The article below is the extract of American Social Leaders published on Jan 1, 2001.
Albert Einstein was the most renowned
scientist of the 20th century and one of the greatest of all time. His
remarkable insights and creative imagination enabled him to bring about great
advances in theoretical physics.
Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, the son
of Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch. When Albert was a year old the family
moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein ran a small electrochemical plant.
Albert was not a notably good student, but scientific subjects and geometry
interested him. His parents moved to Italy in 1894, and Albert later followed
them. In 1895 his desire to enter the Federal Technical Institute (ETH) in
Zurich, Switzerland was disappointed because he failed the entrance examination
in subjects outside physics and mathematics, his principal interests. He went
for a year to a secondary school in Aarau, Switzerland, and in 1896 was
admitted to the ETH. He passed the examinations in 1902, but not brilliantly.
In 1902, Einstein went to work at the Swiss
Patent Office in Bern, the capital, where he had enough free time to write. In
1903 he married a Hungarian student he had met at the ETH, Mileva Maric; she
became the mother of his two sons. His earliest papers were on statistical
thermodynamics. In 1905 Einstein published a series of papers in an important
journal, Annalen der Physik, that had a notable influence on physics. In one
paper he all but proved the existence of molecules by theorizing; the essay was
accepted by the University of Zurich as his Ph.D. dissertation. In another
paper in the series he proved that light is a wave as well as a particle; and
in still another, of major importance, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving
Bodies," he developed the outline of what was eventually called the
special theory of relativity. Another paper in 1905 contained his famous
equation E = mc^2, meaning that the energy in matter (E) is equal to its mass
(m) multiplied by the square of the velocity of light (c). Stars, according to
this theory, can emit large quantities of light yet lose very little mass. The
equation anticipated the splitting of the atom and the possibility of the atom
bomb.
The major importance of Einstein's work
began to be recognized. In 1909 he became a professor at the University of
Zurich, and two years later he was at the German University in Prague. He
returned to Zurich for a professorship at the ETH, having in the meantime taken
Swiss citizenship, which he retained though also acquiring German citizenship.
In 1914 he went to Berlin at the invitation of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
as director of scientific research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (now the Max
Planck Institute), remaining there until 1933.
During World War I, Einstein maintained a
quiet pacifism, being absorbed deeply in research. In 1915 he developed and
published his general theory of relativity. His propositions regarding the
behavior of light were tested and verified in 1919 by scientists on a British
expedition that photographed a solar eclipse. When their findings were
reported, Einstein and his theory of relativity became famous.
In 1921 the Nobel Prize for Physics was
awarded to Einstein for his services to theoretical physics and in particular
for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. A lecture engagement
in Japan prevented him from attending the ceremonies in Stockholm, but he
delivered his address the following year.
Einstein separated from his wife in 1914
and divorced her in 1919, later marrying his widowed cousin, Elsa Einstein. He
became more conscious of his Jewish origins and spoke for Zionism during the
1920s. Though he encouraged the establishment of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, he remained in Europe, where he supported the League of Nations in
its work for peace. In the years before Hitler, Einstein had been attacked by
anti-Semitic scientists, some of whom criticized his work as "Jewish
physics." In 1934 the Nazi government seized Einstein's property and
revoked his German citizenship. At the time he and his wife were in Princeton,
New Jersey where he had been invited to take a half-time appointment at the
Institute for Advanced Study. He chose not to return to Germany and decided to
become a full-time member of the institute, where he continued his work for the
rest of his life. Chiefly he was seeking to create a unified field theory that
would link light and electromagnetism, a goal he never fully achieved. He
became an American citizen in 1940.
During the 1930s Einstein spoke out
strongly against the Nazi government and in favor of world peace. After nuclear
fission was achieved in Germany in 1938, a group of scientists, fearful that
the Germans might develop armaments based on fission, urged Einstein to write
to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning of the danger and proposing that
American scientists study the matter. The consequence was the development of
the A-bomb and its explosion over Japanese cities. Though Einstein had
abandoned pacifism and considered that Nazi German aggression could be halted
only by military force, he did not involve himself in the actual development of
nuclear weapons.
Einstein retired from the Institute for
Advanced Study in 1945 and lived quietly in the town of Princeton, where he was
regarded with affection and respect. In 1952 he was invited to become the
president of Israel, but he declined. He actively promoted international
government and criticized efforts in the United States to limit free speech for
the sake of internal security. Not long before his death he joined the English
philosopher Bertrand Russell in issuing a statement warning world leaders of
the imminent peril of nuclear war.
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