Albert Einstein

(E=mc²)

• Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally a featherbed salesman and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. He had one sister, Maria (who went by the name Maja), born two years after Albert. Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred little geometry book.” Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything. another important influence on Einstein was a young medical student, Max Talmud (later Max Talmey), who often had dinner at the Einstein home. Talmud became an informal tutor, introducing Einstein to higher mathematics and philosophy. A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein was 16 years old. Talmud had earlier introduced him to a children’s science series by Aaron Bernstein , Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher (1867–68; Popular Books on Physical Science), in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling in a telegraph wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”). Einstein’s education was disrupted by his father’s repeated failures at business. In 1894, after his company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich, Hermann Einstein moved to Milan to work with a relative. Einstein was left at a boardinghouse in Munich and expected to finish his education. Alone, miserable, and repelled by the looming prospect of military duty when he turned 16, Einstein ran away six months later and landed on the doorstep of his surprised parents. His parents realized the enormous problems that he faced as a school dropout and draft dodger with no employable skills. His prospects did not look promising.

From graduation to the “miracle year” of scientific theories of Albert Einstein

• "The important thing is not to
  • After graduation in 1900, Einstein faced one of the greatest crises in his life. Because he studied advanced subjects on his own, he often cut classes; this earned him the animosity of some professors, especially Heinrich Weber. Unfortunately, Einstein asked Weber for a letter of recommendation. Einstein was subsequently turned down for every academic position that he applied to. He later wrote, I would have found [a job] long ago if Weber had not played a dishonest game with me. Meanwhile, Einstein’s relationship with Maric deepened, but his parents vehemently opposed the relationship. His mother especially objected to her Serbian background (Maric’s family was Eastern Orthodox Christian). Einstein defied his parents, however, and in January 1902 he and Maric even had a child, Lieserl, whose fate is unknown. (It is commonly thought that she died of scarlet fever or was given up for adoption.) In 1902 Einstein reached perhaps the lowest point in his life. He could not marry Maric and support a family without a job, and his father’s business went bankrupt. Desperate and unemployed, Einstein took lowly jobs tutoring children, but he was fired from even these jobs. The turning point came later that year, when the father of his lifelong friend Marcel Grossmann was able to recommend him for a position as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern. About then, Einstein’s father became seriously ill and, just before he died, gave his blessing for his son to marry Maric. For years, Einstein would experience enormous sadness remembering that his father had died thinking him a failure. With a small but steady income for the first time, Einstein felt confident enough to marry Maric, which he did on January 6, 1903. Their children, Hans Albert and Eduard, were born in Bern in 1904 and 1910, respectively. In hindsight, Einstein’s job at the patent office was a blessing. He would quickly finish analyzing patent applications, leaving him time to daydream about the vision that had obsessed him since he was 16: What would happen if you raced alongside a light beam? While at the polytechnic school he had studied Maxwell’s equations, which describe the nature of light, and discovered a fact unknown to James Clerk Maxwell himself—namely, that the speed of light remains the same no matter how fast one moves. This violates Newton’s laws of motion, however, because there is no absolute velocity in Isaac Newton’s theory. This insight led Einstein to formulate the principle of relativity: “the speed of light is a constant in any inertial frame (constantly moving frame).”
  
  

  10 Things You Didn’t Know About Albert Einstein:

  • "The important thing is not to
    • He never failed math. This is a popular “fact” promoted on the internet, maybe in an attempt to relate to genius. However, it is simply not true. Overall, Einstein was an average student, but math was one area where he excelled, unsurprisingly.
    
    
    • Einstein encouraged the development of the nuclear bomb. His involvement is often misinterpreted, with some claiming that he helped create the atom bomb. In reality, what he did was write a letter to President FDR encouraging him to begin work on such a weapon, which led to the Manhattan Project. Although a dedicated pacifist and, later, an anti-nuke spokesman, Einstein was convinced that America needed the atomic bomb before the Nazis.
    
    
    • He was a great musician. If the whole “genius” thing didn’t work out, Einstein could have become a violinist. His mother played piano so he had the love of music instilled in him—via violin lessons—at the young age of five.
    
    
    • He could have been the President of Israel. When Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, died, Einstein was offered the position, but he declined.
    
    
    • He married his cousin. After Einstein divorced his first wife, Mileva Maric, he married his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal. He was, actually, quite a bad husband to his first wife in their later years. He had affairs he never tried to hide, he moved the entire family to Berlin without discussion, and treated her more as a servant than a wife.
    
    
    • He won the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics. This alone isn’t particularly surprising. What is surprising is the fact that he didn’t receive it for the general or special theory of relativity, but rather for the photoelectric effect.
    
    
    • He loved to sail. Ever since university, Einstein sailed as a hobby. But by his own admission, he never made a particularly good sailor. In fact, he didn’t even know how to swim.
    
    
    • He really didn’t like socks, and usually didn’t wear them. In fact, in a letter to Elsa, he bragged about getting away “without wearing socks” while at Oxford.
    
    
    • He had an illegitimate daughter. This wasn’t known until the 1980s, but according to correspondence between Albert and Mileva it was determined that the two had a daughter in 1902 called Lieserl. At one point, all mention of her in letters stopped so her fate is unknown.
    
    
    • His brain was stolen. After Einstein died, the pathologist who did his autopsy took his brain without permission. He eventually got the permission necessary from Einstein’s son, but he was fired from Princeton when he refused to turn the brain over. He kept it for over forty years before finally returning it in 1998.
    
    
    
    • ~Albert Einstein

    BY: HIMANSHU SHARMA