Biography of Albert Einstein: Eminent Physicist and Nobel Laureate

The Father of Modern Physics

Albert Einstein was a famous physicist well-known for his theory of relativity. He is considered to be the father of modern physics.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany. His father was Hermann Einstein, an engineer and salesman. His mother was Pauline Koch. They were of Jewish descent. He had a sister named Maja.

When Einstein turned one, his parents moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein and his uncle formed a company that made electrical equipment based on direct current.

Einstein's Childhood

When he was a child, Einstein would talk with slow deliberation and contemplation. He had a habit of repeating sentences to himself in soft tones until about the age of seven.

He used to build houses of cards with great patience and concentration. Mathematics and Latin were subjects he excelled at because he was impressed with the logic involved in those subjects.

When Einstein was a small boy, his father showed him a compass. The compass set his brain thinking. Perhaps it was this moment that steered Einstein toward the field of science. Einstein was in awe of the magnetic compass, and he believed that the swing of the needle to the north resulted from an invisible force that worked on the needle.

Life in School

Albert Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium University in Munich. The rigid rules and regulations of the school suffocated Einstein, and he soon started to hate his schooling experience.

At school, teachers thought that he was disabled because he could not speak fluently at the age of nine. At the age of 12, during the beginning of his school year, Einstein came across a book on the Euclidean plane of geometry. The assertions and the examples given in this book impressed him much. He mastered calculus when he was 16 years old.

He started playing the violin when he was six years old, and from then on, the violin became an essential part of his life.

Albert appears as a calm, dreamy, slow, but self-assured and determined child.

— Maja (Sister of Albert Einstein)

Further Education

When Einstein was 16 years old, his teacher expelled him, stating that he negatively influenced his classmates. Later, Einstein was not able to make the entrance exam at the Federal Institute of Technology. He then enrolled at the Cantonal School in Aarau in Switzerland and obtained a diploma. After this, he was automatically admitted into the Swiss FIT.

He graduated from FIT in 1900 but was unable to get the assistantship at the university because one of his professors was against the idea. In 1902, he joined the patent office in Bern, Switzerland. During this time, he devised and experimented with new methods in physics that were never used before.

He married Mileva Maric, who was his former classmate in Zurich. They had a daughter, Lieserl, and two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard.

At the age of 26, Einstein obtained his doctoral degree and wrote his first scientific paper.

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Scientific Papers Published by Einstein

From 1902 up till 1904, Einstein worked on the foundation of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This work was the basis of his scientific papers on Brownian Motion published in 1905.

Also in the year 1905, Einstein came up with the idea that in certain conditions, light exhibited behaviors that indicated that light is made up of particles of energy. His research on this idea resulted in the equation for the photoelectric effect.

Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics on November 9, 1922, for his contribution to theoretical physics, focusing on his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

"The Theory of Relativity" is another scientific paper that resulted from a question that had occurred to him when he was 16. His research to find the answer to this question led Einstein to his theory of relativity. He was also able to prove his prediction that energy e and mass m are related through the equation e = mc squared.

Einstein did not win the Nobel Prize for his well-known work on the theory of relativity; instead, he won the Nobel Prize for his "Services to Theoretical Physics" and especially for his discovery of the "Law of the Photoelectric Effect."

Academic Career

The scientific papers published by Albert Einstein drew the attention of top universities. In 1909, he was asked to join the University of Zurich as an associate professor. He was then appointed as a full-time professor at the German University of Prague in Czechoslovakia. Within a year, Einstein became a professor at FIT.

In 1913, the famous scientists Max Planck and Walter Nernst met Einstein. They requested him to join the University of Berlin in Germany and offered him a full membership in the Prussian Academy of Science. Einstein accepted their offer in 1914. When he left for Germany, his wife chose to stay back with her two sons.

Einstein fell ill in 1917 and did not fully recover until the year 1920. Throughout this period, his cousin Elsa Loewenthal looked after him and nursed him back to health. He fell in love with his cousin and married her on June 2, 1919.

In 1920, Einstein was honored with a lifelong honorary visiting professorship at the University of Leiden in Holland. During this time, he campaigned for the cause of Zionism.

Later Years

Einstein faced a lot of opposition from well-known Nobel Prize-winning physicists Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. The attacks continued till Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy of Science in 1933. After the Nazis had taken over Germany, Einstein immigrated to the US.

Einstein had visited the California Institute of Technology many times, and on his last visit, he was offered a position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, Massachusetts.

Albert Einstein moved to Princeton Township in 1933 and lived there until he died in 1955. He worked at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Princeton. Though Einstein was not a faculty member, he led a university seminar on the mathematics of relativity and often helped students with math problems.

Einstein as a Person

Einstein loved solitude and was not comfortable with socializing and giving speeches in front of people.

He was absent-minded and often forgot the names of his peers. This aspect of Einstein did not upset his peers; they were even amused and attributed these traits of Einstein to his concentration on finding solutions to problems.

Albert Einstein loved to play the violin. He took time off from his busy schedule to practice the violin. Throughout his life, the violin remained his faithful companion. He was a fan of Bach and Mozart.

Einstein was greatly saddened because his equation E = mc squared was used to construct a bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin, what else does a man need to make him happy?

— Albert Einstein

His Last Days

At the age of 76, Albert Einstein refused heart surgery. He felt that he had done his share in the world and wanted to pass on.

In Einstein's words - "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, and it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."

On April 18, 1955, Einstein died at the Princeton Hospital.

After Einstein's Death

Shortly after his death, a pathologist removed Einstein's brain without the permission of his family and stored it in formaldehyde. Small sections of his brain were removed for analysis, and his eyes were given to his ophthalmologist.

A detailed study of Einstein's brain revealed that the inferior parietal lobe (the portion of the brain that is responsible for mathematical reasoning) was wider than the usual size, and a unique structure of the Sylvian fissure in Einstein's brain might have been responsible for his genius trait.

Sources

• http://www.albert-einstein.org
• http://www.biography.com/people/albert-einstein-9285408
• http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-bio.html
• http://www.notablebiographies.com/Du-Fi/Einstein-Albert.html
• http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/biography.html

© 2017 Nithya Venkat

Comments

maxamed on August 11, 2018:

Types of physics

Nithya Venkat (author) from Dubai on October 27, 2017:

Matthews Mbale yes he is an extraordinary man and he lives on among us through his work and discoveries.

Matthews Mbale on October 26, 2017:

What an extraodinary man,l adore him very much because though he died in 1955 bt he is still exsting tody, through his breathtaking discoveries l will l could be half of him

jshantenga on May 20, 2017:

what a greater man he stood on want he believed in at seventy six yet he refused to prolong his life. E=mc still in circulation what an inspiration

Nithya Venkat (author) from Dubai on March 22, 2017:

Louise Powles thank you for taking the time to read and comment.

Louise Powles from Norfolk, England on March 21, 2017:

That was really interesting reading your article on Einstein. He was certainly a fascinating man.

Genna Eastman from Massachusetts, USA on March 10, 2017:

This is a wonderful tribute to a genius I have long admired. I've read that he didn't speak for quite a while when he was very young. When asked why later, he replied, "I had nothing to say." What a remarkable childhood he had. And to think his teachers thought him handicapped and slow. I never realized that his theory of relativity was born from a question he had at sixteen. It was interesting to learn more about who he was, and his love for music -- especially Bach. Music benefits the thinking processes -- among other things. When faced with a problematic equation, Einstein would figure out the solution by improvising on is violin. An astonishing mind.