Summary: The life and work of Albert Einstein continues to motivate new generations of people, particularly scientists. As this biography reveals, Einstein deserves his place not only among the greatest scientists in history, but also among the greatest mankind in general has to offer.
Out of all the many great names in history like Pythagoras who studied the movements of the planets and the heavens, Copernicus who proved that the earth moves around the sun, Galileo who invented the telescope and was able to observe the motions of the planets, Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, Faraday who invented the dynamo. But none of these great minds can compare to be greater than Albert Einstein . His work has helped mold the twentieth century. And still has been able to motivate new generations. Einstein's work has forever changed the way other scientist look at the world.
On March 14, 1879, in Ulm Germany Albert Einstein was born. This is a time period of industrial expansion. Albert's father, Hermann Einstein was a business man. In 1880 his business failed due to the depression. At this time the family moved to Munich, Albert was a year old. In 1881 Hermann and his brother Jacob Einstein opened a small factory. They manufactured dynamo, electric instruments and electric arc lights. Albert's speech was late in developing, he made no attempt to talk until he was past age three. It was thought that he was mentally retarded. When he was four months away before turning three his sister Maja was born, on November 18, 1881. Since Albert was born when the businesses and the most popular science was electricity, his future would be influenced by technical education and state-supported research. Albert was considered quiet and not very social . He rarely ever mixed with other children his age. But there was another side to him he had a wild temper as a child. He would through tantrums and had horrible rages. This was because he was unable to express his anger. But there was this time when at age five he was ill in bed and his father gave him a magnetic compass, to entertain him. Albert was very interested . Since then he threw less tantrums because he would spend his time trying to figure out new things like the magnetic compass by himself. When he reached the age of seven that is when he began elementary school. Before this time his mother had homeschooled him. Since he was not exposed to other children, he was like the "odd boy" in school. His teacher's thought that he was mentally retarded because of his strange behavior and his failure to learn by memorizing. Classmates of Albert's considered him strange because he did not show any interest in sports or anything else they were playing. In his classes he always hesitated to answer a question, then he would silently move his lips, repeating the words. If something did not interest him, he would make no attempt to learn it. But if he found some interest in it, he would focus all of his attention, time, and effort until he mastered it perfectly . He excelled in Math and Latin. In every other subject he was considered hopeless. His Uncle Jacob was the one who introduced Algebra to him. He made Algebra more interesting by creating a game out of it This made Albert fascinated with math.. When Albert was twelve he went to a Catholic school . He was the only Jew in his class. At this point in time he gave up on math and science for the Solomon and the ethics of his religious forefathers, all in the worshipful service of the Master of the Universe. The next year he lost faith out to reason and went back to his love for math and science. Later on in the year he showed a new love for music. He mastered the violin and the piano.. At age fifteen, he would soon be drafted. The law required that all young German males finish military service before they could leave the country, so he stayed behind and finished high school then would complete military service. In 1894 Hermann's business fails again. The family then moves south to Milan, Italy. After two months on his own, Albert obtains a doctor's certificate saying that he is suffering a nervous breakdown. The school authorities dismissed him. From there he spends a year in Italy. But again the business fails and the family moves to Pavia. Where again the business fails. Without a diploma he is not able to enter a University. The Eidgenossiche Technische Hochschule, the most elite technical school outside of Germany would admit him if he passed an entrance exam. But unfortunately he failed, he failed French, English, Zoology, and Botany. But he succeeded in mathematics. So the Einstein's focused on a high school in Aarau. At the end of the year he graduates and passes his ETH exam. On January 1896, his official application for the termination of his German nationality is approved. He becomes a stateless person. This is when he decides to become a teacher instead of an engineer. He forms friendships with Michelangelo Bessa, and Marcel Grossman, who later helps Albert get his first job in the Swiss Patent Office. He marries in 1903, Mileva Marci, a mathematician in Serbia. Unfortunately their marriage lasted for only a short period of time . They live in a good time in the political tone of Zurich. Albert learns about revolutionary socialism from his friend Friedrich Adler, a junior lecturer in physics. In physics Newton's consolidation of the laws of mechanics had dominated for the previous two hundred years. Einstein was disbelieving but impressed by the achievements of the mechanical world view. But it was the physics of electricity and the electrodynamics of Faraday and Maxwell, that attracted his attention. Faraday was one of the most accomplished experimental physicist of the nineteenth century. In 1832, Faraday published the experimental and theoretical work that paved the way for Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. Maxwell's equations showed that electric and magnetic forces should move through empty space at exactly the speed of light. In 1990, five students took an exam-- Marcel Grossmann, Louis Kolloros, Jacob Ehrat, Einstein and Mileva. The highest score of the group was not Einstein but in fact Louis Kollros with a score of sixty. Marcel Grossmann with a score of fifty-seven point five and Jacob Ehrat with a fifty-six point five. Next came Einstein with a score of fifty-four. Mileva failed with a forty-four. On February 21, 1901, his patience finally paid
off he had his right to Swiss citizenship. All of his fellow graduates had been appointed assistant college professors at the college. He was the only one who was rejected. Needing a job Albert decides to give private lessons, tutoring others in mathematics and physics. On February 4, 1902, Einstein learned that he was a father to a little baby girl. By 1902, financial situation worsen. That is until his friend Marcel Grossmann, was able to get him a job at the Swiss Patent Office a common civil service job for science graduates in those days. He works in this office from 1902 to 1905. In Bern, he meets Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habiht. They form the " Olympic Academy." There they worked on how to figure out certain things; like if an object is moving with the speed of light will the image disappear or not? etc. Albert was filled with ideas and thoughts and he was determined to prove them. He based most of his hypothesizes on what has already been proven and ideas from his friends. Here is what Albert thought, that no matter how the light gets from place to place the image should not disappear. But if the observer on the ground would see the light leaving Albert's face at twice its normal velocity. For example, if an object is moving at 186,000 miles per second and the light leaves the object at the same speed then to the ground it should be moving at MPS + MPS = 372,000 miles per second. But the problem was that this did not make sense . Maxwell's equations had predicted the very same thing for light. The observer on the ground should always see the light leaving the object at the same speed. But if the observer on the ground were to see the same speed for the light to leave the object no matter how fast, and this image should not disappear. Complicated.... yes very. This is when he began to try to see if there were any way for the speed of light to be the same for both the moving and the observers. This nearly gave him a nervous breakdown. But he did not give up and his persistence finally paid off. His arguments were logical and simple... well kind of! Albert says that no matter how the light spreads when you are standing still it spreads the exact same way when moving. This is the principle of relativity. Now radio waves, sun rays, microwaves also take time to get from place to place. So Albert made a guess based on the experience with electricity summed up by Maxwell, and proven by Hertz. Einstein hypothesized that there are no instantaneous interactions at all times in nature. So he meant, since every interaction takes time to get from one place to another, and there are no instantaneous interactions in nature than there has to be a maximum speed of interaction. The fastest speed possible is the speed of light. The hardest part was for him to show this. He created another argument that simultaneous events in one frame of reference would be viewed different in another. Albert called this Relativity of Simultaneity. Classical mechanics guess that the time interval between events is the motion of the observer. Second that the space length of a body is independent of motion of the observer. The speed of light is absolute and space and time intervals are relative. His contribution was very interesting because he challenged the frame work of the classic physics that had not been question for the previous two hundred years. Now is the time where he needed to reformulate. He often put his formulas into everyday workable situations. He uses a train in order to explain this theory. Albert used math to express the relationship between the place and the time of an event, in relation, to when we know the place and time of the event with the example of the train. The formula that he created next is t= t11- v2c2. What Albert achieved was a glimpse of how the world work looks when things move at close to the speed of light. But this achievement was a desire for him to find out how electric and magnetic forces propagate worked. Albert created a new formula that follows his velocity one. It is U= v + w / 1 + vw/c2, this is a neat formula because it shows his modifications of space and time intervals. This new formula shows the new fact that there are no instantaneous interactions in nature, and that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But now Albert has to show what happens when you try to get an object to go beyond the speed of light. This is how he argues. To get an object moving you have to apply force. In physics another word for force is interaction. Albert is concerned with something even more difficult. So in 1905 he created a= f/m {1-v2/c2}3/2. Now it shows that when v=c, a=zero. So it showed that if you keep on pushing, the electron does not pick up any more speed. This means that if you push an object with force and it hardly picks up any speed at all, you say is has a lot of inertia. And when an electron gets closer the speed of light appears to get heavier and heavier because is gets harder and harder for the speed to go faster. But he is still not satisfied. He wants to show how the speeds of the electron is related to its energy. Once again, Albert's modification leads to a new formula. The work now equals W= MC2/ {1- v2/c2}1/2 - MC2. At last he is satisfied and concludes instead of going faster it gets heavier. But that is not all, he thought now that if work goes into giving the body more inertia then inertia must have energy. Like mentioned before if W= zero, if you don't put any work at all, then the electron still has an energy equal to E= MC2. This was the most famous equation of the twentieth century. And to show how it worked, he wrote a three page paper in 1905 called "Does The Inertia Of A Body Depend On Its Energy Content"" Some people think that E = MC2 was the formula to the A- bomb. All he really did was propose relativity. Nuclear physics was made by Joliot Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szliard. The A-bomb project began in 1939. In 1934, Szliards came up with the idea of the "chain of reaction" release of atomic energy.. He wrote a famous letter on August 2, 1939, basically saying that Nuclear energy is here and it is a strategic weapon. The President had to decide what to do with it. Later, the A- bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and over 100,000 people were killed. The use of the bomb confirmed the scientific theories of Einstein. In 1921 he won the Nobel Prize and became a popular world figure. He made other contributions to physics too. His theory of relativity and theory of gravitation which replaced Newton's old theories. And he was a central figure in the debates of the quantum theory and the theory of the electron. Not only scientific accomplishments but social too. He was constantly was active in behalf of Israel. On his seventy-fifth birthday the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University was created in his honor. The college is the first medical school under Jewish support to be made in America. Einstein's interest in human rights were expressed throughout his life. He often spoke up for equality for minorities. At the age seventy-six, on April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died. The life and mind of Albert Einstein is truly remarkable.
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