an essay on albert einstein

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Albert Einstein

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 16, 2019 | Original: October 27, 2009

The German-born physicist Albert Einstein developed the first of his groundbreaking theories while working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern. After making his name with four scientific articles published in 1905, he went on to win worldwide fame for his general theory of relativity and a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his explanation of the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect. An outspoken pacifist who was publicly identified with the Zionist movement, Einstein emigrated from Germany to the United States when the Nazis took power before World War II. He lived and worked in Princeton, New Jersey, for the remainder of his life.

Einstein’s Early Life (1879-1904)

Born on March 14, 1879, in the southern German city of Ulm, 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.

Did you know? 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.

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).

Einstein’s 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 Einstein’s 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 Newton’s concepts of absolute space and time and James Clerk Maxwell’s 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. Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 (where “c” was the constant speed of light) expressed this relationship.

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 Einstein’s 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 Einstein’s equivalence principle–which held that gravity’s pull in one direction is equivalent to an acceleration of speed in the opposite direction–if 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 Newton’s, 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 (1933-39)

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 Einstein’s 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.

Einstein’s Later Life (1939-1955)

In the late 1930s, Einstein’s theories, including his equation E=mc2, 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, Israel’s 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, Einstein’s 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.

HISTORY Vault: Secrets of Einstein's Brain

Originally stolen by the doctor trusted to perform his autopsy, scientists over the decades have examined the brain of Albert Einstein to try and determine what made this seemingly normal man tick.

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Essay on Albert Einstein: The Father of Modern Physics

• Updated on  
• Nov 30, 2023

Science is a vast field in which thousands of scientists contributed to exploring and discovering new theories. One of the most renowned and influential scientists is Albert Einstein . He was a German theoretical physicist popularly known as the “ Father of Modern Physics ”. Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 and devoted his life to studying physics. He is famous for the theory of relativity which explains the effect of speed on mass, time, and space. He included the speed of light in the formula of the theory of relativity. Stay tuned and read this article to get a sample essay on Albert Einstein and learn more about his life and contributions to the field of physics!

Table of Contents

• 1 Short Essay on Albert Einstein in 100 Words
• 2 Essay on Albert Einstein in 150 Words
• 3 Essay on Albert Einstein in 300 Words

Also Read: Greatest Scientist of All Times

Short Essay on Albert Einstein in 100 Words

Albert Einstein is the greatest scientist in the world. His theories are still studied in all the academic institutions. He laid the foundation of Modern physics through his famous discoveries. Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 in Ulm. His family ran a shop there and his father Herman Einstein wanted him to run a business but he was strongly inclined and fascinated by the science.

His family shifted from Munich to Milan in 1890, where Einstein received Technical High School Education. At school, he used to have fights with the authority because of the teaching pattern. He believed that due to strict rules and teaching patterns, students could not think creatively and their growth could have been improved. Due to this behavior, he left the academic institutions without the completion of his degree many times. 

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Essay on Albert Einstein in 150 Words

Albert Einstein was an intelligent person. At the age of 12 he started learning Calculus on his own and in no less than 2 years he mastered the concepts of Integral and Differential Calculus. Post completion of his degree in engineering, he got a job in the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. He worked there as a patent clerk and devoted most of his time to theoretical physics. Along with work he also finished his Postdoctoral degree and became a professor at the University of Zurich . 

In 1905, Albert Einstein published 4 papers that had a revolutionary impact on the history of physics, that are Brownian motion, special relativity, photoelectric effect, and equivalence of mass and energy. The famous theory of relativity is referred to as the E=mc 2 equation.

His theory of relativity was used in making the atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan. However, Albert Einstein was against violence and war. He proposed a new theory of relativity which neglects the relativity rules formulated by Isaac Newton.

According to the new Einstein theory of relativity, light and time are not constant. He proposed that time travel can be done if we follow the speed of light. Although, no spacecraft has been designed to date which can travel with the speed of light.

Also Read: How to Become a Physicist in India?

Essay on Albert Einstein in 300 Words

Albert Einstein, the famous and most influential scientist of the 19th century revolutionized the understanding of space, time, energy, and mass. His equation of relativity E=mc 2 equation has a great impact on the development of nuclear science .

He was born in Ulm and devoted his entire life to studying and exploring science. During his childhood, he faced some difficulty in understanding languages and it is believed that he suffered from dyslexia.  

He developed a strong inclination toward science after his father gifted him a compass whose magnetic needle pointed toward the North.

When he was in college, he used to oppose the way of teaching and was suspended from the institute many times. He believed that strict rules and regulations restrict the thinking ability of the students which kills creativity.

In 1905, he completed his PhD degree from the University of Zurich. Initially, he worked as a Patent clerk in Bern Switzerland, and later became a professor.

He made several discoveries and published 4 papers in the journal Annalen der Physik. His papers marked a revolution in Modern Physics. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for photoelectric effect. 

His most famous work is the Theory of Relativity. This theory explains about the connection between space and time and how gravity is caused by the curvature of spacetime. It has applications in the fields of particle physics, cosmology, and astronomy.

In 1515, Albert Einstein proposed the General theory of relativity which is a complete version of the theory of relativity he made some modifications, and this theory has its proof through the results obtained from many experiments. 

Brownian motion is also one of the discoveries made by Albert Einstein which tells about the random motion of particles in the fluid. 

Albert Einstein was one of the four signatories who were against World War II. He was against Nazis and opposed Hitler in Germany. Due to this, he had to emigrate to the United States in 1933. 

He died on 18 April 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, and worked till his last time. His discoveries have a great impact on the world today. The theories he proposed is still taught in academic institution and he is remembered as the greatest scientist of all time. 

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Ans: Albert Einstein, the famous physicist who gave the famous theory of relativity, and the photoelectric effect won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for Physics. He was awarded the prize, especially for the photoelectric effect. Einstein had inspired the entire world to think creatively and follow the lead to discover something new.

Ans: Albert Einstein was a German theoretical physicist who was born on 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Germany . He proposed the famous theory of relativity and the theory of photoelectric effect. Einstein started working as a patent clerk and initially after completing PhD became a Professor at the University of Zurich. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

Ans: 10 facts about Albert Einstein: -Albert Einstein was born in 1879 in Germany but lived in Italy, Switzerland and Czechia. Later he moved to the US due to World War II . -He built a strong inclination towards science after receiving a compass as a gift from his father. -In his childhood, he faced difficulty with understanding languages.  -Albert Einstein suffered from dyslexia but overcame it and made some of the famous discoveries in science.  -At the age of 16, he wrote his first scholarly paper that explained magnetism. -He published 4 papers in 1905. -Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. -In 1933, he shifted to the US, in Princeton, New Jersey because of the World War II condition. -Hitler was against Einstein, and the Nazis seized power in Germany. -Albert Einstein worked till his last breath and died at the age of 76 on 18 April 1955.

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Albert Einstein

One of the most influential scientists of the 20 th century, Albert Einstein was a physicist who developed the theory of relativity.

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Quick Facts

Early life, family, and education, einstein’s iq, patent clerk, inventions and discoveries, nobel prize in physics, wives and children, travel diaries, becoming a u.s. citizen, einstein and the atomic bomb, time travel and quantum theory, personal life, death and final words, einstein’s brain, einstein in books and movies: "oppenheimer" and more, who was albert einstein.

Albert Einstein was a German mathematician and physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. In the following decade, he immigrated to the United States after being targeted by the German Nazi Party. His work also had a major impact on the development of atomic energy. In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory. He died in April 1955 at age 76. With his passion for inquiry, Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20 th century.

FULL NAME: Albert Einstein BORN: March 14, 1879 DIED: April 18, 1955 BIRTHPLACE: Ulm, Württemberg, Germany SPOUSES: Mileva Einstein-Maric (1903-1919) and Elsa Einstein (1919-1936) CHILDREN: Lieserl, Hans, and Eduard ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. He grew up in a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who, with his brother, founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-based company that mass-produced electrical equipment. Einstein’s mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him.

Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. However, he felt alienated there and struggled with the institution’s rigid pedagogical style. He also had what were considered speech challenges. However, he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin, which would stay with him into his later years. Most significantly, Einstein’s youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry.

Toward the end of the 1880s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Einstein. Talmud had introduced his pupil to a children’s science text that inspired Einstein to dream about the nature of light. Thus, during his teens, Einstein penned what would be seen as his first major paper, “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.”

Hermann relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after his business lost out on a major contract. Einstein was left at a relative’s boarding house in Munich to complete his schooling at the Luitpold.

Faced with military duty when he turned of age, Einstein allegedly withdrew from classes, using a doctor’s note to excuse himself and claim nervous exhaustion. With their son rejoining them in Italy, his parents understood Einstein’s perspective but were concerned about his future prospects as a school dropout and draft dodger.

Einstein was eventually able to gain admission into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, specifically due to his superb mathematics and physics scores on the entrance exam. He was still required to complete his pre-university education first and thus attended a high school in Aarau, Switzerland, helmed by Jost Winteler. Einstein lived with the schoolmaster’s family and fell in love with Winteler’s daughter Marie. Einstein later renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century.

Einstein’s intelligence quotient was estimated to be around 160, but there are no indications he was ever actually tested.

Psychologist David Wechsler didn’t release the first edition of the WAIS cognitive test, which evolved into the WAIS-IV test commonly used today, until 1955—shortly before Einstein’s death. The maximum score of the current version is 160, with an IQ of 135 or higher ranking in the 99 th percentile.

Magazine columnist Marilyn vos Savant has the highest-ever recorded IQ at 228 and was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records in the late 1980s. However, Guinness discontinued the category because of debates about testing accuracy. According to Parade , individuals believed to have higher IQs than Einstein include Leonardo Da Vinci , Marie Curie , Nikola Tesla , and Nicolaus Copernicus .

After graduating from university, Einstein faced major challenges in terms of finding academic positions, having alienated some professors over not attending class more regularly in lieu of studying independently.

Einstein eventually found steady work in 1902 after receiving a referral for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his university studies and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

In 1905—seen by many as a “miracle year” for the theorist—Einstein had four papers published in the Annalen der Physik , one of the best-known physics journals of the era. Two focused on the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. The two others, which outlined E=MC 2 and the special theory of relativity, were defining for Einstein’s career and the course of the study of physics.

As a physicist, Einstein had many discoveries, but he is perhaps best known for his theory of relativity and the equation E=MC 2 , which foreshadowed the development of atomic power and the atomic bomb.

Theory of Relativity

Einstein first proposed a special theory of relativity in 1905 in his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which took physics in an electrifying new direction. The theory explains that space and time are actually connected, and Einstein called this joint structure space-time.

By November 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which accounted for gravity’s relationship to space-time. Einstein considered this theory the culmination of his life research. He was convinced of the merits of general relativity because it allowed for a more accurate prediction of planetary orbits around the sun, which fell short in Isaac Newton ’s theory. It also offered a more expansive, nuanced explanation of how gravitational forces worked.

Einstein’s assertions were affirmed via observations and measurements by British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson and Sir Arthur Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse, and thus a global science icon was born. Today, the theories of relativity underpin the accuracy of GPS technology, among other phenomena.

Even so, Einstein did make one mistake when developing his general theory, which naturally predicted the universe is either expanding or contracting. Einstein didn’t believe this prediction initially, instead holding onto the belief that the universe was a fixed, static entity. To account for, this he factored in a “cosmological constant” to his equation. His later theories directly contracted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux. Then, astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe. Hubble and Einstein met at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1931.

Decades after Einstein’s death, in 2018, a team of scientists confirmed one aspect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity: that the light from a star passing close to a black hole would be stretched to longer wavelengths by the overwhelming gravitational field. Tracking star S2, their measurements indicated that the star’s orbital velocity increased to over 25 million kph as it neared the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, its appearance shifting from blue to red as its wavelengths stretched to escape the pull of gravity.

Einstein’s E=MC²

Einstein’s 1905 paper on the matter-energy relationship proposed the equation E=MC²: the energy of a body (E) is equal to the mass (M) of that body times the speed of light squared (C²). This equation suggested that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, a discovery that heralded atomic power.

Famed quantum theorist Max Planck backed up the assertions of Einstein, who thus became a star of the lecture circuit and academia, taking on various positions before becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (today is known as the Max Planck Institute for Physics) from 1917 to 1933.

In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, since his ideas on relativity were still considered questionable. He wasn’t actually given the award until the following year due to a bureaucratic ruling, and during his acceptance speech, he still opted to speak about relativity.

Einstein married Mileva Maric on January 6, 1903. While attending school in Zurich, Einstein met Maric, a Serbian physics student. Einstein continued to grow closer to Maric, but his parents were strongly against the relationship due to her ethnic background.

Nonetheless, Einstein continued to see her, with the two developing a correspondence via letters in which he expressed many of his scientific ideas. Einstein’s father passed away in 1902, and the couple married shortly thereafter.

Einstein and Mavic had three children. Their daughter, Lieserl, was born in 1902 before their wedding and might have been later raised by Maric’s relatives or given up for adoption. Her ultimate fate and whereabouts remain a mystery. The couple also had two sons: Hans Albert Einstein, who became a well-known hydraulic engineer, and Eduard “Tete” Einstein, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man.

The Einsteins’ marriage would not be a happy one, with the two divorcing in 1919 and Maric having an emotional breakdown in connection to the split. Einstein, as part of a settlement, agreed to give Maric any funds he might receive from possibly winning the Nobel Prize in the future.

During his marriage to Maric, Einstein had also begun an affair some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal . The couple wed in 1919, the same year of Einstein’s divorce. He would continue to see other women throughout his second marriage, which ended with Löwenthal’s death in 1936.

In his 40s, Einstein traveled extensively and journaled about his experiences. Some of his unfiltered private thoughts are shared two volumes of The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein .

The first volume , published in 2018, focuses on his five-and-a-half month trip to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain. The scientist started a sea journey to Japan in Marseille, France, in autumn of 1922, accompanied by his second wife, Elsa. They journeyed through the Suez Canal, then to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Japan. The couple returned to Germany via Palestine and Spain in March 1923.

The second volume , released in 2023, covers three months that he spent lecturing and traveling in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in 1925.

The Travel Diaries contain unflattering analyses of the people he came across, including the Chinese, Sri Lankans, and Argentinians, a surprise coming from a man known for vehemently denouncing racism in his later years. In an entry for November 1922, Einstein refers to residents of Hong Kong as “industrious, filthy, lethargic people.”

In 1933, Einstein took on a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he would spend the rest of his life.

At the time the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler , were gaining prominence with violent propaganda and vitriol in an impoverished post-World War I Germany. The Nazi Party influenced other scientists to label Einstein’s work “Jewish physics.” Jewish citizens were barred from university work and other official jobs, and Einstein himself was targeted to be killed. Meanwhile, other European scientists also left regions threatened by Germany and immigrated to the United States, with concern over Nazi strategies to create an atomic weapon.

Not long after moving and beginning his career at IAS, Einstein expressed an appreciation for American meritocracy and the opportunities people had for free thought, a stark contrast to his own experiences coming of age. In 1935, Einstein was granted permanent residency in his adopted country and became an American citizen five years later.

In America, Einstein mostly devoted himself to working on a unified field theory, an all-embracing paradigm meant to unify the varied laws of physics. However, during World War II, he worked on Navy-based weapons systems and made big monetary donations to the military by auctioning off manuscripts worth millions.

In 1939, Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb and to galvanize the United States to create its own nuclear weapons.

The United States would eventually initiate the Manhattan Project , though Einstein wouldn’t take a direct part in its implementation due to his pacifist and socialist affiliations. Einstein was also the recipient of much scrutiny and major distrust from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover . In July 1940, the U.S. Army Intelligence office denied Einstein a security clearance to participate in the project, meaning J. Robert Oppenheimer and the scientists working in Los Alamos were forbidden from consulting with him.

Einstein had no knowledge of the U.S. plan to use atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. When he heard of the first bombing at Hiroshima, he reportedly said, “Ach! The world is not ready for it.”

Einstein became a major player in efforts to curtail usage of the A-bomb. The following year, he and Szilard founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, and in 1947, via an essay for The Atlantic Monthly , Einstein espoused working with the United Nations to maintain nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conflict.

After World War II, Einstein continued to work on his unified field theory and key aspects of his general theory of relativity, including time travel, wormholes, black holes, and the origins of the universe.

However, he felt isolated in his endeavors since the majority of his colleagues had begun focusing their attention on quantum theory. In the last decade of his life, Einstein, who had always seen himself as a loner, withdrew even further from any sort of spotlight, preferring to stay close to Princeton and immerse himself in processing ideas with colleagues.

In the late 1940s, Einstein became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), seeing the parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany and Black people in the United States. He corresponded with scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois as well as performer Paul Robeson and campaigned for civil rights, calling racism a “disease” in a 1946 Lincoln University speech.

Einstein was very particular about his sleep schedule, claiming he needed 10 hours of sleep per day to function well. His theory of relativity allegedly came to him in a dream about cows being electrocuted. He was also known to take regular naps. He is said to have held objects like a spoon or pencil in his hand while falling asleep. That way, he could wake up before hitting the second stage of sleep—a hypnagogic process believed to boost creativity and capture sleep-inspired ideas.

Although sleep was important to Einstein, socks were not. He was famous for refusing to wear them. According to a letter he wrote to future wife Elsa, he stopped wearing them because he was annoyed by his big toe pushing through the material and creating a hole.

One of the most recognizable photos of the 20 th century shows Einstein sticking out his tongue while leaving his 72 nd birthday party on March 14, 1951.

According to Discovery.com , Einstein was leaving his party at Princeton when a swarm of reporters and photographers approached and asked him to smile. Tired from doing so all night, he refused and rebelliously stuck his tongue out at the crowd for a moment before turning away. UPI photographer Arthur Sasse captured the shot.

Einstein was amused by the picture and ordered several prints to give to his friends. He also signed a copy of the photo that sold for $125,000 at a 2017 auction.

Einstein died on April 18, 1955, at age 76 at the University Medical Center at Princeton. The previous day, while working on a speech to honor Israel’s seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

He was taken to the hospital for treatment but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate. “I want to go when I want,” he stated at the time. “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”

According to the BBC, Einstein muttered a few words in German at the moment of his death. However, the nurse on duty didn’t speak German so their translation was lost forever.

In a 2014 interview , Life magazine photographer Ralph Morse said the hospital was swarmed by journalists, photographers, and onlookers once word of Einstein’s death spread. Morse decided to travel to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies, offering the superintendent alcohol to gain access. He was able to photograph the office just as Einstein left it.

After an autopsy, Einstein’s corpse was moved to a Princeton funeral home later that afternoon and then taken to Trenton, New Jersey, for a cremation ceremony. Morse said he was the only photographer present for the cremation, but Life managing editor Ed Thompson decided not to publish an exclusive story at the request of Einstein’s son Hans.

During Einstein’s autopsy, pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey had removed his brain, reportedly without his family’s consent, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience.

However, during his life, Einstein participated in brain studies, and at least one biography claimed he hoped researchers would study his brain after he died. Einstein’s brain is now located at the Princeton University Medical Center. In keeping with his wishes, the rest of his body was cremated and the ashes scattered in a secret location.

In 1999, Canadian scientists who were studying Einstein’s brain found that his inferior parietal lobe, the area that processes spatial relationships, 3D-visualization, and mathematical thought, was 15 percent wider than in people who possess normal intelligence. According to The New York Times , the researchers believe it might help explain why Einstein was so intelligent.

In 2011, the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia received thin slices of Einstein’s brain from Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams, a neuropathologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and put them on display. Rorke-Adams said she received the brain slides from Harvey.

Since Einstein’s death, a veritable mountain of books have been written on the iconic thinker’s life, including Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe, both from 2007. Einstein’s own words are presented in the collection The World As I See It .

Einstein has also been portrayed on screen. Michael Emil played a character called “The Professor,” clearly based on Einstein, in the 1985 film Insignificance —in which alternate versions of Einstein, Marilyn Monroe , Joe DiMaggio , and Joseph McCarthy cross paths in a New York City hotel.

Walter Matthau portrayed Einstein in the fictional 1994 comedy I.Q. , in which he plays matchmaker for his niece played by Meg Ryan . Einstein was also a character in the obscure comedy films I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen (1970) and Young Einstein (1988).

A much more historically accurate depiction of Einstein came in 2017, when he was the subject of the first season of Genius , a 10-part scripted miniseries by National Geographic. Johnny Flynn played a younger version of the scientist, while Geoffrey Rush portrayed Einstein in his later years after he had fled Germany. Ron Howard was the director.

Tom Conti plays Einstein in the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer , directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy as scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer during his involvement with the Manhattan Project.

• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or are the others crazy?
• A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
• I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
• If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
• Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.
• [T]he distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.
• Living in this “great age,” it is hard to understand that we belong to this mad, degenerate species, which imputes free will to itself. If only there were somewhere an island for the benevolent and the prudent! Then also I would want to be an ardent patriot.
• I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] is not playing at dice.
• How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.
• I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.
• I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
• My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault and no merit of my own.
• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
• An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
• My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family.
• Everybody is a genius.

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Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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The Year Of Albert Einstein

His discoveries in 1905 would forever change our understanding of the universe. Amid the centennial hoopla, the trick is to separate the man from the math

Richard Panek

Over four months, March through June 1905, Albert Einstein produced four papers that revolutionized science. One explained how to measure the size of molecules in a liquid, a second posited how to determine their movement, and a third described how light comes in packets called photons—the foundation of quantum physics and the idea that eventually won him the Nobel Prize. A fourth paper introduced special relativity, leading physicists to reconsider notions of space and time that had sufficed since the dawn of civilization. Then, a few months later, almost as an afterthought, Einstein pointed out in a fifth paper that matter and energy can be interchangeable at the atomic level specifically, that E=mc2, the scientific basis of nuclear energy and the most famous mathematical equation in history.

No wonder 2005 has been designated worldwide as a celebration of all things Einstein. International physics organizations have proclaimed this centenary as the World Year of Physics, and thousands of scientific and educational institutions have followed their lead. Images of Einstein have become even more common than usual, discussions of his impact a cultural drumbeat. “His name is synonymous with science,” says Brian Schwartz, a physicist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “If you ask kids to show you what a scientist looks like, the first thing they’ll draw is wild white hair.”

In many ways, Einstein’s “miracle year” inaugurated the modern era, with its jumpy, discordant points of view and shocks to established truths. But the time, generally, was one of great cultural and social upheaval. Also in 1905, Sigmund Freud published his essay “Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious” and an account of one of his first psychoanalyses. Pablo Picasso switched from his Blue Period to his Rose Period. James Joyce completed his first book, Dubliners . Still, no one’s rethinking of universal assumptions was more profound than Einstein’s.

Largely for that reason, Einstein today is more myth than man, and the essence of that myth is that the workings of his mind are beyond the reach not only of most mortals but even of most physicists. As with many myths, there’s some truth to it. “I learned general relativity three times,” says Spencer Weart, director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics. “It’s that difficult, subtle, different.”

But there’s also a good deal of exaggeration to the myth. Right from the start, long before he was Einstein the Inscrutable, the most prescient of his fellow physicists understood what he’d accomplished and its larger significance. He’d reinvented physics, which is just another way of saying he’d reinvented the way we all—physicists and nonphysicists alike—conceive of our place in the cosmos.

Specifically, he’d reinvented relativity. In a 1632 treatise, Galileo Galilei set forth what would become the classic version of relativity. He invited you, his reader, to imagine yourself on a dock, observing a ship moving at a steady rate. If someone at the top of the ship’s mast were to drop a rock, where would it land? At the base of the mast? Or some small distance back, corresponding to the distance that the ship had covered while the rock was falling?

The intuitive answer is some small distance back. The correct answer is the base of the mast. From the point of view of the sailor who dropped the rock, the rock falls straight down. But for you on the dock, the rock would appear to fall at an angle. Both you and the sailor would have equal claim to being right—the motion of the rock is relative to whoever is observing it.

Einstein, however, had a question. It had bothered him for ten years, from the time he was a 16-year-old student in Aarau, Switzerland, until one fateful evening in May 1905. Walking home from work, Einstein fell into conversation with Michele Besso, a fellow physicist and his best friend at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, where they were both clerks. Einstein’s question, in effect, added a complication to Galileo’s imagery: What if the object descending from the top of the mast wasn’t a rock but a beam of light?

His choice wasn’t arbitrary. Forty years earlier, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell had demonstrated that the speed of light is constant. It’s the same whether you’re moving toward the source of light or away from it, or whether it’s moving toward or away from you. (What changes isn’t the speed of the light waves, but the number of waves that reach you in a certain length of time.) Suppose you go back to the dock and look at Galileo’s ship, only now the height of its mast is 186,282 miles, or the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one second. (It’s a tall ship.) If the person at the top of the mast sends a light signal straight down while the ship is moving, where will it land? For Einstein as well as Galileo, it lands at the base of the mast. From your point of view on the dock, the base of the mast will have moved out from under the top of the mast during the descent, as it did when the rock was falling. This means that the distance the light has traveled, from your point of view, has lengthened. It’s not 186,282 miles. It’s more.

That’s where Einstein begins to depart from Galileo. The speed of light is always 186,282 miles per second. Speed is simply distance divided by, or “per,” a length of time. In the case of a beam of light, the speed is always 186,282 miles per second, so if you change the distance that the beam of light travels, you also have to change the time.

You have to change the time.

“Thank you!” Einstein greeted Besso the morning after their momentous discussion. “I have completely solved the problem.”

According to Einstein’s calculations, time itself wasn’t constant, an absolute, an immutable part of the universe. Now it was a variable that depended on how you and whatever you’re observing are moving in relation to each other. “Every other physicist assumed that there was a universal world clock that kept time,” says Schwartz. “Einstein completely removed that idea.” From the point of view of the person on the dock, the time it took the light to reach the ship’s deck was longer than a second. That means the time on board the ship appeared to be passing more slowly than on the dock. The reverse, Einstein knew, would also have to be true. From the sailor’s point of view, the dock would be moving, and therefore a beam of light sent down from a tall post on land would appear to him to travel a bit farther than it would to you on the dock. To the sailor, the time onshore would appear to be passing more slowly. And there we have it: a new principle of relativity.

“Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows,” the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski declared in 1908. Other physicists had done calculations that showed a similar difference in measurement of time between two observers, but they always added some version of “but not really.” For them, a difference in time might be in the math, but it wasn’t in the world. Einstein, however, said there is no “really.” There is only what you on the dock can measure about time on board the moving ship and what the sailor can measure about time on board the moving ship. The difference between the two is in the math, and the math is the world. Einstein’s insight was that because these perceptions are all that we can ever know, they are also, in terms of taking the measure of the universe, all that matter.

This was pretty heady stuff for a 26-year-old clerk who only a couple of weeks earlier had submitted his doctoral thesis to the University of Zurich. Einstein would keep his day job at the patent office until 1909, but his obscurity was over, at least among physicists. Within a year of completing his relativity paper, his ideas were being debated by some of the most prominent scientists in Germany. In 1908 physicist Johann Jakob Laub traveled from Würzburg to Bern to study with Einstein, exclaiming that to find the great man still laboring in a patent office was one of history’s “bad jokes.” But Einstein wasn’t complaining. His “handsome” pay, as he wrote a friend, was sufficient to support a wife and 4-year-old son, Hans Albert, and his schedule left him “eight hours of fun in the day, and then there is also Sunday.” Even on the job, he found plenty of time to daydream.

During one such daydream, Einstein experienced what he would later call “the most fortunate thought of my life.”

He knew that his 1905 special relativity theory applied only to the relationship between a body at rest and a body moving at a constant velocity. What about bodies moving at changing velocities? In the fall of 1907, he saw a vision in his mind’s eye not unlike a beam of light descending from a mast: a man falling off a roof.

What’s the difference? Unlike the beam of light, which moves at a constant velocity, the falling man would be accelerating. But in another sense, he would also be at rest. Throughout the universe, every scrap of matter would be exerting its exquisitely predictable influence on the man, through gravity. This was Einstein’s key insight—that acceleration and gravitation are two ways of describing the same force. Just as someone on board Galileo’s ship would have as much right to think of the dock leaving the ship as the ship leaving the dock, so the man in free fall from the roof would have as much right to think of himself being at rest while the earth hurtles toward him. And there we have it: another principle of relativity, called general relativity.

“Einstein always took what everyone else thought to be two completely different scenarios of nature and saw them as equivalent,” says Gerald Holton of Harvard, a leading Einstein scholar. Space and time, energy and mass, and acceleration and gravitation: as Holton says, “Einstein was always confronting the question, Why should there be two different phenomena with two different theories to explain them when they look to me like one phenomenon?”

After his 1907 vision, however, another eight years would pass before Einstein worked out the equations to support it. Einstein told friends that when he finally figured out the math to demonstrate general relativity in 1915, something burst inside him. He could feel his heart beating erratically, and the palpitations didn’t stop for days. He later wrote a friend, “I was beyond myself with excitement.”

By then, Einstein was a professor at the University of Berlin, and the Great War was raging across the Continent. For word of Einstein’s achievement to reach the wider world of physicists, it was going to have to travel across enemy lines. Einstein carried his writings on general relativity to the Netherlands, and from there a physicist friend forwarded them across the North Sea to England, where they eventually reached Arthur Eddington, perhaps the only astronomer in the world with the political clout and scientific prominence sufficient to mobilize wartime resources and to put general relativity to the test.

Einstein had theorized that a solar eclipse offered a rare opportunity to observe gravity’s effect on light. As the daytime sky darkened, stars would become visible, and if indeed the sun’s gravity pulled on the passing light, then those stars near the edge of the sun would appear to be out of position by a degree his equations predicted precisely. Eddington rallied his nation’s scientific troops, and Great Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, petitioned his war-depleted government to send two expeditions to observe the total eclipse on May 29, 1919—one to Sobral, Brazil, the other to Príncipe, an island off the west coast of Africa.

In late September, Einstein got a telegram saying that the eclipse results matched his predictions. In October, he accepted the congratulations of the most prominent physicists on the Continent at a meeting in Amsterdam. Then he went home to Berlin. As far as he knew, he’d gotten his due.

“REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE,” the November 7  Times  of London trumpeted. “New Theory of the Universe. Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.” The preceding day, Dyson had read aloud the eclipse results at a rare joint session of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. The Royal Society president and the discoverer of the electron, J. J. Thomson, called Einstein’s theory, in a quote that raced around the world, “one of the most momentous, if not the most momentous, pronouncements of human thought.”

Only then, 14 years after Einstein’s miracle year, did the range of Einstein’s accomplishments begin to become common knowledge. Because the public learned about special relativity and general relativity at the same time, says Weart, the cult of Einstein coalesced quickly. “And then came quantum theory, and people went back and said, ‘Oh, yeah, Einstein did that, too.’ ”

An accurate count of articles about Einstein around the world in 1919—that first year of fame—is probably impossible; an essay contest sponsored by  Scientific American  for the best explanation of relativity in layperson’s terms attracted entries from more than 20 countries. “I have been so swamped with questions, invitations, challenges,” Einstein wrote in a letter during this period, “that I dream that I am burning in Hell and that the postman is the Devil eternally roaring at me, throwing new bundles of letters at my head because I have not yet answered the old ones.”

And all this celebrity, British astronomer W.J.S. Lockyer remarked, was for discoveries that “do not personally concern ordinary human beings; only astronomers are affected.” The depth of the response could be due only to the historical moment—the aftermath of the Great War. “Here was something which captured the imagination,” wrote Leopold Infeld, a Polish physicist and future collaborator of Einstein’s: “human eyes looking from an earth covered with graves and blood to the heavens covered with the stars.”

To many, Einstein became a symbol of postwar rapprochement and a return to reason. As Eddington wrote to him less than a month after the eclipse announcement, “For scientific relations between England and Germany this is the best thing that could have happened.” Even today, that interpretation continues to resonate. “During that war when much of humanity devoted itself to senseless destruction,” Holton has said, Einstein “revealed the outlines of the grand construction of the universe. That must count as one of the most moral acts of that time.”

But some critics of relativity argued that Einstein was merely one more anarchist fueling the funeral pyres of civilization. A professor of celestial mechanics at Columbia University worried in the  New York Times  in November 1919 that the impulse to “throw aside the well-tested theories upon which have been built the entire structure of modern scientific and mechanical development” was of a piece with “the war, the strikes, the Bolshevist uprisings.”

Einstein’s own political leanings further complicated people’s responses to his work. Avisceral, lifelong anti-authoritarian, he had renounced his German citizenship at age 16 rather than subject himself to mandatory military service. Now, in the nascent WeimarRepublic, Einstein, a Jew, found himself portrayed as a villain by swastika-sporting German nationalists and as a hero by internationalists. “This world is a curious madhouse,” Einstein wrote a friend. “At present every coachman and every waiter argues about whether the relativity theory is correct. Aperson’s conviction on this point depends on the political party he belongs to.” The “arguments” soon descended into death threats, and Einstein briefly fled Germany for a speaking tour of Japan. After Hitler rose to power in 1933, Einstein abandoned Germany for good. He accepted an appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he lived in a modest house on Mercer Street until his death from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm at age 76 in April 1955.

Throughout his public years, Einstein embodied contradictions. A pacifist, he would advocate the construction of the atomic bomb. He argued for a world without borders, and campaigned for the establishment of the state of Israel—so much so that in 1952 he was invited to be its president. He was a genius, puttering absent-mindedly around his house in Princeton, and he was a joker, sticking out his tongue for a photographer. But it wasn’t simply these contradictions that distinguished him. It was their scale. They were all larger than life, and so therefore, the thinking went, must he be, too.

But he wasn’t, as he well knew. His first marriage had ended in divorce, a second, to a cousin, in her death, nearly two decades before his. He fathered one illegitimate daughter, who is thought to have been given up for adoption and is lost to history, and two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard. One of them, Eduard, suffered from schizophrenia. Hans Albert taught engineering at UC Berkeley. Yet somehow Einstein  père  became a myth among men.

It was a fate Einstein hated. “I feel,” he wrote a friend in 1920, “like a graven image”—as if there were something blasphemous in how his idolaters even then were beginning to fashion him. And maybe there was. Once the Nazis were defeated, Einstein would become not all things to all people but one thing to all people: a saint.

The halo of white hair helped. In 1919, when the world first made Einstein’s acquaintance, his 40-year-old, slightly cocky visage only hinted at the caricature to come. But in time his hair flew, like a mind untethered, while the bags under his eyes deepened, as if from the burden of looking too hard and seeing too much. And as for those eyes—well, when Steven Spielberg was designing the title character of  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial , and he wanted his alien ambassador of good will to have eyes that were moist like a wise old man’s yet twinkling with childlike wonder, he knew whose to use.

Long before the public beatified Einstein, his fellow physicists had begun to question his infallibility. When the Russian mathematician Aleksandr Friedmann in 1922 noted that, according to his calculations using Einstein’s equations, the universe could be expanding or contracting, Einstein wrote a brief rebuttal saying Friedmann’s math was mistaken. Ayear later Einstein acknowledged that the error had in fact been his, yet he remained unrepentant. Only after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble’s 1929 discovery that other galaxies are receding from our own—that the universe is indeed expanding—did Einstein relent. He’d committed his “greatest blunder,” he sighed.

Stubbornness would also dominate his attitude toward quantum mechanics, even though the field was partly an outgrowth of Einstein’s 1905 paper on photons. Einstein frequently and famously objected to the central tenet of quantum theory—that the subatomic world operates according to statistical probabilities rather than cause-and-effect certainties. “God does not play dice with the universe,” he often declared, and to the increasing exasperation of colleagues, he spent the last three decades of his life trying—without success—to find a grand unified theory that would banish such uncertainty.

“Einstein was single-minded, and you can see the good and the bad in that,” says Michael S. Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and a director for mathematical and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. “He was single-minded in reconciling general relativity with Newton’s theory of gravity, and he hit a home run. But he was also single-minded about finding a unified field theory, and from 1920 on, his career was that of a mere mortal.” Over the decades, experiments have repeatedly supported both the relativistic and the quantum interpretations of the cosmos. “Space is flexible,” Turner says. “Time warps. And God plays dice.”

In the half century since his death, astronomers have validated perhaps the most revolutionary prediction embedded within Einstein’s equations—the big bang theory of the creation of the universe, a conclusion that seems inevitable if one “runs the film” of Hubble’s expanding universe backward. And there have been other startling ramifications of relativity theory, such as black holes, which can be created by collapsed stars with masses so great that their gravitational force swallows everything in their vicinity, including light. As Weart says, quoting a maxim among physicists, “The general theory of relativity just dropped in 50 years ahead of its time.”

Scientists are still asking questions that Einstein made possible: What powered the big bang? What happens to space, time and matter at the edge of a black hole? What mysterious energy is causing the acceleration of the universe’s expansion? “This is really the golden age for Einstein’s theory, quite apart from the centenary,” says Clifford M. Will, a physicist at WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis and the author of  Was Einstein Right?

For his part, Einstein never quite knew what hit him. “I never understood why the theory of relativity with its concepts and problems so far removed from practical life should for so long have met with a lively, or indeed passionate, resonance among broad circles of the public,” he wrote in 1942, at age 63. “What could have produced this great and persistent psychological effect? I never yet heard a truly convincing answer to this question.”

Yet when Einstein attended the Hollywood première of  City Lights  in 1931, the movie’s star and director, Charlie Chaplin, offered him an explanation: “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.” Maybe Einstein achieved his peculiar brand of immortality not in spite of his inscrutability but because of it. Social scientist Bernard H. Gustin has suggested that an Einstein assumes godlike status because he is “thought to come into contact with what is essential in the universe.” Holton recently elaborated on this comment: “I believe this is precisely why so many who knew little about Einstein’s scientific writing flocked to catch a glimpse of him, and to this day feel somehow uplifted by contemplating his iconic image.”

The halo has helped maintain the myth, keeping Einstein a presence on magazine covers and newspaper front pages, on posters and postcards, coffee mugs, baseball caps, T-shirts, refrigerator magnets and, based on a Google search, 23,600 Internet sites. But what we’re celebrating this year is more than a myth. In reinventing relativity, Einstein also reinvented nothing less than the way we see the universe. For thousands of years, astronomers and mathematicians had studied the motions of bodies in the night sky, then searched for equations to match them. Einstein did the reverse. He started with idle musings and scratches on paper and wound up pointing toward phenomena previously unimaginable and still unfathomable. “The general theory of relativity is one man’s idea of what the universe ought to be like,” says Einstein scholar Arthur I. Miller of UniversityCollege, London. “And that’s pretty much what it turned out to be.” It’s this legacy of Einstein’s that the World Year of Physics is commemorating, this lasting contribution to the modern era: the triumph of mind over matter.

THE LAST WORD ON ENERGY It may be the world’s most famous equation, but what does E=mc2 actually mean?

Shortly after completing his paper on special relativity, in 1905, Einstein realized his equations applied to more than space and time. From the point of view of an observer standing still relative to an object moving very fast—approaching the speed of light—the object would appear to be gaining mass. And the greater its velocity—in other words the more energy that had been spent in getting it moving—the greater its apparent mass. Specifically, the measure of its energy would be equal to the measure of its mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.

The equation didn’t help scientists engineer an atomic bomb, but it does explain why smashing atoms can release mushroom clouds’ worth of power. The speed of light, or c, is a big number: 186,282 miles per second. Multiply it by itself, and the result is, well, a really big number: 34,700,983,524. Now multiply that number by even an extraordinarily minute amount of mass, such as what one might find in the nucleus of an atom, and the result is still an extraordinarily tremendous number. And that number is E, energy.

Prompted by two nuclear physicists, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, that “extremely powerful bombs” of a new type were now “conceivable.” Historians tend to think the letter played a “strictly subsidiary role” in the decision of the Allied powers to pursue the nuclear option, says physics historian Spencer Weart. But the fact that Einstein and, indirectly, his equation played any role whatsoever has forever linked a lifelong pacifist and utopian with mankind’s ability to destroy itself.

Einstein later realized that his assessment that German scientists would be capable of building an atomic bomb—the opinion that drove him to write to FDR—was mistaken. “If I had known that these fears were groundless,” he wrote to a friend late in life, “I would not have taken part in opening that Pandora’s box.” But open it now was, never to close, as Einstein himself had acknowledged elliptically, almost poetically, back in August 1945, when he first heard the news about Hiroshima. “Oh, Weh”—using the German word for pain. “And that’s that.”

A NEW VIEW OF GRAVITY Einstein’s vision of a man falling from a roof marked the beginning of a great struggle

Once while Einstein was working on the equations for general relativity, which would take him eight years to complete, he went mountain-climbing with the French-Polish chemist Marie Curie. Seemingly oblivious to the crevasses as well as to her difficulty in understanding his German, Einstein spent much of the time talking about gravitation. “You understand,” Einstein said to her, suddenly gripping her arm, “what I need to know is exactly what happens in an elevator when it falls into emptiness.”

In Einstein’s imagination, the man suspended midway between roof and earth was now inside an elevator. In a certain set of circumstances, the passenger would have no way of knowing whether he was experiencing gravity or upward acceleration. If the elevator were standing on the surface of the earth, the man would feel gravity’s force there, which causes falling objects to accelerate at a rate of 32 feet per second squared. But if the elevator were accelerating through deep space at that same rate, he would experience precisely the same downward force.

Einstein imagined a beam of light piercing the elevator. If the elevator were rising relative to the source of light, the beam would enter at a certain height on one side of the elevator and appear to curve on its way to a lower height on the opposite wall. Einstein then imagined that the elevator were stationary on the surface of the earth. Since he postulated that the two circumstances are the same, Einstein concluded that the same effect would have to hold true for both. In other words, gravity must bend light.

He wouldn’t have the math to support this idea until 1915, and he wouldn’t have the proof until the eclipse expeditions of 1919. But by then he was so confident of his calculations that when a student asked what he would have done if he’d heard the eclipse observations hadn’t validated his math, Einstein told her, “Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord. The theory  is  correct.”

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Essay on Albert Einstein

Students are often asked to write an essay on Albert Einstein in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Germany. He was a curious child, and his interest in science was sparked by a compass he saw at the age of five.

Education and Career

Einstein studied physics and mathematics in Switzerland. He is best known for developing the theory of relativity. He worked as a patent examiner before becoming a professor.

Contributions to Science

Einstein’s most famous equation, E=mc^2, changed the way we understand energy and matter. His work has had a huge impact on physics, leading to inventions like nuclear power.

Einstein died in 1955, but his theories continue to shape science today. He is remembered as one of the greatest minds in history.

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250 Words Essay on Albert Einstein

Introduction.

Albert Einstein, a name synonymous with genius and innovation, is arguably the most influential physicist of the 20th century. Born in Germany in 1879, Einstein’s theories of relativity propelled him to international fame, fundamentally reshaping our understanding of the universe.

Theoretical Contributions

Einstein’s most acclaimed work, the theory of relativity, includes the famous equation E=mc^2, which asserts that energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. This equation, part of his Special Theory of Relativity (1905), revolutionized physics by demonstrating the equivalence of energy and mass, laying the groundwork for nuclear energy.

His General Theory of Relativity (1915), further refined his initial postulates. It proposed a revolutionary concept: gravity as the curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy, a departure from Newton’s gravitational law.

Nobel Prize and Legacy

Despite the significance of his relativity theories, Einstein’s 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, which played a pivotal role in the development of quantum mechanics.

Einstein’s legacy extends beyond his scientific contributions. A pacifist, he was a vocal critic of war and nationalism. His letters to President Roosevelt warning of Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons research led to the Manhattan Project, although he regretted this later.

Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking theories and philosophical perspectives have left an indelible mark on science and society. His work continues to inspire scientific exploration, underscoring the significance of curiosity, imagination, and critical thinking in the quest for knowledge.

500 Words Essay on Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein, arguably the most influential physicist of the 20th century, revolutionized the way we understand the fundamental laws of the universe. Born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, Einstein’s theories of relativity and groundbreaking ideas about quantum mechanics deeply influenced modern physics and our comprehension of the universe.

Early Life and Education

Einstein’s early life was marked by deep curiosity and independent thinking. Despite his initial struggles with traditional schooling, his fascination with science and mathematics was apparent. He eventually attended the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, where he graduated in 1900 as a teacher of physics and mathematics.

The Miracle Year

The year 1905, known as Einstein’s “Annus Mirabilis” or “Miracle Year,” marked a turning point in the history of physics. During this year, Einstein published four papers in the Annalen der Physik, each of which would radically alter established fields. He proposed the theory of special relativity, explained Brownian motion, formulated the theory of the photoelectric effect (which later won him the Nobel Prize), and provided a proof of the existence of atoms.

The General Theory of Relativity

Later life and legacy.

Einstein emigrated to the United States in 1933, escaping the rise of Nazism in Germany. He accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked until his retirement in 1945. Throughout his life, Einstein made significant contributions to quantum mechanics, cosmology, statistical mechanics, and the understanding of atomic transition probabilities.

Einstein’s legacy is profound, not just in the realm of science, but also in philosophy and the arts. His theories continue to guide scientific research, and his philosophical reflections on science and knowledge have shaped the intellectual landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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This I Believe

An ideal of service to our fellow man.

Albert Einstein

Listen to Robert Krulwich Read Einstein's Essay

Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1916, profoundly affecting the study of physics and cosmology for years. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his work on the photo-electric effect. Einstein taught for many years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Yousef Karsh hide caption

NPR's Robert Krulwich. hide caption

NPR's Robert Krulwich reads Albert Einstein's This I Believe essay, which first aired circa 1954.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious — the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with the awareness of — and glimpse into — the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature. This is the basis of cosmic religiosity, and it appears to me that the most important function of art and science is to awaken this feeling among the receptive and keep it alive.

I sense that it is not the State that has intrinsic value in the machinery of humankind, but rather the creative, feeling individual, the personality alone that creates the noble and sublime.

Man's ethical behavior should be effectively grounded on compassion, nurture and social bonds. What is moral is not the divine, but rather a purely human matter, albeit the most important of all human matters. In the course of history, the ideals pertaining to human beings' behavior towards each other and pertaining to the preferred organization of their communities have been espoused and taught by enlightened individuals. These ideals and convictions — results of historical experience, empathy and the need for beauty and harmony — have usually been willingly recognized by human beings, at least in theory.

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us westerners in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.

The pursuit of recognition for their own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the quest for personal independence form the traditional themes of the Jewish people, of which I am a member.

But if one holds these high principles clearly before one's eyes and compares them with the life and spirit of our times, then it is glaringly apparent that mankind finds itself at present in grave danger. I see the nature of the current crises in the juxtaposition of the individual to society. The individual feels more than ever dependent on society, but he feels this dependence not in the positive sense — cradled, connected as part of an organic whole. He sees it as a threat to his natural rights and even his economic existence. His position in society, then, is such that that which drives his ego is encouraged and developed, and that which would drive him toward other men (a weak impulse to begin with) is left to atrophy.

It is my belief that there is only one way to eliminate these evils, namely, the establishment of a planned economy coupled with an education geared towards social goals. Alongside the development of individual abilities, the education of the individual aspires to revive an ideal that is geared towards the service of our fellow man, and that needs to take the place of the glorification of power and outer success.

Translation by David Domine. Essay courtesy of the Albert Einstein Archives at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Albert Einstein: His life, theories and impact on science

Where would science be without Albert Einstein?

• Early years

Career highlights

Einstein's remarkable brain, einstein's scientific legacy.

• Astronomical legacy

Additional resources

Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His work continues to help astronomers study everything from gravitational waves to Mercury 's orbit. 

The scientist's equation that helped explain special relativity – E = mc^2 – is famous even among those who don't understand its underlying physics. Einstein is also known for his theory of general relativity (an explanation of gravity ), and the photoelectric effect (which explains the behavior of electrons under certain circumstances); his work on the latter earned him a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

Einstein also tried in vain to unify all the forces of the universe in a single theory, or a theory of everything, which he was still working on at the time of his death.

Related: What is the Theory of Everything?

Einstein's early years

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, a town that today has a population of just more than 120,000. There is a small commemorative plaque where his house used to stand (it was destroyed during World War II). The family moved to Munich shortly after his birth, according to the Nobel Prize website , and later to Italy when his father faced problems with running his own business. Einstein's father, Hermann, ran an electrochemical factory and his mother Pauline took care of Albert and his younger sister, Maria.

— What is wormhole theory?

— Was Einstein wrong? Why some astrophysicists are questioning the theory of space-time

— Albert Einstein: Before and after relativity

Einstein would write in his memoirs that  two "wonders"  deeply affected his early years, according to Hans-Josef Küpper, an Albert Einstein scholar. Young Einstein encountered his first wonder — a compass — at age 5: He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with unseen forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he worshipped, calling it his "holy geometry book."

Contrary to popular belief, young Albert was a good student, according to an online archive . He  excelled in physics and mathematics , but was a more "moderate" pupil in other subjects, Küpper wrote on his website. However, Einstein rebelled against the authoritarian attitude of some of his teachers and dropped out of school at 16. He later took an entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, and while his performances in physics and math were excellent, his marks in other areas were subpar, and he did not pass the exam. The aspiring physicist took additional courses to close the gap in his knowledge and was admitted to the Swiss Polytechnic in 1896. In 1901 he received his diploma to teach physics and mathematics. 

However, Einstein could not find a teaching position, and began work in a Bern patent office in 1901, according to his Nobel Prize biography . It was while there that, in between analyzing patent applications, he developed his work in special relativity and other areas of physics that later made him famous.

Einstein married Mileva Maric, a longtime love of his from Zurich, in 1903. Their children, Hans Albert and Eduard, were born in 1904 and 1910. (The fate of a child born to them in 1902 before their marriage, Lieserl, is unknown.) Einstein divorced Maric in 1919 and soon after married Elsa Löwenthal. Löwenthal died in 1933.

Einstein's career sent him to multiple countries. He earned his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 and subsequently took on professor positions in Zurich (1909), Prague (1911) and Zurich again (1912). Next, he moved to Berlin to become director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and a professor at the University of Berlin (1914). He also became a German citizen. 

A major validation of Einstein's work came in 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington, secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, led an expedition to Africa that measured the position of stars during a total solar eclipse . The group found that the position of stars was shifted due to the bending of light around the sun . (In 2008, a BBC/HBO production dramatized the story in " Einstein and Eddington .") 

Einstein remained in Germany until 1933 when dictator Adolf Hitler rose to power. The physicist then renounced his German citizenship and moved to the United States to become a professor of theoretical physics at Princeton. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and retired in 1945.

Einstein remained active in the physics community throughout his later years. In 1939, he famously penned a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that uranium could be used for an atomic bomb. 

Late in Einstein's life, he engaged in a series of private debates with physicist  Niels Bohr  about the validity of quantum theory . Bohr's theories held the day, and Einstein later incorporated quantum theory into his own calculations. 

Einstein's death

Einstein died of an aortic aneurysm on April 18, 1955. A blood vessel burst near his heart, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) . When asked if he wanted to have surgery, Einstein refused. "I want to go when I want to go," he said. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."

Einstein's body — most of it, anyway — was cremated; his ashes were spread in an undisclosed location, according to the AMNH. However, a doctor at Princeton Hospital, Thomas Harvey, had controversially performed an autopsy, and removed Einstein's brain and eyeballs, according to the BBC .

Harvey sliced hundreds of thin sections of brain tissue to place on microscope slides and  snapped 14 photos  of the brain from several angles. He took the brain tissue, slides and images with him when he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he was a medical supervisor in a biological testing lab.

Over the next 30 years, Harvey sent a few slides to other researchers who requested them, but kept the rest of the brain in two glass jars, sometimes in a cider box under a beer cooler. The story of Einstein's brain was largely forgotten until 1985, when Harvey and his colleagues published their study results in the journal Experimental Neurology .

Harvey failed a competency exam in 1988, and his medical license was revoked, Blitz wrote. Harvey eventually donated the brain to Princeton Hospital, where the brain's journey had begun. Harvey died in 2007. Pieces of Einstein's brain are now at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Live Science reported .

Harvey's 1985 study authors reported that Einstein's brain had a higher number of glial cells (those that support and insulate the nervous system) per neurons (nerve cells) than other brains they examined. They concluded that it might indicate the neurons had a higher metabolic need — in other words, Einstein's brain cells needed and used more energy, which could have been why he had such advanced thinking abilities and conceptual skills.

However, other researchers have pointed out a few problems with that study, according to Eric H. Chudler , a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. First, for example, the other brains used in the study were all younger than Einstein's brain. Second, the "experimental group" had only one subject — Einstein. Additional studies are needed to see if these anatomical differences are found in other people. And third, only a small part of Einstein's brain was studied.

Another study, published in 1996 in the journal Neuroscience Letters , found that Einstein's brain weighed only 1,230 grams, which is less than the average adult male brain (about 1,400 g). Also, the scientist's cerebral cortex was thinner than that of five control brains, but the density of neurons was higher.

A study published in 2012 in the journal Brain revealed that Einstein's brain had extra folding in the gray matter , the site of conscious thinking. In particular, the frontal lobes, regions tied to abstract thought and planning, had unusually elaborate folding.

Einstein's legacy in physics is significant. Here are some of the key scientific principles that he pioneered:

Theory of special relativity : Einstein showed that physical laws are identical for all observers, as long as they are not under acceleration. However, the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same, no matter at what speed the observer is traveling. This work led to his realization that space and time are linked to what we now call space-time . So, an event seen by one observer may also be seen at a different time by another observer. 

Theory of general relativity : This was a reformulation of the law of gravity. In the 1600s, Newton formulated three laws of motion, among them, outlining how gravity works between two bodies. The force between them depends on how massive each object is, and how far apart the objects are. Einstein determined that when thinking about space-time, a massive object causes a distortion in space-time (like putting a heavy ball on a trampoline). Gravity is exerted when other objects fall into the "well" created by the distortion in space-time, like a marble rolling towards a large ball. General relativity passed a major test in 2019 in an experiment involving a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way .

Photoelectric effect : Einstein's work in 1905 proposed that light should be thought of as a stream of particles (photons) instead of just a single wave, as was commonly thought at the time. His work helped decipher curious results scientists were previously unable to explain. 

Unified field theory : Einstein spent much of his later years trying to merge the fields of electromagnetism and gravity. He was unsuccessful but may have been ahead of his time. Other physicists are still working on this problem.

Einstein's astronomical legacy

There are many applications of Einstein's work, but here are some of the most notable ones in astronomy :

Gravitational waves : In 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected space-time ripples — otherwise known as gravitational waves— that occurred after black holes collided about 1.4 billion light-years from Earth . LIGO also made an initial detection of gravitational waves in 2015, a century after Einstein predicted these ripples existed. The waves are a facet of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Mercury's orbit : Mercury is a small planet orbiting close to a very massive object relative to its size — the sun. Its orbit could not be understood until general relativity showed that the curvature of space-time is affecting Mercury's motions and changing its orbit. There is a small chance that over billions of years, Mercury could be ejected from our solar system due to these changes (with an even smaller chance that it could collide with Earth).

Gravitational lensing : This is a phenomenon by which a massive object (like a galaxy cluster or a black hole) bends light around it. Astronomers looking at that region through a telescope can then see objects directly behind the massive object, due to the light being bent. A famous example of this is Einstein's Cross, a quasar in the constellation Pegasus : A galaxy roughly 400 million light-years away bends the light of the quasar so that it appears four times around the galaxy.

Black holes : In April 2019, the Event Horizon telescope showed the first-ever images of a black hole . The photos again confirmed several facets of general relativity, including not only that black holes exist, but also that they have a circular event horizon — a point at which nothing can escape, not even light.

To find the answers to frequently asked questions about Albert Einstein , visit The Nobel Prize website. Additionally, you can learn about The Einstein Memorial at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.  

Bibliography

"Einstein: The Life and Times". American Journal of Physics (1973). https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1

"On the brain of a scientist: Albert Einstein". Experimental Neurology (1985). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3979509/

"The fascinating life and theory of Albert Einstein". Mih, W. C. Nova Publishers (2000).   https://books.google.co.uk/books

"Alterations in cortical thickness and neuronal density in the frontal cortex of Albert Einstein". Neuroscience Letters (1996). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8805120/

"The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs". Brain, Volume 136, Issue 4 (2012). https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/136/4/1304/356614?login=true

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• Albert Einstein - Questions and answers

Albert Einstein

Questions and answers.

Question: When was Albert Einstein born?

Answer: Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879.

Question: Where was he born?

Answer: He was born in Ulm, Germany.

Question: When did he die?

Answer: He died 18 April 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Question: Who were his parents?

Answer: His father was Hermann Einstein and his mother was Pauline Einstein (born Koch).

Question: Did he have any sisters and brothers?

Answer: He had one sister named Maja.

Question: Did he marry and have children?

Answer: He was married to Mileva Marić between 1903 and 1919. They had three children, Lieserl (born 1902), Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910). He married Elsa Löwenthal in 1919 and they lived together until her death in 1936.

Question: Where did he receive his education?

Answer: He received his main education at the following schools: Catholic elementary school in Munich, Germany (1885-1888) Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, Germany (1888-1894) Cantonal school in Aarau, Switzerland (1895-1896) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland (1896-1900) Ph.D. from Zurich University, Switzerland (1905)

Question: When was Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics?

Answer: The Nobel Prize Awarding Institution, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, decided to reserve the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and therefore no Physics Prize was awarded that year. According to the statutes, a reserved prize can be awarded the year after, and Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

Question: Did Albert Einstein attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony?

Answer: The Nobel Prize was announced on 9 November 1922. Being too remote from Sweden, Albert Einstein could not attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December the same year.

Question: For what did he receive the Nobel Prize?

Answer: Einstein was rewarded for his many contributions to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Question: What is the photoelectric effect?

Answer: The photoelectric effect is a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from the surface of matter (usually metals) when light shines upon it. Einstein explained the effect by proposing that light consists of small particles, or quanta, called photons, which carry energy that is proportional to the frequency of light. The electrons in the matter that absorb the energy of the photon get ejected. These findings were published in 1905 in the paper “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light”. Einstein’s observations that the photoelectric effect could only be explained if light behaves like a particle, not a wave, was instrumental in establishing the hypothesis that light can behave both like a wave and a particle.

Question: What are the practical applications of the photoelectric effect?

Answer: The photoelectric effect is very important for our daily life. It is the basis for photosynthesis, which is like a very effective solar cell where sunlight is absorbed by plants to make them grow. The effect also forms the basis for a variety of devices such as photodiodes, which are used in light detection within fibre optics, telecommunications networks, solar cells, imaging and many other applications.

Question: When did he deliver his Nobel Lecture?

Answer: He gave his Nobel Lecture on 11 July 1923 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Question: What other scientific accomplishments is Albert Einstein known for?

Answer: Albert Einstein is one of the most influential physicists in the 20 th century. In 1905 Einstein published four landmark papers in physics – on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity and equivalence of matter and energy (E=mc 2 ). The year 2005 was named the “World Year of Physics” in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s publications. Einstein is also well known for his general relativity theory published 1915 that complements his special relativity theory of 1905.

First published 25 January 2008

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Princeton University Press proudly presents The Digital Einstein Papers , an open-access site for The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein , the ongoing publication of Einstein's massive written legacy comprising more than 30,000 unique documents.

The site presents 15 volumes published to date by the editors of the Einstein Papers Project , covering the writings and correspondence of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) from his youth to 1927.

The volumes are presented in the original language version with in-depth English language annotation and other scholarly apparatus. In addition, the reader can toggle to an English language translation of most documents.

By clicking on the unique archival identifier number below each text, readers can access the archival record of each published document at the Einstein Archives Online and in some cases, the digitized manuscript. These 15 documentary edition and translation edition volumes total 18,000 pages and contain more than 8,000 unique documents, of which half are presented here as full text.

The site will present subsequent volumes in the series roughly two years after original book publication.

The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein brought to you by:

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