Albert Einstein, (born March 14, 1879, Ulm, Württemberg, Germany—died April 18, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.), German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century.
Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally
a featherbed salesman and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success. His
mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. He had one sister, Maria (who went by
the name Maja), born two years after Albert.
Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his
encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the
needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came
at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred
little geometry book.”
Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and
chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read
science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority
left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place
and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and
creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything.
Yet another important influence on Einstein was a young medical student, Max Talmud (later Max
Talmey), who often had dinner at the Einstein home. Talmud became an informal tutor, introducing
Einstein to higher mathematics and philosophy. A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein
was 16 years old. Talmud had earlier introduced him to a children’s science series by Aaron
Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher (1867–68; Popular Books on Physical Science), in
which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph
wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10
years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave,
then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he
knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also
wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in
Magnetic Fields”).
After graduation in 1900, Einstein faced one of the greatest crises in his life. Because he
studied advanced subjects on his own, he often cut classes; this earned him the animosity of
some professors, especially Heinrich Weber. Unfortunately, Einstein asked Weber for a letter of
recommendation. Einstein was subsequently turned down for every academic position that he
applied to. He later wrote,
"I would have found [a job] long ago if Weber had not played a dishonest game with me."
Meanwhile, Einstein’s relationship with Maric deepened, but his parents vehemently opposed the
relationship. His mother especially objected to her Serbian background (Maric’s family was
Eastern Orthodox Christian). Einstein defied his parents, however, and in January 1902 he and
Maric even had a child, Lieserl, whose fate is unknown. (It is commonly thought that she died of
scarlet fever or was given up for adoption.)
In 1902 Einstein reached perhaps the lowest point in his life. He could not marry Maric and
support a family without a job, and his father’s business went bankrupt. Desperate and
unemployed, Einstein took lowly jobs tutoring children, but he was fired from even these jobs.
The turning point came later that year, when the father of his lifelong friend Marcel Grossmann
was able to recommend him for a position as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern. About
then, Einstein’s father became seriously ill and, just before he died, gave his blessing for his
son to marry Maric. For years, Einstein would experience enormous sadness remembering that his
father had died thinking him a failure.
With a small but steady income for the first time, Einstein felt confident enough to marry
Maric, which he did on January 6, 1903. Their children, Hans Albert and Eduard, were born in
Bern in 1904 and 1910, respectively. In hindsight, Einstein’s job at the patent office was a
blessing. He would quickly finish analyzing patent applications, leaving him time to daydream
about the vision that had obsessed him since he was 16: What would happen if you raced alongside
a light beam? While at the polytechnic school he had studied Maxwell’s equations, which describe
the nature of light, and discovered a fact unknown to James Clerk Maxwell himself—namely, that
the speed of light remains the same no matter how fast one moves. This violates Newton’s laws of
motion, however, because there is no absolute velocity in Isaac Newton’s theory. This insight
led Einstein to formulate the principle of relativity: “the speed of light is a constant in any
inertial frame (constantly moving frame).”
Albert Einstein’s time on earth ended on April 18, 1955, at the Princeton Hospital. In April of
1955, shortly after Einstein’s death, a pathologist removed his brain without the permission of
his family, and stored it in formaldehyde until around 2007, shortly before dying himself. In
that time, the brain of the man who has been credited with the some of the most beautiful and
imaginative ideas in all of science was photographed, fragmented—small sections parceled to
various researchers. His eyes were given to his ophthalmologist. These indignities in the name
of science netted several so-called findings—that the inferior parietal lobe, the part said to
be responsible for mathematical reasoning was wider, that the unique makeup of the Sulvian
fissure could have allowed more neurons to make connections. And yet, there remains the sense
that no differences can truly account for the cognitive abilities that made his genius so
striking.
One might expect a story of encroaching death, however restrained, to chronicle confusion and
fear. Medically supported death was a regular occurrence by the middle of the 20th century, and
Einstein died in his local hospital. But what is immediately striking from the account is the
simplicity and calmness with which Einstein met his own passing, which he regarded as a natural
event. The telling of this chapter is matter of fact, from his collapse at home, to his
diagnosis with a hemorrhage, to his reluctant trip to the hospital and refusal of a famous heart
surgeon. Dukas writes that he endured the pain from an internal hemorrhage (“the worst pain one
can have”) with a smile, occasionally taking morphine. On his final day, during a respite from
pain, he read the paper and talked about politics and scientific matters. “You’re really
hysterical—I have to pass on sometime, and it doesn’t really matter when.” he tells Dukas, when
she rises in the night to check on him.
Einstein refrigerator
In 1926, Einstein and his former student Leo Szilard patented a refrigerator design that used no moving parts and relied on the properties of gases to cool a system.
Einstein-Szilard letter
In 1939, Einstein co-authored a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him of the potential for Nazi Germany to develop nuclear weapons and urging the U.S. to pursue its own nuclear research.
Nuclear chain reaction
Einstein's famous equation, E=mc², provided the theoretical framework for nuclear fission, which can create a chain reaction that releases a tremendous amount of energy.
Theory of relativity
Einstein's theory of relativity, which he developed in the early 20th century, revolutionized our understanding of space, time, and gravity.
Photon theory of light
Einstein proposed that light was made up of individual particles, or photons, which helped to explain the behavior of light in certain situations.
Brownian motion
Einstein's study of the random motion of particles in a fluid, known as Brownian motion, helped to confirm the existence of atoms and molecules.
Unified field theory
Einstein spent much of the latter part of his life searching for a "theory of everything" that would unify all of the forces of nature into a single framework.
Bose-Einstein condensate
Einstein's work on the behavior of atoms at extremely low temperatures laid the groundwork for the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate, a new state of matter.
Critical opalescence
Einstein helped to explain the phenomenon of critical opalescence, which occurs when certain fluids near a critical point become turbid and opaque.
Gravitational waves
Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves, which were finally observed in 2015 by the LIGO experiment.