- When Einstein learned of the death of his old physicist friend Michele Besso, he wrote the Besso family: “He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.” http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/columns/michael-shermer/einstein%E2%80%99s-god 133 comments science