Walter Isaacson is the CEO of the Aspen Institute and the author of the New York Times bestselling biography, Einstein.

"I like writing about people with interesting minds," says Walter Isaacson. "I try to explore the various aspects of intelligence: common sense, wisdom, creativity, imagination, mental processing power, emotional understanding, and moral values. Which of these traits are the most important? How do they make someone an influential or significant or good person?"

The CEO of the Aspen Institute, a think tank for some of the world’s most accomplished minds, and the former head of Time magazine, Isaacson is the biographer of the most influential mind of the modern age: Albert Einstein (Einstein: His Life and Universe, Simon & Schuster). From his own early age Einstein was dismissive of authority but disarmed by the seemingly ordinary—a compass with a magnetic field, a moving train.

"A century after his great triumphs, we are still living in his universe," says Isaacson, who ticks off some of the breakthroughs that bear the mark of the rebellious kid whom one headmaster declared would never amount to anything: nuclear power, lasers, photoelectric cells, semiconductors, space travel, television.

The last is one invention that Isaacson eschews in his own, personal universe (a delightful irony for the man who is the former CEO of CNN). He opts instead for reading.

"Reading—unlike watching TV—allows things to stick in your mind. It stimulates rather than deadens the imagination. That’s why we’ve gotten rid of the TV in our house, and we read in the evenings."

Perhaps not surprisingly, given that Isaacson is also the author of biographies on Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, the breed of books he finds the most helpful in nurturing thought and creativity is the kind that he writes.

"I love biography. The best way to convey ideas and values is through the tales of people. That’s been true since the Bible."

In the case of Einstein the book, it’s Einstein the man’s creativity and imagination that make concepts such as the theory of relativity and the principle of uncertainty accessible to even the nonscientific reader, Isaacson says.

"Science should not be intimidating," says Isaacson, who studied history and literature at Harvard and philosophy, politics and economics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. "In this new century, we should all try to appreciate the methods and magic of science." Isaacson’s own magic for engendering creative thought is to practice that most Thoreauvian of arts: walking, especially on a beach.

Researching Einstein meant poring over the great mind’s notebooks. One of the last acts of Einstein’s before he died in 1955 was to make just a few more calculations in his notebook. Though more than a century has passed and a world has changed since Einstein published his theory of relativity in 1905, there still appears to be some constants. Asked how he records a new idea he has, Isaacson replies:

"I love taking notes on paper. I carry note cards around with me wherever I go."

Isaacson is a devout believer in Einstein’s famous maxim about imagination trumping knowledge in fostering creative thinking. There is also another Einsteinism that Isaacson lives by: "Life is like riding a bicycle. In order to keep your balance you must keep moving."

Don’t expect Walter Isaacson to stop pedaling anytime soon.