Do you refer to the smart kid in your class or group as “Einstein”? If you answered yes, you aren’t the only one who thinks this way. People all across the world bestow the moniker of ‘Einstein’ on their friends and acquaintances in recognition of their flawless intellect and brilliant minds. While there are many brilliant minds at work today, Albert Einstein is born only once every century. Not only did the nineteenth century see the birth of Albert Einstein, but it also saw the creation of modern physics. Albert Einstein, dubbed the “Father of Modern Physics,” was without a doubt the most influential physicist of the twentieth century. Einstein ushered forth a revolution in science with his research and discoveries. Among his many contributions, the most important are (a) the general theory of relativity, which offered a unified description of gravity as a geometric characteristic of space and time, and (b) the photoelectric effect, which established quantum theory in physics. Einstein published over 300 scientific publications and 150 non-scientific books during his lifetime. He received various honors, including the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Copley Medal, the Matteucci Medal, and the Max Planck Medal. Aside from that, he was named Person of the Century by the New York Times magazine. His contribution to humanity was so significant that his name has become associated with “genius.”
Childhood and Adolescence
Albert Einstein was one of the couple’s two children, born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, to Hermann and Pauline Einstein. Maja Einstein was his younger sister.
The family relocated to Munich, where his father and uncle created the Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie Company, which produced direct current electrical equipment.
Albert began his studies at the Catholic Elementary School when he was five years old. He was sent to the Luitpold Gymnasium after three years of education. He left Germany after completing advanced primary and high school studies.
Einstein exhibited symptoms of having a deep talent and skill for mathematics when he was a toddler. He used to make models and mechanical devices during this time, but these were only for fun.
When Max Talmund gave Einstein popular science books, mathematical textbooks, and philosophical works when he was ten years old, his desire for mathematics increased. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid’s Elements were among them.
Einstein’s father went out of business in 1894, when alternating current was introduced to the world. As a result, in pursuit of work, the family relocated to Milan at first, then to Pavia a few months later.
Einstein, on the other hand, stayed in Munich to finish his studies at Luitpold Gymnasium. Though he tried to follow his father’s intentions, who wanted Einstein to study electrical engineering, it wasn’t long before Einstein withdrew his name from the school roll list since his beliefs clashed with the education center’s study schedule. While Einstein desired to study in a creative way, the university prioritized rote instruction.
In 1894, he moved to Pavia with his family and began work on his first article, ‘On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field.’
Einstein took the examinations at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich the following year. His grades in physics and mathematics were superb, despite the fact that he did not pass the test.
Following the advice of the Principal of Polytechnic, Einstein enrolled in the Aargau Cantonal School in Aarau, Switzerland, to complete his secondary education for the academic year 1895-96.
In 1896, Einstein resigned his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Wurttemberg, fearing military service. His father was fully supportive of his decision. He completed the exam in September with good overall ratings, once again receiving top marks in mathematics and physics subjects.
Einstein participated in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching certificate program at ETH Zurich when he was seventeen years old. In 1900, he received a teaching diploma from the Zurich Polytechnic.
Einstein became a Swiss citizen the following year, in 1901.
Years of Formative Experience
After graduating, Einstein spent two years looking for a teaching career but was unable to find one. Finally, he was able to secure a position as an assistant examiner at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, with the support of his former classmate’s father.
Einstein joined the army as a permanent officer in 1903. His responsibilities included assessing patent applications for electromagnetic devices.
His research largely focused on electrical signal transmission and time synchronization between electrical and mechanical systems. Einstein came to his conclusions regarding the nature of light and the basic relationship between time and space as a result of this.
During this time, Einstein produced the majority of his truly exceptional writings. He put his spare time to good use by conducting scientific studies. In 1901, he published ‘Folgerungen aus den Kapillaritat Erscheinungen’ (Conclusions from the Capillarity Phenomena) in Annalen der Physik, the most prestigious scientific magazine.
He finished his thesis four years later, in 1905, by delivering a dissertation titled “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.” He received a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich for his efforts. The degree, on the other hand, was only the beginning of a long list of things to come.
Academic Achievement of Albert Einstein
The year 1905, often known as the Annus Mirabilis or the Miracle Year in Einstein’s Life, marked the beginning of Einstein’s career as an innovator and creator, as it was during this year that he published his four seminal articles.
The papers included topics like the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and matter-energy equivalence. They not only transformed the way people thought about time, space, and matter, but they also helped to establish the foundations for modern physics. Furthermore, the articles thrust Einstein into the spotlight.
As planned, Einstein became famous almost immediately after the papers were published, and he was widely regarded as the leading scientist. He was hired as a lecturer at the University of Bern in 1908. However, Einstein left this job, as well as one at the patent office, to pursue a post as a physics teacher at the University of Zurich. In 1911, he was hired as a full-time lecturer at Prague’s Karl-Ferdinand University.
He returned to Germany three years later, in 1914, as the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and a professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, with a unique clause in his contract exempting him from most teaching commitments.
Einstein was appointed president of the German Physical Society two years later, in 1916, a position he held for two years. Einstein was also elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences during this time.
The Experiencing Voyages
Due to Einstein’s growing notoriety, he was officially invited by the Mayor of New York, who personally welcomed him on April 2, 1921. Einstein gave multiple talks at Columbia and Princeton Universities during his time in New York.
After New York, Einstein proceeded to Washington, D.C., where he accompanied several National Academy of Science representatives to the White House.
During his return to Europe, Einstein spent a few days in London as a guest of Viscount Haldane, a British nobleman and philosopher. During his stay, Einstein visited with a number of scientists, intellectuals, and politicians, as well as giving a speech at Kings College.
In the following year, 1922, Einstein embarked on a six-month vacation and speaking tour that took him to Asia and then Palestine. His travels took him to Singapore, Ceylon, and Japan, where he delivered a series of lectures to tens of thousands of Japanese people.
His first four-hour speech in Japan was followed by a meeting with the Emperor and Empress at the Imperial Palace. Einstein spent a total of 12 days in Palestine. It was also his only trip to the area.
The second time Einstein visited America was in 1933. During his tour, he stopped by a number of universities. He even returned to the California Institute of Technology for his third two-month visiting professorship. By the end of March, Einstein had returned to Belgium and learned that his home and leisure boat had been seized by the Nazis, who had come to power under Germany’s new chancellor.
Einstein returned home and proceeded straight to the German consulate, where he refused his passport and renounced his German citizenship. (He had previously given up his citizenship in the German state of Wurttemberg.)
In Germany, a new rule was passed prohibiting Jews from holding any official posts, including teaching at universities. Not only was Einstein’s work targeted, but he was also on the Nazis’ list of assassination targets, with a $5,000 reward on his head.
Before returning to the United States in October of 1933, Einstein sought temporary refuge in England. He obtained a job at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, which required him to be there for six months every year. He remained a member of the institute until his death.
Einstein’s future was uncertain, as he got offers from several European universities. He, on the other hand, decided to stay in the United States permanently and applied for citizenship.
In the year 1939, a group of Hungarian scientists attempted to warn Washington about the Nazis’ developing atomic weapon research. Their warning, however, was largely ignored. As a result, they turned to Einstein, who sent President Franklin D. Roosevelt a letter warning him of the danger.
The letter grabbed the attention of the US government, which got directly involved in uranium research and related chain reaction research as a result of the letter. The United States launched the Manhattan Project with its vast financial and technological resources and emerged as the only country to successfully create an atomic bomb during World War II.
In the year 1940, Einstein was granted permanent citizenship in the United States. In contrast to Europe, what drew him to this country and its culture was the prevalence of meritocracy. People in the United States were rewarded for their efforts, and they had the freedom to express and think whatever they liked.
In his later years, Einstein was even offered the office of President of Israel, but he declined, claiming that he had the necessary competence and experience.
Albert Einstein delivers a lecture in 1934 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. (AP)
Major Projects of Albert Einstein
Einstein’s innovative contributions to the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the particular theory of relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy were published in 1905.
He studied statistical physics and thermodynamic fluctuations. He even experimented with general relativity and used it to explain cosmology. Einstein’s other contributions include the Schrodinger gas model and the Einstein refrigerator.
Achievements & Awards
In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to theoretical physics, particularly for his discovery of the photoelectric effect law.
The Max Planck award of the German Physical Society was presented to Einstein in Berlin in 1929.
For his substantial work on relativity and the photoelectric effect, he received the Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1936.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the publishing of the “annus mirabilis” papers, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics designated 2005 as the “World Year of Physics.”
Albert Einstein has a science park on the hill of Telegrafenberg in Potsdam, Germany, named after him. The park features an astrophysical tower named Einstein Tower, which was intended to test Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.
The Albert Einstein Memorial is located in Washington, DC. It houses a colossal bronze figure of Einstein, who is reclining and holding manuscript pages. The chemical element 99 (einsteinium) was named after him four months after his death.
Einstein was selected Person of the Century by Time magazine in 1999.
Einstein was honored by the United States Postal Service with an 8-cent stamp from the Prominent Americans series.
Einstein was elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2008.
Personal Life, Family, and Legacy
In terms of Einstein’s personal life, the year 1896 was significant since it was then that he met Mileva Mariac. The two became fast friends, and their friendship quickly turned into marriage. However, before they tied the nuptial knots, Einstein and Mariac had their first child, a daughter named Lieserl.
In January 1903, Einstein and Mariac married. Mariac gave birth to their first son, Hans Albert Einstein, later that year. Eduard, the couple’s second son, was born six years later. Einstein relocated to Berlin in 1914, leaving his wife and two sons in Zurich.
On February 14, 1919, the couple divorced after five years of marriage. After a romance with Elsa Lowenthal in 1912, Einstein remarried in the same year.
The couple moved to the United States in 1933. Elsa didn’t live long after being diagnosed with heart and kidney problems in 1835, and she died in December 1936.
On April 17, 1955, Albert Einstein suffered internal bleeding due to the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Despite the fact that Dr. Rudolph Nissen had surgically repaired the same in 1948, the condition resurfaced. He was sent to Princeton Hospital for treatment.
Despite the fact that the doctors were preparing for the procedure, Einstein rejected it, stating that he did not wish to extend his life by artificial means. As a result, on April 18, 1955, Einstein passed away. His ashes were scattered in an undisclosed area after he was cremated.
Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić Einstein, 1912
Albert Einstein’s Net Worth
Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist born in Germany, had a net worth of $65 thousand at the time of his death in 1955. After adjusting for inflation, that equates to roughly $634,000 in today’s money. He is regarded as one of history’s most influential physicists, having developed both the theory of relativity and the equation E=MC2. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his contributions to quantum physics.
Trivia
He is often referred to as the “Father of Modern Physics.” Surprisingly, his surname has been assigned the meaning of ‘genius,’ and it is used by people all over the world.
He is credited with creating new waves in modern physics as a brilliant and faultless theoretical physicist. However, as a child, he struggled with speech and spoke with a slow cadence.
The contact with the compass and the discovery of Euclid’s Element, a geometry book he affectionately referred to as “holy little geometry book,” had a profound impact on the life of this Nobel Laureate scientist.
Without the approval of his family, Princeton Hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey withdrew this accomplished scientist’s brain for preservation in the hopes that future neuroscience will be able to determine what made the guy who discovered the theory of relativity so clever.
Top 10 Albert Einstein Facts You Didn’t Know
- Albert Einstein was an agnostic, not an atheist, as some people mistakenly assume.
- He was a womanizer who had a slew of extramarital encounters.
- His mother was a pianist who fostered a lifelong passion for music in him. Einstein was a good violinist himself.
As a child, he was a slow learner with speech issues. - He is claimed to have had high expectations of his first wife and imposed some strange regulations for her to obey.
- Einstein’s disheveled look, particularly his unruly hair, was well-known. He despised wearing socks, a truth that few people are aware of.
- Einstein was reportedly offered the Israeli presidency but politely declined.
- As part of his divorce settlement, he gave his Nobel Prize money to his ex-wife.
- He was well-known for being forgetful, forgetting names, dates, and phone numbers.
- On his 50th birthday, he was given a boat as a gift because he enjoyed sailing. However, he was a poor sailor who needed to be rescued on a regular basis.