Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the
small town of Ulm, in southern Germany, near the source of
Europe's longest river, the Danube. His parents, Hermann and
Pauline were Jewish.
Mr.Hermann |
Mrs.Pauline |
His father was an electrician who was interested
in electrical inventions. He was unsuccessful in his business,
and as soon as Albert was born.So Einstein's parents
moved from Ulm to Munich when Einstein was an infant.
As a child Einstein was very lonely and shy. He preferred to play
with himself in the parks and forests. According to
family legend he was a slow talker at first, pausing to consider
what he would say.
When he
was four and sick in bed, Albert Einstein’s father gave him a
magnetic compass. Albert practiced turning the compass every
which way, soon becoming fascinated by the new toy.
No matter which way he turned
it, the needle would always point in the same direction.The
compass profoundly impressed him. The compass convinced
him that there had to be "something behind things, something
deeply hidden.Altough he was a small boy, he was self-sufficient
and thoughtful.It may even be that,
Einstein’s genius and
fascination with nature pointed him toward a life of scientific
discovery.
Later
in his life as a kid, Einstein's uncle Jacob introduced him to
mathematics and specifically, equations
School
class photograph in Munich, 1890. Einstein is in the
front row, second from right. |
Einstein’s mother introduced him
to music, and he became a fine violinist. He also excelled
in mathematics; at 11 he studied Physics at the university
level. But he was an independent thinker and hated the
regimentation of the German school system. To Albert,
schools were like barracks and teachers like military
commanders. School was an unpleasant
experience for Einstein.He had discussions with teachers’.
The teachers weren't so happy about Einstein and once, one
of his teacher told him; "you know Einstein, you will never
amount to anything."
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The family business was the
manufacture of electrical apparatus; when the business failed
(1894), the family moved from Munich to Milan, Italy. At this
time Einstein decided officially to relinquish his German
citizenship. Within a year, still without having completed
secondary school.
When he was sixteen(1895) he renounced
his citizenship in order to avoid joining the German army, and
moved to Switzerland. He was advised to study at a Swiss
school to complete secondary school in Aarau. Here his teachers
were humane and his ideas were set free
From a
classroom essay Einstein wrote in French at the age of 16,
explaining why he would like to study theoretical mathematics or
physics:……..
Einstein's essay for the Aarau school,
written in French.
My plans for the future.
A happy man is too content with the present to think much
about the future. On the other hand it is young people above all
who like to occupy themselves with bold plans.... If I should
have the good fortune to pass my examinations, I would go to the
Zürich polytechnical school. I would stay there for four years
in order to study mathematics and physics. I see myself becoming
a teacher in these branches of the natural sciences, choosing
the theoretical part of these sciences.
Here are the reasons that led me to this plan. Above all
it is my individual disposition for abstract and mathematical
thought... And then there is a certain independence in the
scientific profession which greatly pleases me.
Einstein graduated from the
Aarau school and sought enrollment
to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
He took the entrance examination
but he did not pass the entrance exam
as a result of his poor French..
However, after a year of reading on his own, he passed the exam
and Einstein entered to the Institute of Technology in
Zurich(1896). Around this time he recognized that physics was
his true subject.
In Institute of Technology,
Einstein grew familiar with the successes of past scientists who
had tried to explain the world entirely through atoms or fluids,
interacting like parts of a machine. But he learned that
Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism was defying
efforts to reduce it to mechanical processes.
At the Zurich
Polytechnic had a romance between the handsome and witty would-be
science teacher and a young Serbian woman, Mileva Maric, the
only woman in Albert's physics class.
After
four years studying math and physics at the Institute of
Technology, he graduated as a secondary school teacher of
mathematics and physics(1900). In 1901, the year he gained his
diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship After Einstein graduated,
he made a number of efforts to get a university job, and failed.
He found only occasional jobs on the periphery of the academic
world.
The
patent office in Bern.
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Finally, in
1902, he accepted a position with the Swiss Patent Office in
Bern reviewing patent applications. While there, he
began to publish scientific papers
that would revolutionize the study of physics.
One of these papers was
developed from an essay he wrote when he was 16.
This 1905 publication is
known as the 'Special *Theory of Relativity.' It introduced
an entirely new concept of time and motion. As a
mathematical addition to this theory, Einstein introduced
his famous equation, E=mc2, which he called 'energy-mass
equivalence' |
Einstein, his wife
Mileva, and their
son. |
The pair finally married in 1903 after
Einstein got his job at the Patent Office. Einstein
discussed physics with Mileva, but there is no solid
evidence that she made any significant contribution to his
work. In 1904 a son was born, and a second in 1910. |
Einstein
submitted one of his scientific papers to the University of
Zurich to obtain a Ph.D. degree in 1905 .
As a result of his 1905 papers,
Einstein was regarded as the rising star of theoretical physics.On
March, May and June , 1905, he published three immortal
scientific papers.
In 1908 he sent
a second paper to the University of Bern and became privatdocent,
or lecturer, there.Einstein's began to attract respect with his
published papers, and in 1909 he was appointed associate
professor at the University of Zurich. He was also invited to
present his theories before the annual convention of German
scientists. He met many people he had known only through their
writings, such as the physicist Max Planck of Berlin. Soon
Einstein was invited to the German University in Prague as full
professor. Here he met a visiting Austrian physicist, Paul
Ehrenfest. "Within a few hours we were true friends," Einstein
recalled, "as though our dreams and aspirations were made for
each other.
Einstein in 1912. |
Through letters, visits, and science meetings, Einstein came
to know most of the major physicists of Europe (there were
not many in those days). In 1912 Einstein was invited back
to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as professor.
In 1914, the German government gave Einstein a
senior research appointment in Berlin, along with a
membership in the prestigious Prussian Academy of Sciences.
It was the highest level a scientific career could
ordinarily reach
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.
He became a German citizen in 1914 and
remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship
for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the
position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at
Princeton.
Mileva complained "I am very
starved for love." Einstein felt suffocated in the increasingly
strained and gloomy relationship. He found solace in a love
affair with his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal. Mileva and Albert
separated in 1914, after bitter arguments, and divorced in 1919.
That same year he married Elsa Löwenthal.
In 1916, about halfway through the
First World War, Einstein published his famous General Theory of
Relativity. In this new theory, one of the main predictions was
concerned with the deflection of light in a gravitational field.
This prediction was tested during the May, 1919 Solar Eclipse by
two British Astronomer eclipse expeditions. The results from
these expeditions agreed with Einstein's' theory, and laid the
foundation for Einstein's' world fame; he became an overnight
celebrity. In November 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Physics. His theory of relativity, however, was still
controversial. One winter while Einstein was abroad, a group of
anti-semitic German physicists rejected the theory of relativity
as an erroneous Jewish theory. At that time, 2,000 books were
burned outside the opera house in Berlin. To them Albert
Einstein was not a celebrated genius; he was a communist, an
anti-German, and a Jew!
During the 1930's, Einstein spent
several winters in the United States as a visiting professor at
Caltech. In 1933, while he was abroad, Hitler came to power in
Germany. That same year, Einstein accepted a permanent
appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,
and in 1941, he became a United States citizen.
Einstein surrendered his lifelong
pacifism in 1939, when he wrote a letter to Franklin D.
Roosevelt encouraging the President to begin atomic weapon
research. He felt uneasy about the rise in power of Nazi Germany
and was told that German physicists had split the uranium atom.
A citation like this could create a nuclear chain reaction
permitting large amounts of radium elements and huge amounts of
energy to be produced.
It was on March 25, 1945 that Einstein
sent a second letter to President Roosevelt warning him of the
cataclysmic and destructive outcome that would result if an
atomic bomb were ever actually used. President Roosevelt died on
April 12, 1945 and the letter lay on his desk, unopened!
The first atomic bombs were
successfully tested in July, 1945. Then on August 6th, 1945, an
American plane dropped a bomb onto the Japanese city of
Hiroshima, killing or injuring 140,000 people. Three days later
on August 9th, the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb over
Nagasaki, killing 60,000 men, women and children.
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When
Einstein heard of the massive death and destruction, he put
his head in his hands. “I could burn my fingers that I wrote
that first letter to President Roosevelt,” he said. Einstein
was burdened by the misuse of that which he loved the most,
a mathematical expression of nature. To his friend Linus
Pauling, another famous scientist, Einstein said: “I
made one mistake in my life when I signed that letter to
President Roosevelt |
advocating that the atomic bomb should be built. But perhaps
I can be forgiven because we all felt that there was a high
probability that the Germans were working on this problem
and would use the atomic bomb to become the master race.” |
On April 18, 1955 Albert Einstein, one
of the greatest natural philosophers of all time, died, leaving
behind a legacy of thought-provoking scientific theories.
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