Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein Biography

Albert Einstein was a physicist, born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Albert Einstein is the author of the theory of relativity, and he is known as a genius in history, also is the symbol of the scientific revolution of the twentieth century.

What did Albert Einstein contribute to science?

As stated by Russell:

“Everyone knows that Einstein did something amazing, but very few people know exactly what he did in reality.”

It is generally so, Einstein became a symbol of intellectual development, although not many people actually know what his contributions to science were.

Albert Einstein managed to prove the existence of atoms; explain the rotation of the planets around the sun; show the particles that break down the light; demonstrate that time and space are relative and stated that the universe is constantly expanding.

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, kingdom of Württemberg, German empire. His parents were Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch, who got married in 1876. Einstein’s ancestors, both paternal and maternal, were shopkeepers and artisans, and in a historical exercise, no matter how many attempts to go back in time, without slightly significant distinctions in any cultural or academic branch.

Einstein spent his childhood in the bosom of a Jewish family. His parents settled in1880 in München, where he lived his first 15 years of age. At that time Einstein was a student of a catholic school, being the only Jewish in it. His performance did not arouse any particular interest.

From an early age he developed a taste for mathematics; thanks to the interest generated by the operation of a compass, he began to develop a particular interest in physics. However, many historians affirm that Albert Einstein was not considered a good student, he did not like the study of languages, natural sciences or history; despite this, he began to excel in mathematics and developed a taste for music, especially the violin.

At the age of 15, his father, Herman Einstein, had to emigrate to Italy, a country in which his business failed as well as in Germany. Albert remained in Germany, he dropped out of school since he felt a bit isolated. However, sometime later, he needed to find some profession, so he aspired to enter the Zurich institute of technology (polytechnic) and was not accepted, due to lack of preparation in subjects such as languages and natural sciences. Einstein opted for a year of preparation in the school of Arau, then he had access to the polytechnic, meeting with his family in Switzerland, an academic stage that he experienced with a certain disdain, given his self-taught nature.

From his self-taught nature, guided by his intuition, he began to lean decisively for physics and decided to study with ardor and rigor Maxwell, Hertz, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff, Boltzmann.

In 1901, he would graduate from the polytechnic and be granted the Swiss citizenship. He remained unemployed for several months and experienced a very difficult financial situation.

In 1902, he got a job in the patent office of Berne, with a salary according to his aspirations and enough free time. This stage of his life is characterized by the loneliness of Albert, he distanced himself considerably from his family, friends and from society itself; he minimized everything that could be considered as a distracting element and went into study and meditation about the vicissitudes that clogged physics.

In 1903, he married Mileva Maric, a woman he met at the polytechnic. Two years later, Albert Einstein would publish five memories in a physics journal in Berlin. This work is considered a great manifestation of his ingenuity with which Einstein would print his mark in the twentieth century.

The first and third reports addressed the molecular dimensions and the Brownian motion; the second memory addressed the quantum properties of light, a discovery that would make him worthy of the Nobel Prize, although belated (1922). As for the fourth and fifth memories, he built the special theory of restricted relativity.

In 1907, Einstein raises the equivalence between gravity and acceleration. Two years later, and until 1914, he began to work in several universities.

In 1916, Albert Einstein poses and publishes successfully his general theory of relativity. Einstein announced that light, instead of propagating in a straight line, should be characterized by a deflected trajectory, something like the trajectory of a projectile, once it crosses an intense gravitational field.

The famous formula E = mc2 is one of the main conclusions of the theory of relativity. It describes the relationship between the mass (m) and the energy of a body (e). Energy is its mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Revealing the existence of large amounts of energy, even in the tiniest masses.

His theory was immediately striking. However, only until May 20, 1919, the day on which an English astronomical expedition was able to verify not only the deviation but also the order of magnitude of the deviation that Einstein had predicted, and only until that day, would confirm his theory about gravitational fields. The announcement of this observation shocked the scientific world, the academic opinion, and suddenly elevated Albert Einstein as the most famous man in the world

Einstein was called as a professor in Berlin. However, a short time later, Hitler would rise to power, and with it the wave of persecution towards the Jews. Albert Einstein moved to the united states in 1932, leaving all his assets in Germany, country to which he would never return.

Einstein’s history recalls his deeply pacifist nature, and once he learned about the progress made by Germany in the field of nuclear fission, warned the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the need to prepare for an atomic conflict, called for the release of atomic energies and declared with absolute conviction that the threat of this bomb would suffice to complete the war; although he strongly opposed the use of these against Japanese cities.

Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, at the age of 76, due to an internal hemorrhage.