Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
BORN : - Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on
March 14, 1879
EDUCATION & CAREER: - In November 1881 Albert's sister Maria called Maja was born. A short time later the Einstein family went to Munich where Albert first attended elementary school and subsequently Luitpold grammar school. He did not like lessons in grammar school as they were held with strict discipline and as he was forced to learn. When he turned 15 he left school without any degree and followed his family to Milan. To make up for the missed degree he attended school in Aarau (Switzerland) from 1895 to 1896 when he successfully took his A-levels and began to study in Zurich. His ambition was to obtain the diploma of a subject teacher for mathematics and physics. He successfully finished his studies in July 1900.
Einstein passed his examination to graduate from the FIT in 1900, but due to the opposition of one of his professors he was unable to go on to obtain the usual university assistantship. In 1902 he was hired as an inspector in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland. Six months later he married Mileva Maric, a former classmate in Zurich. They had two sons. It was in Bern, too, that Einstein, at twenty-six, completed the requirements for his doctoral degree and wrote the first of his revolutionary scientific papers.
These papers made Einstein famous, and universities soon began competing for his services. In 1909, after serving as a lecturer at the University of Bern, Einstein was called as an associate professor to the University of Zurich. Two years later he was appointed a full professor at the German University in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Within another year-and-a-half Einstein became a full professor at the FIT. Finally, in 1913 the well-known scientists Max Planck (1858–1947) and Walther Nernst (1864–1941) traveled to Zurich to persuade Einstein to accept a lucrative (profitable) research professorship at the University of Berlin in Germany, as well as full membership in the Prussian Academy of Science. He accepted their offer in 1914, saying, "The Germans are gambling on me as they would on a prize hen. I do not really know myself whether I shall ever really lay another egg." When he went to Berlin, his wife remained behind in Zurich with their two sons; they divorced, and Einstein married his cousin Elsa in 1917.
In 1920 Einstein was appointed to a lifelong honorary visiting professorship at the University of Leiden in Holland. In 1921 and 1922 Einstein, accompanied by Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), the future president of the state of Israel, traveled all over the world to win support for the cause of Zionism (the establishing of an independent Jewish state). In Germany, where hatred of Jewish people was growing, the attacks on Einstein began. Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, both Nobel Prize–winning physicists, began referring to Einstein's theory of relativity as "Jewish physics." These kinds of attacks increased until Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy of Science in 1933.
Marriages and children
An early correspondence between Einstein and Marić was discovered and published in 1987 which revealed that the couple had a daughter named "Lieserl", born in early 1902 in Novi Sad where Marić was staying with her parents. Marić returned to Switzerland without the child, whose real name and fate are unknown. The contents of Einstein's letter in September 1903 suggest that the girl was either given up for adoption or died of scarlet fever in infancy.
Einstein and Marić married in January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert Einstein was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born in Zürich in July 1910. The couple moved to Berlin in April 1914, but Marić returned to Zürich with their sons after learning that Einstein's chief romantic attraction was his first and second cousin Elsa. They divorced on 14 February 1919, having lived apart for five years. Eduard had a breakdown at about age 20 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother cared for him and he was also committed to asylums for several periods, finally being committed permanently after her death.
In letters revealed in 2015, Einstein wrote to his early love Marie Winteler about his marriage and his strong feelings for her. He wrote in 1910, while his wife was pregnant with their second child: "I think of you in heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy as only a man can be." He spoke about a "misguided love" and a "missed life" regarding his love for Marie.
Einstein married Elsa Löwenthal in 1919, after having a relationship with her since 1912. She was a first cousin maternally and a second cousin paternally. They emigrated to the United States in 1933. Elsa was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems in 1935 and died in December 1936.
Einstein’s Patents and Inventions
Towards the end of the last century, Times Magazine asked some of the World’s leading
personalities to pick their choice for the person of the century. The magazine compiled a list 100 most
influential people of 20th century and the German born scientist Albert Einstein topped the list. Einstein’s choice as the person of the century didn’t invoke any resentment, it was generally agreed
that 20th century is the age of Science and undoubtedly, Einstein’s contribution to Science, to the
understanding of the intricate laws of nature was unparalleled. He greatly influenced modern science;
altered our views on space‐time, matter and energy, gave new interpretation to gravity etc. The
enormous popularity he enjoyed during his lifetime and even now, is rare for any individual; religious
leader, politician, film star. Even a child knows his name, not to speak of adults.
However, while Einstein is known as a great theoretical physicist, few possibly knew that he
had more than 50 patents in his names and in several counties
- Albert Einstein's most significant achievements and inventions.
In 1905, sometimes referred to as his “annus mirabilis” (wonderful year), and while he was still working in the patent office, the young 26 year old Einstein completed his PhD (with a thesis on "A new determination of molecular dimensions") and had no less than four important papers published in the “Annalen der Physik”, the leading German physics journal:
- a paper on the particulate nature of light, in which he explained the “photoelectric effect” and certain other experimental results by proposing that light interacts with matter as discrete “packets” or quanta of energy, rather than as a wave (an idea first suggested by Max Planck as a purely mathematical manipulation).
- a paper explaining Brownian motion (the seemingly random movement of particles suspended in a fluid) as direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory (that all matter is made up of tiny atoms and molecules).
- a paper, which has become known as the Special Theory of Relativity, on the electrodynamics of moving bodies, which showed that the speed of light is independent of the observer's state of motion, and introduced the idea that the space-time frame of a moving body could slow down and contract in the direction of motion relative to the frame of the observer.
- ALBERT EINSTEIN BOOKS
- Relativity : the Special and General Theory
- The World as I See It
- Essays in Humanism
- The Meaning of Relativity
- The Principal of Relativity
Personal Sorrow, World War II, And The Atomic Bomb
In 1930s, physicists began seriously to consider whether his equation E = mc2 might make an atomic bomb possible. In 1920 Einstein himself had considered but eventually dismissed the possibility. However, he left it open if a method could be found to magnify the power of the atom. Then in 1938–39 Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, Lise Meitner, and Otto Frisch showed that vast amounts of energy could be unleashed by the splitting of the uranium atom.
In July 1939 physicist Leo Szilard convinced Einstein that he should send a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to develop an atomic bomb. With Einstein’s guidance, Szilard drafted a letter on August 2 that Einstein signed, and the document was delivered to Roosevelt by one of his economic advisers, Alexander Sachs, on October 11. Roosevelt wrote back on October 19, informing Einstein that he had organized the Uranium Committee to study the issue.
Einstein was granted permanent residency in the United States in 1935 and became an American citizen in 1940, although he chose to retain his Swiss citizenship. During the war Einstein’s colleagues were asked to journey to the desert town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, to develop the first atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project. Einstein, the man whose equation had set the whole effort into motion, was never asked to participate. Voluminous declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, numbering several thousand, reveal the reason: the U.S. government feared Einstein’s lifelong association with peace and socialist organizations. (FBI director J. Edgar Hoover went so far as to recommend that Einstein be kept out of America by the Alien Exclusion Act, but he was overruled by the U.S. State Department.) Instead, during the war Einstein was asked to help the U.S. Navy evaluate designs for future weapons systems. Einstein also helped the war effort by auctioning off priceless personal manuscripts. In particular, a handwritten copy of his 1905 paper on special relativity was sold for $6.5 million. It is now located in the Library of Congress.
Death
Einstein died on April 18, 1955, at age 76 at the University Medical Center at Princeton. The previous day, while working on a speech to honor Israel's seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
He was taken to the hospital for treatment but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate.
Einstein’s last words
"I want to go when I want," he stated at the time. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."
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