ALBERT EINSTEIN

Born : 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Kingdom of Wrttemberg, German Empire

Died : 18 April 1955 (aged 76) in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Residence : Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria (present-day Czech Republic),
Belgium, United States

Citizenship :
1. Subject of the Kingdom of Wrttemberg during the German Empire (18791896)
Stateless (18961901)
2. Citizen of Switzerland (19011955)
3. Austrian subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (19111912)
4. Subject of the Kingdom of Prussia during the German Empire (19141918)[note 1]
5. German citizen of the Free State of Prussia (Weimar Republic, 19181933)
6. Citizen of the United States (19401955)

Education :
Swiss Federal Polytechnic (18961900; B.A., 1900)
University of Zurich (Ph.D., 1905)

Known for :
General relativity
Special relativity
Photoelectric effect
E=mc2 (Massenergy equivalence)
E=hf (PlanckEinstein relation)
Theory of Brownian motion
Einstein field equations
BoseEinstein statistics
BoseEinstein condensate
Gravitational wave
Cosmological constant
Unified field theory
EPR paradox
List of other concepts

Spouse(s) : Mileva Mari (m. 1903; div. 1919) and Elsa Lwenthal (m. 1919; her
death 1936)
Children : "Lieserl" Einstein (1902), Hans Albert Einstein (1904), and Eduard "Tete"
Einstein (1910)

Awards :
Barnard Medal (1920)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)
Matteucci Medal (1921)
ForMemRS (1921)[4]
 Copley Medal (1925)[4]
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1926)
Max Planck Medal (1929)
Time Person of the Century (1999)

Scientific career
Fields : Physics, philosophy
Institutions :
Swiss Patent Office (Bern) (19021909)
University of Bern (19081909)
University of Zurich (19091911)
Charles University in Prague (19111912)
ETH Zurich (19121914)
Prussian Academy of Sciences (19141933)
Humboldt University of Berlin (19141933)
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (director, 19171933)
German Physical Society (president, 19161918)
Leiden University (visits, 1920)
Institute for Advanced Study (19331955)
Caltech (visits, 19311933)
Thesis : Eine neue Bestimmung der Molekldimensionen (A New
Determination of Molecular Dimensions) (1905)
Doctoral advisor : Alfred Kleiner
Other academic advisors :Heinrich Friedrich Weber
Influenced :
Ernst G. Straus
Nathan Rosen
Le Szilrd

Signature :

Photos about Albert Einstein

Einstein in age 3, 1882 Einstein in age 14, 1893

Colourized photo of Albert Einstein, c. 1919. Einstein with his wife, Elsa 1921

Einstein accepting U.S. citizenship certificate from judge Phillip Forma

The 1927 Solvay Conference in Brussels, a gathering of the world's top physicists. Einstein is
in the center.
Albert Einstein in his study, Princeton, N.J. Einstein in 1947

On his 70th birthday, Albert Einstein greeting children from the Reception Shelter of United

A discussion of the unique features of Albert Einsteins brain.

EINSTEINS EARLY LIFE (1879-1904)

ALBERT EINSTEIN was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. After education
in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, and professorships in Bern, Zurich, and Prague, he was
appointed Director of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin in 1914. Albert Einstein
grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Munich. As a child, Einstein became fascinated
by music (he played the violin), mathematics and science. He dropped out of school in 1894
and moved to Switzerland, where he resumed his schooling and later gained admission to
the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. In 1896, he renounced his German
citizenship, and remained officially stateless before becoming a Swiss citizen in 1901.

While at Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with his fellow student Mileva
Maric, but his parents opposed the match and he lacked the money to marry. The couple had
an illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, born in early 1902, of whom little is known. After finding a
position as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein married Maric in 1903; they
would have two more children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910).

EINSTEINS MIRACLE YEAR (1905)

While working at the patent office, Einstein did some of the most creative work of
his life, producing no fewer than four groundbreaking articles in 1905 alone. In the first
paper, he applied the quantum theory (developed by German physicist Max Planck) to light
in order to explain the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect, by which a material
will emit electrically charged particles when hit by light. The second article contained
Einsteins experimental proof of the existence of atoms, which he got by analyzing the
phenomenon of Brownian motion, in which tiny particles were suspended in water.

In the third and most famous article, titled On the Electrodynamics of Moving
Bodies, Einstein confronted the apparent contradiction between two principal theories of
physics: Isaac Newtons concepts of absolute space and time and James Clerk Maxwells
idea that the speed of light was a constant. To do this, Einstein introduced his special theory
of relativity, which held that the laws of physics are the same even for objects moving in
different inertial frames (i.e. at constant speeds relative to each other), and that the speed of
light is a constant in all inertial frames. A fourth paper concerned the fundamental
relationship between mass and energy, concepts viewed previously as completely separate.
Einsteins famous equation E = mc2 (where c was the constant speed of light) expressed
this relationship.
 Besides that, Einstein found about photoelectric effect. Shortly, photoelectric effect is
a phenomenon of the ejection of electrons from a metal when irradiated by light.

Planck's explanation of the blackbody spectrum was published in 1900. Five years
later, Einstein published a paper which used Planck's idea of quanta to explain the
photoelectric effect's quirks. He wrote: In accordance with the assumption to be considered
here, the energy of a light ray spreading out from a point source is not continuously
distributed over an increasing space, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta which
are localized at points in space, which move without dividing, and which can only be
produced and absorbed as complete units. In other words, Einstein proposed that light
behaved not like a wave, but like a particle: the photon

How does this explain the observed photoelectric phenomena?

1. The energy of the electrons does NOT depend on the intensity of the light.
o Each electron absorbs only one photon at a time. If the absorbed energy is
large enough to expel the electron from the metal, it leaves. If not, the
electron dissipates its energy in collisions with nearby electrons and atoms
before it can absorb another photon.
o And yes, this implies that the time it takes for an electron to lose the energy
gained in one absorption is much smaller than the interval between
absorptions. Under ordinary circumstances, it is.
2. The electrons always appear AS SOON AS the light reaches the plate (though a
feeble light produces only a few).
o As soon as a single photon containing sufficient energy strikes the source
plate, it will knock an electron free. There is no need to wait for multiple
waves to build up enough energy.
3. NO electrons are produced if the frequency of the light waves is below a critical
value.
o Since the energy of each photon is

o below some critical frequency, no photon has enough energy to knock an

electron free.

FROM ZURICH TO BERLIN (1906-1932)

Einstein continued working at the patent office until 1909, when he finally found a
full-time academic post at the University of Zurich. In 1913, he arrived at the University of
Berlin, where he was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. The move
coincided with the beginning of Einsteins romantic relationship with a cousin of his, Elsa
Lowenthal, whom he would eventually marry after divorcing Mileva. In 1915, Einstein
published the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterwork. This theory
found that gravity, as well as motion, can affect time and space. According to Einsteins
equivalence principlewhich held that gravitys pull in one direction is equivalent to an
acceleration of speed in the opposite directionif light is bent by acceleration, it must also be
bent by gravity. In 1919, two expeditions sent to perform experiments during a solar eclipse
found that light rays from distant stars were deflected or bent by the gravity of the sun in just
the way Einstein had predicted.

The general theory of relativity was the first major theory of gravity since Newtons,
more than 250 years before, and the results made a tremendous splash worldwide, with the
London Times proclaiming a Revolution in Science and a New Theory of the Universe.
Einstein began touring the world, speaking in front of crowds of thousands in the United
States, Britain, France and Japan. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the
photoelectric effect, as his work on relativity remained controversial at the time. Einstein
soon began building on his theories to form a new science of cosmology, which held that the
universe was dynamic instead of static, and was capable of expanding and contracting.

EINSTEIN MOVES TO THE UNITED STATES (1933-1939)

A longtime pacifist and a Jew, Einstein became the target of hostility in Weimar
Germany, where many citizens were suffering plummeting economic fortunes in the
aftermath of defeat in the Great War. In December 1932, a month before Adolf
Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Einstein made the decision to emigrate to the United
States, where he took a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey. He would never again enter the country of his birth.

By the time Einsteins wife Elsa died in 1936, he had been involved for more than a
decade with his efforts to find a unified field theory, which would incorporate all the laws of
the universe, and those of physics, into a single framework. In the process, Einstein became
increasingly isolated from many of his colleagues, who were focused mainly on the quantum
theory and its implications, rather than on relativity.

EINSTEINS LATER LIFE (1939-1955)

In the late 1930s, Einsteins theories, including his equation E=mc 2, helped form the
basis of the development of the atomic bomb. In 1939, at the urging of the Hungarian
physicist Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to
approve funding for the development of uranium before Germany could gain the upper hand.
Einstein, who became a U.S. citizen in 1940 but retained his Swiss citizenship, was never
asked to participate in the resulting Manhattan Project, as the U.S. government suspected his
socialist and pacifist views. In 1952, Einstein declined an offer extended by David Ben-
Gurion, Israels premier, to become president of Israel.

Throughout the last years of his life, Einstein continued his quest for a unified field
theory. Though he published an article on the theory in Scientific American in 1950, it
remained unfinished when he died, of an aortic aneurysm, five years later. In the decades
following his death, Einsteins reputation and stature in the world of physics only grew, as
physicists began to unravel the mystery of the so-called strong force (the missing piece of
his unified field theory) and space satellites further verified the principles of his cosmology.

He became a professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced

Study in Princeton beginning the fall of 1933, became an American citizen in the summer of
1936, and died in Princeton, New Jersey on April 18, 1955. In the Berlin where in 1900 Max
Planck discovered the quantum, Einstein fifteen years later explained to us that gravitation is
not something foreign and mysterious acting through space, but a manifestation of space
geometry itself. He came to understand that the universe does not go on from everlasting to
everlasting, but begins with a big bang.
Of all the questions with which the great thinkers have occupied themselves in all
lands and all centuries, none has ever claimed greater primacy than the origin of the universe,
and no contributions to this issue ever made by any man anytime have proved themselves
richer in illuminating power than those that Einstein made.

FACT ABOUT EINSTEIN

Almost immediately after Albert Einstein learned of the atomic bomb's use in Japan,
he became an advocate for nuclear disarmament. He formed the Emergency Committee of
Atomic Scientists and backed Manhattan Project scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer in his
opposition to the hydrogen bomb.