Albert Einstein

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.