ALBERT EINSTEIN
Einstein was a German/American physicist who contributed more to the 20th century vision
of physical reality than any other scientist. Einstein's theory of RELATIVITY seemed to
a lot of people to be pure human thought, as did his other theories.
LIFE
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Einstein's parents were
nonobservant Jews. They moved to Munich from Ulm when Einstein was an infant. The family
business was to manufacture electrical equipment. When the business failed in 1894, the
family move to Milan, Italy. He decided to officially give up his German citizenship.
With in a year, still not having completed secondary school, he failed and examination
that allow him to follow studies that would lead to a diploma in electrical engineering
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (the Zurich Polytechnic). He spent the
following year in Aarau where there were excellent teachers and an excellent physics
facility. In 1896 he returned to the Zurich Polytechnic, there he graduated in 1900 as a
secondary school teacher of math and physics.
Two years later, he acquired a post at the Swiss patent office in Bern. While he was
employed there from 1902 to 1909, he completed an extraordinary range of publications in
theoretical physics. Most parts of there were written in his spare time. In 1905 he
submitted one of his many scientific papers to the University of Zurich to obtain a
Ph.D. degree. In 1908 he sent another scientific paper to the University of Bern and
became a lecturer there.
In 1914 Einstein returned to Germany but did not reapply for citizenship. He was one of
only handful of German professors who was opposed the use of force and did not support
Germany's war aims. After the war, the allies wanted the removal of German scientist
from international meetings, but Einstein was a Jew and traveling with a Swiss passport,
he remained an acceptable German delegate. Albert Einstein's political views as a
pacifist and a Zionist placed him against conservatives in Germany, who labeled him a
traitor and a defeatist.
In Germany there was a rise of fascism, so he moved to the united states in 1933 and
abandoned his pacifism. He unwillingly agreed that the new danger (the Germans) had to
be brought down by force of arms. In 1939 he sent a letter to President Franklin D.
Roosevelt that urged America to continue to develop an ATOMIC BOMB before the Germans
did. This letter was one of many exchanges the White House and Einstein had. This
contributed to Roosevelt's decision to fund what became the MANHATAN PROJECT.
Until the end of Einstein's life he searched for a Unified Field Theory, by which the
phenomena of gravitation and electromagnetism could be derived from one set of equations.
In 1955 Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, where he held an analogous
research position at the Institute for Advanced Study.
RELATIVITY
Einstein's theory of relativity had caused major revolution in 20th century physics and
astronomy. It introduced the concept of "relativity" to science. It is the idea that
there is no absolute motion only relative motion. Consequently replacing Isaac Newton's
200-year-old theory of mechanics. "Einstein showed that we do not reside in the flat,
Euclidean space and uniform, absolute time of everyday life, but in another environment;
curved-space time." The theory played a part in advances in physics. It led to the
nuclear era, with potential for benefit as well as devastation, and made possible an
understanding of the microworld of elementary particles and their interactions.
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