The 2013 Rothschild Lecture
“The Genius of Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin”
featuring Walter Isaacson
(Mr. Isaacson is introduced by Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor)
This event took place Monday, April 8, 2013.
Walter Isaacson is President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, past Chairman and CEO of CNN, former Managing Editor of TIME, and author of the recent biography Steve Jobs.
Recalling when Jobs approached him about writing a biography, Isaacson wrote, “I had recently published one on Benjamin Franklin and was writing one about Albert Einstein, and my initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” Reflecting later on what he learned during the process in an October 2011 New York Times opinion piece, he concluded that Jobs did share certain qualities with his other subjects—the elusive qualities that allowed them, in the words of Apple, Inc., to Think Different. “In the annals of ingenuity, new ideas are only part of the equation. Genius requires execution. When others produced boxy computers with intimidating interfaces that confronted users with unfriendly green prompts that said things like ‘C:\>,’ Mr. Jobs saw there was a market for an interface like a sunny playroom. Hence, the Macintosh.”
Download a press release and event poster.
Coverage of this event in The Harvard Gazette.
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