "is less to be blamed for having reached arguable conclusions in matters of intense scholarly debate than praised for having had the grit to confront them.

"[5] In his 1982 review, John Stachel criticized the book for not discussing the Fizeau experiment and for using an archaic explanation of the twin paradox of special relativity.

[29] The New York Times listed the volume as one of its "Notable Books of the Year" in 1982 with a caption that read: "The first biography to emphasize the physicist's scientific research rather than his life is 'splendid,' if 'written in a rigorous vocabulary.