Albert Einstein was a physicist who pioneered the theory of general relativity. He is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most significant scientists.
Who was Albert Einstein?
Albert Einstein was a German scientist and mathematician who pioneered the special and general theories of relativity. For his explanation of the photoelectric phenomenon, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. After being targeted by the German Nazi Party, he moved to the United States in the following decade.
His work influenced the creation of atomic energy as well. Einstein concentrated on unified field theory in his later years. Einstein is often regarded as the most influential physicist of the twentieth century, thanks to his curiosity.
Early Life
Einstein was born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Einstein was raised in a secular Jewish household. Hermann Einstein, his father, was a salesman and engineer who formed Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-based company that mass-produced electrical equipment, with his brother.
The family was run by Einstein's mother, the former Pauline Koch. Maja, Einstein's sister, was born two years after him.
The Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich was where Einstein went to primary school. However, he felt alienated there and struggled with the rigorous teaching style of the school. He also had speech difficulties, however, he acquired a liking for classical music and playing the violin, which he would carry into his senior years. Most notably, Einstein's boyhood was defined by intense curiosity and inquiry.
Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who occasionally dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Einstein toward the end of the 1880s. Talmud had given his student a children's science book that had encouraged Einstein to ponder the nature of light. Thus, while still in his teens, Einstein wrote "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields," which is considered his first major publication.
After his company lost a big contract, Hermann Einstein moved his family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s. To finish his education at the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein was sent to a relative's boarding house in Munich.
When he reached the age of military service, Einstein supposedly withdrew from classes, claiming nervous weariness on the basis of a doctor's note. With their son rejoining them in Italy, Einstein's parents appreciated his point of view but were concerned about his prospects as a school dropout and conscription dodger in the future.
Education
Due to his outstanding mathematics and physics results on the entrance exam, Einstein was eventually accepted into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
He still needed to finish his pre-university education first, so he went to Jost Winteler's high school in Aarau, Switzerland. Einstein lived with the schoolmaster's family and was smitten by Marie Winteler, the schoolmaster's daughter. At the turn of the century, Einstein abandoned his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen.
Wife and Children
On January 6, 1903, Einstein married Mileva Maric. Einstein met Maric, a Serbian physics student while attending school in Zurich. Einstein became closer to Maric, but his parents were adamantly opposed to the relationship because of her ethnicity.
Despite this, Einstein continued to see her, and the two began writing letters to each other in which he revealed many of his scientific theories. After Einstein's father died in 1902, he and his wife married soon after. Lieserl, the couple's daughter, was born the same year and may have been reared by Maric's relatives or put up for adoption. Her final fate and whereabouts are still unknown.
Hans Albert Einstein (a well-known hydraulic engineer) and Eduard "Tete" Einstein were the couple's two sons (who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man).
The Einsteins' marriage would end in divorce in 1919, with Maric experiencing an emotional breakdown as a result of the split. Einstein agreed to give Maric any monies he would receive from winning the Nobel Prize in the future as part of a settlement.
During his marriage to Maric, Einstein had initiated an affair with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, sometime before. In 1919, the same year that Einstein divorced, the pair married. Throughout his second marriage, which ended with Löwenthal's death in 1936, he continued to visit other women.
The Nobel Prize in Physics
Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, despite the fact that his theories on relativity were still controversial. Due to a bureaucratic snafu, he didn't receive the award until the following year, but he still chose to speak on relativity during his acceptance speech.
Einstein had held onto the concept that the cosmos was a fixed, static object, dubbed a "cosmological constant," during the creation of his general theory, while his later theories directly contradicted this view and argued that the universe may be in a state of flux.
In a conference at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1931, astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we do indeed live in an expanding universe.
Inventions and Discoveries
As a physicist, Einstein made numerous discoveries, but his theory of relativity and the equation E=MC2 is likely best recognized, as they foretold the creation of atomic power and the atomic bomb.
Theory of Relativity
In his paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," published in 1905, Einstein postulated a special theory of relativity, propelling physics in a thrilling new path. Einstein finished his general theory of relativity in November 1915. This hypothesis was considered by Einstein to be the pinnacle of his life's work.
He was convinced that general relativity was superior to Isaac Newton's theory because it allowed for a more precise forecast of planetary orbits around the sun and a more expansive, nuanced description of how gravitational forces functioned.
Observations and measurements by British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson and Sir Arthur Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse backed up Einstein's claims, and a global science hero was established.
Einstien's E=MC2
The equation E=MC2 was suggested by Einstein in his 1905 work on the matter/energy relationship: the energy of a body (E) is equal to the mass (M) of that body times the speed of light squared (C2). This equation implied that little bits of matter might be turned into enormous amounts of energy, paving the way for atomic power.
Max Planck, a renowned quantum theorist, backed up Einstein's claims, propelling him to stardom on the lecture circuit and in academia, where he held various positions before serving as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (now known as the Max Planck Institute for Physics) from 1917 to 1933.
How to Become a U.S. Citizen
Einstein began working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1933. In an impoverished post-World War I Germany, the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, were gaining notoriety with aggressive propaganda and hate.
Other scientists were inspired by the Nazi Party to label Einstein's work "Jewish physics." Jews were forbidden from working at universities and other government posts, and Einstein himself was targeted for assassination. Meanwhile, other European scientists fled Germany-affected areas and came to the United States, fearful of Nazi plans to develop an atomic weapon.
Einstein never returned to his native land after relocating. Einstein would spend the remainder of his life at Princeton working on a unified field theory, an all-encompassing paradigm aimed at unifying the various rules of physics. Einstein declared his admiration for American "meritocracy" and the opportunities for free thought not long after starting his work at Princeton, a dramatic contrast to his own upbringing.
Einstein was awarded the permanent status in his adopted country in 1935, and five years later he became an American citizen. During World War II, he worked on Navy-based weaponry systems and donated large sums of money to the military by auctioning manuscripts worth millions of dollars.
The Atomic Bomb and Einstein
In a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard warned of the danger of a Nazi bomb and urged the US to develop its own nuclear weapons.
The United States would eventually start the Manhattan Project, albeit Einstein would not be directly involved because of his pacifist and socialist beliefs. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, scrutinized Einstein and held him in high regard.
Following the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, Einstein became a leading figure in attempts to limit the use of the atomic bomb. The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists was created the next year by Einstein and Szilard, and in a 1947 editorial for The Atlantic Monthly, Einstein advocated working with the United Nations to keep nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conflict.
Death
Einstein died on April 18, 1955, at the University Medical Center in Princeton, at the age of 76. Einstein had suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm the day before while working on a speech to commemorate Israel's seventh anniversary.
He was rushed to the hospital for treatment, but he refused surgery, claiming that he had lived his life to the fullest and was pleased with his fate. He said at the time, "I want to go when I want." "Artificially extending life has a bad flavor. I've done my part, and now it's time for me to leave. I'll do it gracefully."
Einstein's Brain
During Einstein's autopsy, pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey took his brain for preservation and future research by neurologists, purportedly without his family's agreement.
However, during his lifetime, Einstein took involved in brain research, and according to one account, he wished for researchers to study his brain after he died. The Princeton University Medical Center now houses Einstein's brain. The rest of his corpse was burned, and the ashes were spread at a secret location, as per his wishes.
In 1999, Canadian scientists investigating Einstein's brain discovered that his inferior parietal lobe, which processes spatial relationships, 3D visualization, and mathematical cognition, was 15% wider than normal intelligent people. The researchers believe it may help explain why Einstein was so intelligent, according to The New York Times.
QUOTES
"The world is a dangerous place to live;
not because of the people who are evil,
but because of the people who don't do
anything about it."
Albert Einstein
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