Albert Einstein:

The Great Thinker

 Albert Einstein: The Great Thinker

I. Early Years

A. Childhood

B. Curiosity

C. School

II. Middle years

A. Relationship

B. Patent office

C. Family

III. Later years

A. Popularity

1. General theory of relativity

2. Special theory of relativity

3. Nobel prize

4. Atomic bomb

B. Religion

C. Physical problems

1. Personal life

2. Death

D. Brain

E. Achievements
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Albert Einstein: The Great Thinker

Albert Einstein, developer of the theory of relativity and mastermind behind the atomic

bomb, contributed so much to the world during his lifetime that his name is synonymous with the

word genius (Frisch 5).

It has been so since the early twentieth century, when as an eager young scientist with

sleepy-looking eyes, he made order of the universe as we know it. But our fascination

with him is about much more than science. It is about a man of contradictions. A genius

with a notoriously poor memory. A lover of humankind who was a self-proclaimed Lone

Traveler. A pacifist who advocated the creation of the atomic bomb. A nonreligious man

who was a champion of Jewish causes. A figure loved by the world but distrusted by

governments. All of these things and more make up the legacy of Albert Einstein (Frisch

5).

Einstein was a theoretical physicist whose theories and ideas forced even world-renowned

scientists to rethink the accepted suppositions and theories of the past. This man had an

immeasurable amount of knowledge more than the average human, but this knowledge was not

what made him so successful. It was his willingness and eagerness to apply his God-given

knowledge to answer unanswered questions and solve unsolved problems that made him

one of the most famous and well-known scientists of today.

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A native of Germany but a nominal Jew, Albert Einstein was born into a well-to-do

family. On March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Hermann Einstein gazed proudly at his wife,

Pauline, holding his newborn son, Albert Eugene Einstein. At birth, Albert was an oversized,

oddly shaped baby. His concerned parents wondered if he had a mental problem or a physical

deformity. To add to their worry, Albert did not speak a single word until the age of three. In one

of his journals later in life, he explained that he had kept silent because he had decided not to talk

until he could speak in full sentences (McPherson 6-8).

When Albert was one year old, his family moved to Munich, Germany where his father

and uncle were planning to start a new enterprise in the electrical industry. A year later, his

younger sister, Maria, was born. Albert preferred to call her Maja. When his parents first

brought her home from the hospital, he thought she was a new toy and asked his mother where

Marias wheels were (Frisch 7).

The old maxim Curiosity killed the cat did not apply to Albert. His extreme curiosity in

how things worked helped fuel his genius mind. One day, his father gave him a compass to play

with. Alberts curiosity was instantly sparked. Why did the needle always point north no matter

which way the compass was turned or flipped? Albert loved solving problems. At the age of six,

Albert was admitted into a Catholic elementary school even though his family was Jewish.

Albert was not like the other children his age. Instead of going outside to play ball during recess,

he stay inside to read and study. In school, he kept to himself and did not communicate much.

For this reason, he had no friends as a young student in school and was always teased by the

other boys in his class. Academically, Albert only did well in the subjects he liked. He excelled
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in mathematics and science but his language studies were not as impressive. In school, he was

forced into monotonous learning and restricted from asking questions which frustrated Albert

greatly as questioning was what fueled his learning. His Uncle Jakob had noticed Alberts

enthusiasm to learn and decided to test the capacity of Alberts intelligence. No matter how

advanced the problems were, Albert solved them and was hungry for more. An old family friend,

Max Talmud who stayed with the Einsteins for a few years while attending medical school, also

noticed Alberts hunger for learning and decided to help fuel his curiosity. Max gave Albert a

large problem-solving book meant for much older students much older. To the amazement of

Max, Albert finished every problem in that book within a few weeks. Max gave Albert a college-

level mathematics book which he also finished. Albert moved on to even harder books and soon

was solving math problems that even the medical student, Max Talmud, could not answer

(McPherson 6-10, Frisch 7-8)!

In the first year of Alberts high school years, his fathers business failed, and his family

was forced to move to Milan, Italy, to start over. Albert, however, stayed in Munich to finish high

school, which he soon found unbearable. His school was very legalistic and stressed arts and

humanities over science and mathematics. Alberts apathetic attitude and obvious intelligence

irritated his teachers. When he could no longer endure his high schools atmosphere, he received

permission to drop out and go to Milan to be with his family (Frisch 12).

In Italy, he decided to further his education by applying to Zurich Polytechnic, later

known as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Switzerland. He was rejected when he

failed the entrance exam, not due to poor grades in science and mathematics, but because his
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language arts and history sections were not satisfactory. He spent another year studying at a local

high school and finally graduated at the age of seventeen. He applied to the college again a year

later and was accepted (Hasday 27-29).

At the Zurich Polytechnic, he met his future wife, Mileva Maric. Mileva was a gifted

young woman being only the fifth female accepted into the institute. Albert loved Mileva despite

her non-Jewish background, age (she was four years older than he), and physical deformity that

made her limp. Their parents disapproval of their relationship only made their love grow

stronger. Because they spent more time together than in school work, both Albert and Milevas

grades at the Zurich Polytechnic began to drop. After their trip to a resort on Lake Como, Italy,

Mileva discovered that she was pregnant. Albert distanced himself from her to avoid the

humiliation correlated with pregnancy outside of marriage. When Mileva had her baby in early

1902, Albert made excuses to avoid her; thus, there is no record of Albert ever even seeing his

daughter. When Mileva was finally well enough to go see Albert, she did not have the baby with

her. It is not known what happened to the child. Some sources say she was put up for adoption,

while others say she died of scarlet fever. About a year later, on January 6, 1903, Albert and

Mileva had a quiet marriage with only a few guests (Milevas Story).

At almost the same time, Albert had graduated from the Zurich Polytechnic and was

looking for a job. After two years of futile searching, he finally secured a low-paying job at the

Swiss patent office. There he spent long hours sorting through haphazard piles of peoples

abstract ideas. Some historians say these seven years were a waste of Einsteins genius, yet

others believe that it was a critical development point in his life. Reading through submitted
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patents required imagination and insightfulness to understand the intangible descriptions of the

inventors. Some inventors had an ingenuous idea but did not know how to depict it in words and

pictures. Alberts job was to decipher their meaning and rewrite their descriptions into something

more comprehensible for the common person. This process helped Albert think more simply so

that people could somewhat understand his later writings and thoughts more easily (Hasday 50-

53).

Though married, Albert did not try to cultivate his family relationships. In the midst of

the births of both his sons, Hans Albert in 1904 and Eduard in 1910, Albert was busily

developing new theories and working on new projects. He was not home often and spent most of

his time doing research in the laboratory. When he was home, he ignored Mileva and his two

sons and worked on new hypotheses in his room. The four famous papers he wrote during this

time were his essays on the quantum law and the emission and absorption of light, Brownian

motion, the inertia of energy, and the electrodynamics of moving bodies. These four papers were

all published in the same year, 1905, and this year is known as Einsteins Wonderful Year.

Though famous and recognized as great accomplishments today, these papers were rejected by

most scientists of the day. (MacLeod 10-12; Albert Einstein; Biography).

In the next ten years, Einstein would quit his job at the patent office to pursue higher

positions as a professor at various institutes of science in Europe. He worked at the University of

Bern, University of Zurich, Charles University of Prague, and even the University of Berlin.

World War I was on the brink of exploding into fierce fighting, and Mileva was tired of

constantly relocating to follow Alberts conquests. She finally settled down in Zurich,
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Switzerland, with their two boys and let Albert continue his efforts for success. This success

would finally blossom in May of 1919 when British astronomers, after observing a solar eclipse,

found Alberts general theory of relativity to be true. Alberts theory stated that everything,

including light, is affected by gravity. This means that starlight traveling near the Sun should be

pulled toward it, following the curve of space near the Sun (MacLeod 18). To prove his theory,

he compared a stars position between two different seasons. If the stars position seemed to

change, it would prove that its light had been bent by the suns gravity. The only way to

photograph a star close to the sun was during a solar eclipse (MacLeod 18).

Albert Einstein also wrote a paper on the theory of relativity, penning his own version

the special theory of relativity. In it, he generalized Galileo's principle of relativity that all

uniform motion was relative, and that there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest from

mechanics to all the laws of physics, including electrodynamics. (Special Theory of

Relativity). Einstein stated that the speed of light is mathematically constant and not dependent

on its viewer. His famous equation to show this relation was E=MC2. In this, he was able to

prove that any increase in the energy, E, of a body must lead to a corresponding increase in its

mass, m, these increases being related by a factor c2, where c represents the velocity of light

squared (Biography).

Alberts fame began to grow, and word of his genius spread all over the world. He

traveled the globe making speeches at universities to ecstatic and enthusiastic crowds of college

students. At the same time, his relationship with his wife was dwindling, and Mileva had agreed

to divorce him on one condition: that when he eventually won the Nobel Prize (which he felt was
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inevitable), that the prize money would go to her and their two boys. On one of his tours to Japan

in 1922, he was not flabbergasted to find out that he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for one

of the papers he wrote in 1905 explaining the law of the photoelectric effect which elucidated the

production and transformation of light (Macleod 20).

The atomic bomb was something Albert Einstein never wanted to see come to fruition.

The common misconception is that Einstein created the atomic bomb, but in fact, Einstein was

not even part of the team of nuclear physicists who created it. The whole project started in the

United States after news came that the German physicists had successfully completed stage one

in the development of an atomic bomb. At this disheartening news, Einstein sent a letter to

President Roosevelt urging the United States to develop their own atomic weapons to combat the

Germans. He warned, Much as I regret this, there is no other way. Organized power can be

opposed only by organized power (Frisch 31). If the Germans had atomic bombs in their

possession, they could take over the world as one bomb could destroy an entire city. The

Germans and American both used Einsteins E=MC2 equation to figure the magnitude of

destruction one bomb could inflict. When Germany surrendered in 1945, Einstein wrote another

letter to President Roosevelt informing him of the consequences of an atomic bomb. But

President Roosevelt died before the letter reached him and development continued. It was not

until the United States dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki that Albert found out that the United States had succeeded in building the bomb. Albert

later lamented that I could burn my fingers that wrote that first letter to Roosevelt (Frisch 32).

From that day on, Albert Einstein became an advocate of world peace speaking at pacifist
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conventions and promoting the preservation of life (Frisch 31-32; Macleod 22-26; McPherson

39-41).

Though Albert Einstein is known mostly for his scientific summations, he also was

heavily opinionated about religious subjects. Albert Einstein once stated: I believe in Spinoza's

God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns

Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (Dennis 127). And he also said, "My position

concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary

importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea

of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."

(Albert Einstein). From these two statements, one can see that Einstein doubted Gods

existence and a need for a supreme being to control the universe. Most of his thoughts on

religion were found in his letters to friends and relatives (Albert Einstein).

As a researcher and avid physicist, Albert would work for long hours without eating or

resting. When he did eat, he ate whatever he could find in the kitchen, or whatever he could

prepare fast. Foods such as cookies and cereal made up his haphazard diet that led to huge

amounts of stress on his digestive organs. He would often go to sleep late at night but then wake

up the next hour having found a solution to a previous problem and then keep working on it. His

irregular sleeping pattern and meal times led to many physical problems in his later years. The

last few years of his life, he was suffering from anemia, respiration problems, and an aneurysm

threatening to rupture. Often times he would collapse squeezing his stomach in pain, yet despite

his physical problems, he kept solving problems and writing scientific papers until his last days.
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On April 12, 1955, Albert Einsteins body could not endure the stress and abuse anymore. The

aneurysm in Alberts abdomen burst leaving just a lifeless body. The fate of his remains always

concerned Einstein, since people had idolized him like a living monument. When he was mobbed

during a trip to Geneva, a crazed young girl had tried to snip off a lock of his hair. What might

they do to his body when he was dead? I want to be cremated, so people don't come to worship

at my bones, he once said (My Dad Has Einsteins Brain).

Einsteins brain was preserved so that scientists years later could observe and compare

his brain to that of others. In recent years, they have found some similarities and also some

differences between Einsteins brain and a normal brain. Three consecutive studies have

attempted to uncover the secrets to Einsteins intelligence. One study deduced that the ratio of

neurons to glial cells, specific cells that provide nourishment. In one area of the left side of

Einstein's brain there were 73% more glial cells per neuron than average, which might suggest

the neurons needed more energy (My Dad Has Einsteins Brain). In another study scientists

observed "alterations in cortical thickness and neuronal density in the frontal cortex of Albert

Einstein. And because Einstein's brain weighed only 1,230 grams (1,400g is average for a man)

and his cerebral cortex was thinner than usual, the scientists concluded that Einstein's brain had a

much greater density of neurons (My Dad Has Einsteins Brain). The last and most recent

study found that Einsteins brain had an unusual series of grooves in the part associated with

mathematics and spatial reasoning. Some argue that this shows Einstein's brain allowed better

communication between neurons, though skeptics say it is difficult to draw conclusions from one

brain (My Dad Has Einsteins Brain). The brain is one of the most important pieces in our

body. Without it, we lose all our senses and ability to function. The deep dark secrets of the brain
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will be revealed as technology advances and as scientists begin to gain a better understanding of

the brain (My Dad Has Einsteins Brain).

With intelligence of this caliber, Einstein discovered and solved many problems during

his life time.

His contributions include his special theory of relativity, which reconciled

mechanics with electromagnetism, and his general theory of relativity, which

extended the principle of relativity to non-uniform motion, creating a new theory

of gravitation. His other contributions include relativistic cosmology, capillary

action, critical opalescence, classical problems of statistical mechanics and their

application to quantum theory, an explanation of the Brownian movement of

molecules, atomic transition probabilities, the quantum theory of a monatomic

gas, thermal properties of light with low radiation density (which laid the

foundation for the photon theory), a theory of radiation including stimulated

emission, the conception of a unified field theory, and the geometrization of

physics (Albert Einstein).

Intelligence, acuity, brilliance, intellect all these words are synonymous with genius and

can adequately describe Albert Einstein. This mans knowledge and critical reasoning was

extremely acute. Problems that had puzzled scientists for centuries were solved by Einstein

within a few years. Yet, how could the one who is regarded as the worlds smartest man not

believe in the existence or need of God? One would think that he would be thankful for all the

intelligence God gave him. But because success, intellect, and wealth build up a mans pride, it is
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hard for him to realize that his success is because of God, and that he has no control over it. With

intellect, brings pride, a pride strong enough to make even a genius like Albert Einstein deny

God. Success, intellect, and wealth are the goals of men today, yet all men should be grasping for

the intangible prize, eternal life.

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Works Cited

Frisch, Aaron. Albert Einstein

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921: Presentation Speech.

<http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/press.html> (accessed 29 October

2006).

Severance, John B. Einstein. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999.

Short Life History: Maria Winteler-Einstein. <http://www.einstein-

website.de/biographies/einsteinmaja_content.html> (accessed 29 October 2006).

Solar Eclipses Overview: Relativity and the 1919 Eclipse. <http://sci.esa.int/science-

e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=37889&fbodylongid=1786> (accessed 29 October 2006).

Brian, Dennis (1996), Einstein: A Life, New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 127, ISBN 0-
471-11459-6

^ Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215;
from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.