The biography of Albert Einstein

Einstein’s family originated from Jewish emigrants who settled in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. Though Albert was Jewish, his Jewish traditions were not very marked, so he was able to attend a Catholic elementary school in Munich. Jakob Einstein, a fellow engineer, and Hermann Einstein founded a factory to supply power plants with electrical equipment around that time.

During its first nine years of operation, the Munich business was quite successful, but its profitability ended with the arrival of alternating current in 1894. Due to a lack of funds, the family had to sell its direct current factory in Munich. They traveled to Pavia (Italy) to try their luck with the branch, which they maintained for two more years.

Albert Einstein finished high school in Munich while his parents solved their business problems. Teachers often reprimanded him for being openly dissatisfied with the education system. As he used to put it, it is “a strict memorization system that dampens the spirit of learning and creativity.”

Therefore, Albert Einstein preferred to study alone at home with his tutor, Max Talmud, and-sometimes-with his uncle Jacob. It was because of them that he found his strong passion for mathematics at the age of twelve. Jacob taught him the Euclidean proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Since he saw it as too complex, he tried different algorithms from the geometry book that his tutor gave him until he found his own solution.

Please note

A colleague of Einstein’s told him the anecdote about his proof of the Pythagorean theorem -already an award-winning scientist. Physicist Manfred R. Schroeder heard the story and told it to us.

Einstein had self-taught attitudes from an early age, refusing to use mathematical formulas without understanding their logical applications first. As Max Talmud confessed, he was completely impressed by him when, after giving him the geometry book, he already solved it within a few months.

In Albert Einstein, stubbornness was undoubtedly a well-defined quality. In addition to being a lonely boy with few words, he enjoyed the company of his -ironically – talkative younger sister for a long time.

As if you were a Swiss citizen

Albert Einstein’s parents sent him to Switzerland to continue his studies in spring 1895. Without a bachelor’s degree, Albert entered ETH Zurich despite not having a bachelor’s degree. At the age of 16, he would be able to start his Physics degree if he passed the exam.

Despite excellent marks in physics and mathematics, Einstein failed botany and French on the entrance exam. The director of the institution recommended that he finish high school in Aargau and try again at ETH Zurich once certified.

Einstein traveled to Aarau (Aargovia) to stay with the family of a trusted teacher, Jost Winteler, whose daughter would capture his heart. In the following year (1896), he began to renounce his German nationality, allegedly to avoid conscription.

Albert Einstein graduates from Aargau High School in September with top marks. Einstein got less than 6 in only three subjects (Art, Technical Drawing, and French) in Switzerland. French was the most difficult for him, where he achieved a satisfactory (3).

Albert Einstein enrolled at the ETH Zurich at the age of 17 to earn his mathematics and physics teaching diploma. During the race, he meets his future wife, Mileva Marić, the only woman in the race. By 1900, both had graduated as educators and were enamoured with each other. In 1903, they are married, and their first child, Hans Albert, is born the following year.

THESE ARE CURIOUS FACTS

According to the letters the couple sent each other, they had a daughter named Lieserl in 1902. In order to avoid social discrimination regarding extramarital children at the time, Mileva secretly gave birth in her native Serbia. The girl may have been given up for adoption or passed away at an early age.

During his studies, Albert Einstein saved 20 francs a month to pay for Swiss naturalization. As a Swiss citizen, he was drafted into the military in 1901. “Excessive perspiration and varicose veins” resulted in his “incapacity” during recruitment exams.

Inventor Albert Einstein at the patent office

After graduating as a professor, Einstein was unable to find a job. He was hired in a patent office in Bern two years later by Marcel Grossmann, a former classmate from the polytechnic. His duties included the examination of a wide variety of electrical devices as an assistant technical examiner.

Please note

The news of Albert Einstein’s father’s illness reaches him from Italy in the same month that he receives the patent office position. Hermann Einstein was able to spend his last days with his son after Albert traveled to meet him.

Albert Einstein had to constantly analyze the synchronization of electrical signals with mechanisms’ reaction times as an examiner. This work, although not part of his initial plans, sowed his concern about light’s behavior in time and space.

A few colleagues and Albert Einstein organized a scientific debate group during those days, where they discussed physics, mathematics, and philosophy. His readings included contributions in acoustics and optics by the physicist Ernst Mach.

During 1903, Albert Einstein had already published some articles on thermodynamics in the leading German journal Annalen der Physik. During this time, he also continued to work on his doctoral thesis, which he titled A new determination of molecular dimensions.

Doctoral degrees were not granted by the ETH until 1909. As a result, many of its students received their doctorates from the University of Zurich. The University of Zurich endorsed Einstein’s diploma the following year after he sent his dissertation in 1905.

It was the greatest year of all time in 1905 

Since James Clerk Maxwell discovered electromagnetism in 1865, the scientific world has been turning upside down in search of a Newtonian solution to this problem. According to Newton, two observers moving at different speeds should measure different speeds of light, since time is absolute.

In real experiments, the measurement of light speed was indifferent to the observer. The speed of the object was the same, but the distance and time were measured differently by different observers. How was this possible? This is when the theory of special relativity comes into play.

In June and November 1905, a series of documents were published that would change the way we view reality forever. Until then, the author was an unknown scientist working in a Swiss patent office.

Albert Einstein proposed, with physical arguments, that we could solve the problem by abandoning absolute time and space. Consequently, in a relative space-time system, light can always move at the same speed. “Special relativity” was the name he gave to this approach.

The following article describes Albert Einstein’s formulation of mass-energy equivalence, the well-known equation E=mc2. In another of these documents, he uses Max Planck’s quantum theory to explain the photoelectric effect. Statistical physics was further enhanced by his mathematical support of Brownian motion the following month.

Immediately following the publication of his last article, his name took off. His masterpiece was missing a “key element.”.

General relativity theory

Several prominent Central European universities offered me positions as an educator over the next few years. A similar situation occurred at the University of Bern, where he obtained the chair of theoretical physics, and at the Charles-Ferdinand University, Kingdom of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). He also lectured on classical electrodynamics and relativity in his spare time.

YOU WILL BE SURPRISED!

She learned that Einstein had a romantic affair with Elsa, his paternal cousin, in 1914, after they had already had their second child, Eduard. After being separated for five years, their marriage collapsed, and they divorced in 1919.

His good friend Max Planck nominated him to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1913. Like a succession of events, the German Empire opens its doors to memberships and chairs in its best universities. Einstein agreed to return, but the main reason was to be near Elsa.

The Prussian Academy of Sciences received Einstein’s paper on his new gravitational field equations in November 1915. Together, these equations make up general relativity.

Albert Einstein had been working tirelessly for the previous seven years to answer a question arising from his theory of special relativity: If nothing travels faster than light, how can gravity affect two bodies regardless of their distance? His final conclusion was that gravity is an effect of space-time deformation, not a force.

Einstein, the famous scientist

General relativity also predicted that light is subject to fluctuations since space-time is curved. Due to the outbreak of World War I, Einstein’s theory was forgotten during this time.

Fortunately, Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer and mathematician, learned about the theory of relativity first. He was also one of the few who understood her perfectly. Thus, after the war, he organized two expeditions to observe the 1919 solar eclipse from Africa and Brazil. It was an impressive set of results. It is true that the mass of the sun deflected the light of some stars, which caused their positions to be incorrect.

In November of that same year, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Society held a long meeting to discuss the issue. “Scientific Revolution – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian Ideas Overthrown” appeared on The Times’ front page shortly after. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922 for his contributions to theoretical physics and his discovery of the photoelectric effect.

Albert Einstein traveled the world with his wife, Elsa, giving lectures and meeting celebrities, political leaders, and leading academics of the time between 1921 and 1923. The leaders of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States accompanied him to the White House. After a short trip to London, he became familiar with Asian culture.

The emperors of Japan received him at the Imperial Palace. A diploma and membership in the Spanish Academy of Sciences were presented to him by King Alfonso XIII in Spain. In addition, he was made a foreign member of the Royal Society and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW…?

Albert Einstein met and empathized with the political ideas of the famous Spanish writer José Ortega y Gasset during his stay in Spain, and Charles Chaplin was introduced to him by the head of Universal Studios.

Albert Einstein visited the United States again at the end of 1930. The original plan was to stay for two months to participate in a research project. He was, however, able to extend his stay for a few more years, as he himself admitted that he liked the “friendly and energetic personality of the Americans.” When Nazi Germany seized control of the government in 1933 and cracked down on the Jews, Einstein was fortunate enough to be far from Europe.

New York City’s project

A German scientist named Otto Hahn discovered and publicized the possibility of generating enormous amounts of energy through nuclear fission between 1938 and 1939. After this revelation, Albert Einstein was persuaded by two colleagues to use his influence to call a meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt a few months before the outbreak of World War II. In their view, the Nazi government was developing nuclear weapons and the Führer would use them without hesitation.

As a pacifist, Einstein opposed starting a war. But he knew if the United States did not exert pressure, more people would die from Nazi injustices. It was at this point that the so-called Manhattan Project was born.

The project was budgeted at more than 2,000 million dollars (equivalent to more than 23,000 million today) and employed more than 130,000 people (engineers, scientists, and military). In August 1945, he successfully launched Little Boy and Fat Man bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. As a result of an unexpected genocide, Albert Einstein and his fellow physicists were overwhelmed by guilt.

The weapon we have left in your hands as representatives of humanity is so deadly. Since the end of the war, fear has increased alarmingly around the globe. Albert Einstein, speech in New York, December 1945.

Last year: Albert Einstein versus the system

In addition to his well-defined political, moral, and religious opinions, Albert Einstein was not afraid to express them in public. Thus, he published articles criticizing capitalism during the war and afterward, supported Zionist causes by raising funds for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and opposed racism.

OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW…

Einstein declared himself an agnostic once. The Jew confessed he didn’t believe they were “God’s chosen people” even though he was proud of being one. Although he denied being an atheist, he added that Judaism, for him, was a “childish superstition” like any other religion.

Albert Einstein rebelled against the system, even against quantum mechanics, which was in full swing during those years. Contrary to classical mechanics, quantum mechanics predicts the probability of obtaining a particular result, not a specific value. In response to Einstein’s argument, Niels Bohr replied that it makes no sense to speculate about a reality that is not observable.

In an ironic twist, Planck’s constant and general relativity laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics. He even predicted the expansion of the universe, something Einstein himself thought absurd, and to solve it he introduced an “antigravitational” constant into the equation. Edwin Hubble proved that the universe has expanded in 1922.

Albert Einstein signed a manifesto against war and nuclear weapons in April 1955 with ten other eminent scientists. Einstein suffered internal bleeding after rupturing an abdominal aortic aneurysm a few days later. He refused the operation due to his distaste for “artificially extending life. “ “It’s time to go,” he declared.

The great Albert Einstein passed away on April 18, 1955, at Princeton Hospital at the age of 76. In his lifetime, Einstein published more than 450 articles, of which about 300 dealt with science. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer described him as “not sophisticated nor worldly” and as having “a childish purity and yet a profound stubbornness”.