Albert Einstein's biography

Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist
who developed the general theory of
relativity, among other feats. He is
considered the most influential physicist of
the 20th century.
Synopsis
Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany in
1879, Albert Einstein had a passion for
inquiry that eventually led him to
develop the special and general
theories of relativity. In 1921, he won
the Nobel Prize for physics for his
explanation of the photoelectric effect
and immigrated to the U.S. in the
following decade after being targeted
by the Nazis. Einstein is generally
considered the most influential
physicist of the 20th century, with his
work also having a major impact on
the development of atomic energy.
With a focus on unified field theory
during his later years, Einstein died on
April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New
Jersey.
Background and Early Life
Born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm,
Württemberg, Germany, Albert Einstein
grew up in a secular Jewish family.
His father, Hermann Einstein, was a
salesman and engineer who with his
brother founded Elektrotechnische
Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-
based company that manufactured
electrical equipment. His mother, the
former Pauline Koch, ran the family
household. Einstein had one sister,
Maja, born two years after him.
Einstein attended elementary school at
the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich.
However, he felt alienated there and
struggled with the institution's rigid
pedagogical style. He also had what
were considered to be speech
challenges, though he developed a
passion for classical music and
playing the violin that would stay with
him into his later years. Most
significantly, Einstein's youth was
marked by deep inquisitiveness and
inquiry.
Towards the end of the 1880s, Max
Talmud, a Polish medical student who
sometimes dined with the Einstein
family, became an informal tutor to
young Albert. Talmud had introduced
his pupil to a children’s science text
that inspired Einstein to dream about
the nature of light. Thus, during his
teens, Einstein penned what would be
seen as his first major paper, "The
Investigation of the State of Aether in
Magnetic Fields."
Resident of Switzerland
Hermann Einstein relocated the family
to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after
his business lost out on a major
contract. Albert was left at a relative's
boarding house in Munich to complete
his schooling at the Luitpold
Gymnasium. Faced with military duty
when he turned of age, Albert allegedly
withdrew from classes, using a
doctor’s note to excuse himself and
claim nervous exhaustion. With their
son rejoining them in Italy, his parents
understood Einstein's perspective but
were concerned about his future
prospects as a school dropout and
draft dodger.
Einstein was eventually able to gain
admission into the Swiss Federal
Polytechnic School in Zurich,
specifically due to his superb
mathematics and physics scores on
the entrance exam. He was still
required to complete his pre-university
education first, and thus attended a
high school in Aarau, Switzerland
helmed by Jost Winteler. Einstein lived
with the schoolmaster's family and fell
in love with Wintelers' daughter,
Marie. Einstein later renounced his
German citizenship and became a
Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new
century.
Marriage and Family
While attending school in Zurich,
Einstein developed lasting friendships
and alliances, also meeting his future
wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian physics
student.
After graduating from Polytechnic,
Einstein faced major challenges in
terms of finding academic positions,
having alienated some professors over
not attending class more regularly in
lieu of studying independently.
Meanwhile, Einstein continued to grow
closer to Maric, but his parents were
strongly against the relationship due
her ethnic background. Nonetheless,
Einstein continued to see her, with the
two developing a correspondence via
letters in which he expressed many of
his scientific ideas. In 1902 the couple
had a daughter, Lieserl, who might
have been later raised by Maric's
relatives or given up for adoption. Her
ultimate fate and whereabouts remain
a mystery.
Einstein eventually found steady work
in 1902 after receiving a referral for a
clerk position in a Swiss patent office.
Einstein’s father passed away shortly
thereafter, and the young scientist
married Milena Maric on Jan. 6, 1903.
The couple went on to have two sons,
Hans and Eduard.
The marriage would not be a happy
one, however, with the two divorcing
in 1919 and Maric having an
emotional breakdown in connection to
the split. Einstein, as part of a
settlement, agreed to give Maric any
funds he might receive from possibly
winning the Nobel Prize in the
future. He had also begun an affair
some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa
Löwenthal, whom Einstein wed during
the same year of his divorce. He
would continue to see other women
throughout his second marriage,
which ended with Löwenthal's death
in 1936.
Miracle Year
While working at the patent office,
Einstein had the time to further ideas
that had taken hold during his studies
at Polytechnic and thus cemented his
theorems on what would be known as
the principle of relativity.
In 1905—seen by many as a "miracle
year" for the theorist—Einstein had
four papers published in the Annalen
der Physik , one of the best known
physics journals of the era. The four
papers focused on the photoelectric
effect, Brownian motion, the special
theory of relativity (the most widely
circulated of the write-ups) and the
matter/energy relationship, thus taking
physics in an electrifying new
direction. In his fourth paper, Einstein
came up with the equation E=mc2,
suggesting that tiny particles of
matter could be converted into huge
amounts of energy, foreshadowing the
development of atomic power.
Famed quantum theorist Max Planck
backed up the assertions of Einstein,
who thus became a star of the lecture
circuit and academia, taking on
various positions before becoming
director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Physics from 1913 to 1933.
Relativity and Nobel Prize
In November, 1915, Einstein completed
the general theory of relativity, which
he considered the culmination of his
life research. He was convinced of the
merits of general relativity because it
allowed for a more accurate prediction
of planetary orbits around the sun,
which fell short in Isaac Newton ’s
theory, and for a more expansive,
nuanced explanation of how
gravitational forces worked. Einstein's
assertions were affirmed via
observations and measurements by
British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson
and Sir Arthur Eddington during the
1919 solar eclipse, and thus a global
science icon was born.
In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize
for Physics though he wasn't actually
given the award until the following
year due to a bureaucratic ruling.
Because his ideas on relativity were
still considered questionable, he
received the prize for his explanation
of the photoelectric effect though
Einstein still opted to speak about
relativity during his acceptance
speech.
In the development of his general
theory, Einstein had held on to the
belief that the universe was a fixed,
static entity, aka a "cosmological
constant," though his later theories
directly contradicted this idea and
asserted that the universe could be in
a state of flux. Astronomer Edwin
Hubble deduced that we indeed
inhabit an expanding universe, with
the two scientists meeting at the
Mount Wilson Observatory near Los
Angeles in 1930.
While Einstein was travelling and
speaking internationally, the Nazis, led
by Adolf Hitler, were gaining
prominence with violent propaganda
and vitriol in an impoverished post-
WWI Germany. The party influenced
other scientists to label Einstein's
work "Jewish physics." Jewish citizens
were barred from university work and
other official jobs, and Einstein himself
was targeted to be killed.
Move to U.S. and Atomic Energy
In 1933, Einstein took on a position at
the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton, New Jersey and never went
back to his native land. It was here
that he would spend the rest of his
life working on a unified field theory—
an all-embracing paradigm meant to
unify the varied laws of physics. Other
European scientists also left regions
threatened by Germany and
immigrated to the states, with there
being concern over Nazi strategies to
create an atomic weapon.
In 1939, Einstein and fellow
physicist Leo Szilard wrote to
President Franklin D . Roosevelt to
alert him of the possibility of a Nazi
bomb and to galvanize the United
States to create its own nuclear
weapons. The U.S. would eventually
initiate the Manhattan Project, though
Einstein would not take direct part in
its implementation due to his pacifist
and socialist affiliations. Einstein was
also the recipient of much scrutiny
and major distrust from FBI director J .
Edgar Hoover .
Not long after he began his career at
Princeton, Einstein expressed an
appreciation for American
"meritocracy" and the opportunities
people had for free thought, a stark
contrast to his own experiences
coming of age. In 1935, Einstein was
granted permanent residency in his
adopted country and became an
American citizen a few years later.
During WWII, he worked on Navy-
based weapons systems and made big
monetary donations to the military by
auctioning off manuscripts worth
millions.
Global and Domestic Activism
After learning of the 1945 bombing of
Hiroshima, Japan, Einstein became a
major player in efforts to curtail usage
of the a-bomb. The following year he
and Szilard founded the Emergency
Committee of Atomic Scientists, and in
1947, via an essay for The Atlantic
Monthly, Einstein espoused working
with the United Nations to maintain
nuclear weapons as a deterrent to
conflict.
Around this time, Einstein also
became a member of the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, seeing the parallels
between the treatment of Jews in
Germany and African Americans in the
United States. He corresponded with
scholar/activist W .E. B . Du Bois as well
as performing artist Paul Robeson and
campaigned for civil rights, calling
racism a "disease" in a 1946 Lincoln
University speech.
After the war, Einstein continued to
work on his unified field theory and
key aspects of the theory of general
relativity, such as wormholes, the
possibility of time travel, the existence
of black holes and the creation of the
universe. However, he became
increasingly isolated from the rest of
the physics community, whose eyes
were set on quantum theory. In the
last decade of his life, Einstein, who
had always seen himself as a loner,
withdrew even further from any sort of
spotlight, preferring to stay close to
Princeton and immerse himself in
processing ideas with colleagues.
Final Years and Legacy
On April 17, 1955, while working on a
speech to honor Israel's seventh
anniversary, Einstein suffered an
abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was
taken to the University Medical Center
at Princeton for treatment but refused
surgery, believing that he had lived his
life and was content to accept his
fate. "I want to go when I want," he
stated at the time. "It is tasteless to
prolong life artificially. I have done my
share, it is time to go. I will do it
elegantly." Einstein died at the
university medical center early the
next morning—April 18, 1955—at the
age of 76.
During the autopsy, Thomas Stoltz
Harvey removed Einstein's brain,
reportedly without the permission of
his family, for preservation and future
study by doctors of neuroscience.
Einstein's remains were cremated and
his ashes were scattered in an
undisclosed location, following his
wishes. After decades of study,
Einstein's brain is now located at the
Princeton University Medical Center. A
veritable mountain of books have been
written on the iconic thinker's life,
including Einstein: His Life and
Universe by Walter Isaacson and
Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe,
both from 2007. Einstein's own words
are presented in the collection The
World as I See It .