Albert Einstein Life History at His 138 Birth Anniversary

Albert Einstein Life History at His 138 Birth Anniversary

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics. Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science.
Born: 14 March 1879, Ulm, Germany
Died: 18 April 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Influenced: Satyendra Nath Bose, Wolfgang Pauli, Leo Szilard, more
Education: University of Zurich (1905), ETH Zurich (1896–1901),

Albert Einstein Life History at His 138 Birth Anniversary

Einstein is best known in popular culture for his mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2.

Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field.

In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the large-scale structure of the universe.

Later, with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons.

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works.

On 5 December 2014, universities and archives announced the release of Einstein's papers, comprising more than 30,000 unique documents.

Einstein's intellectual achievements and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with "Genius".

Albert Einstein in 1893 Einstein's matriculation certificate at the age of 17.

Einstein's matriculation certificate at the age of 17, showing his final grades from the Argovian cantonal school Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879.

In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.

The Einsteins were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of 5 for three years.

His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school's regimen and teaching method.

In 1895, at the age of 16, Einstein sat the entrance examinations for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich.

In 1900, Einstein was awarded the Zürich Polytechnic teaching diploma, but Marić failed the examination with a poor grade in the mathematics component, theory of functions.

The following year, after giving a lecture on electrodynamics and the relativity principle at the University of Zürich, Alfred Kleiner recommended him to the faculty for a newly created professorship in theoretical physics.

Einstein became a full professor at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague in April 1911, accepting Austrian citizenship in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to do so.

During his Prague stay, he wrote 11 scientific works, five of them on radiation mathematics and on the quantum theory of solids.

From 1912 until 1914, he was professor of theoretical physics at the ETH Zurich, where he taught analytical mechanics and thermodynamics.

Based on calculations Einstein made in 1911, about his new theory of general relativity, light from another star should be bent by the Sun's gravity.

On 7 November 1919, the leading British newspaper The Times printed a banner headline that read: "Revolution in Science - New Theory of the Universe - Newtonian Ideas Overthrown".

In 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "For his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

On 17 April 1955, Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been reinforced surgically by Rudolph Nissen in 1948.

He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the State of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live long enough to complete it.

Einstein refused surgery, saying: "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." He died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end.

During the autopsy, the pathologist of Princeton Hospital, Thomas Stoltz Harvey, removed Einstein's brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.

Einstein's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.

In a memorial lecture delivered on December 13, 1965 at UNESCO headquarters, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: "He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.