Albert Einstein Biography

Physicist, Scientist (18791955)

Quick Facts
Name
Albert Einstein
Occupation
Physicist, Scientist
Birth Date
March 14, 1879
Death Date
April 18, 1955
Education
Luitpold Gymnasium, Eidgenssische Polytechnische Schule (Swiss Federal
Polytechnic School)
Place of Birth
Ulm, Wrttemberg, Germany
Place of Death
Princeton, New Jersey

Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the general theory of relativity,
among other feats. He is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century.

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.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein - Mini Biography (TV-14; 3:46) Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein is one of
the most influential and well-known physicist in history. Learn more about his life and work
in this mini biography.
Synopsis
Born in Ulm, Wrttemberg, Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein had a passion for inquiry that
eventually led him to develop the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won
the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and immigrated to
the U.S. in the following decade after being targeted by the Nazis. Einstein is generally
considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century, with his work also having a
major impact on the development of atomic energy. With a focus on unified field theory
during his later years, Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Background and Early Life

Born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Wrttemberg, Germany, Albert Einstein 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 manufactured electrical equipment. His 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 to be speech challenges, though he developed a passion for classical music
and playing the violin that would stay with him into his later years. Most significantly,
Einstein's youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry.

Towards the end of the 1880s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined
with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Albert. Talmud had introduced
his pupil to a childrens 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."

Resident of Switzerland
Hermann Einstein relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after his business lost
out on a major contract. Albert was left at a relative's boarding house in Munich to complete
his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Faced with military duty when he turned of age,
Albert allegedly withdrew from classes, using a doctors 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 Polytechnic School 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 Wintelers' daughter, Marie. Einstein later renounced his German
citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century.

Marriage and Family

While attending school in Zurich, Einstein developed lasting friendships and alliances, also
meeting his future wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian physics student.

After graduating from Polytechnic, 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. Meanwhile, Einstein continued to grow closer to Maric, but
his parents were strongly against the relationship due 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. In 1902 the couple had a daughter, Lieserl, who
might have been later raised by Maric's relatives or given up for adoption. Her ultimate fate
and whereabouts remain a mystery.

Einstein eventually found steady work in 1902 after receiving a referral for a clerk position in
a Swiss patent office. Einsteins father passed away shortly thereafter, and the young scientist
married Milena Maric on Jan. 6, 1903. The couple went on to have two sons, Hans and
Eduard.

The marriage would not be a happy one, however, 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. He had also begun an affair some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa Lwenthal,
whom Einstein wed during the same year of his divorce. He would continue to see other
women throughout his second marriage, which ended with Lwenthals death in 1936.

Miracle Year
While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further ideas that had taken hold
during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as
the principle of relativity.

In 1905seen by many as a "miracle year" for the theoristEinstein had four papers
published in the Annalen der Physik, one of the best known physics journals of the era. The
four papers focused on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of
relativity (the most widely circulated of the write-ups) and the matter/energy relationship,
thus taking physics in an electrifying new direction. In his fourth paper, Einstein came up
with the equation E=mc2, suggesting that tiny particles of matter could be converted into
huge amounts of energy, foreshadowing the development of 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 from 1913 to 1933.

Relativity and Nobel Prize

In November, 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which he considered
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 Newtons theory, and for 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.

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

In the development of his general theory, Einstein had held on to the belief that the universe
was a fixed, static entity, aka a "cosmological constant," though his later theories directly
contradicted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux. Astronomer
Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe, with the two scientists
meeting at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1930.

While Einstein was travelling and speaking internationally, the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler,
were gaining prominence with violent propaganda and vitriol in an impoverished post-WWI
Germany. The 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.

Move to U.S. and Atomic Energy

In 1933, Einstein took on a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New
Jersey and never went back to his native land. It was here that he would spend the rest of his
life working on a unified field theoryan all-embracing paradigm meant to unify the varied
laws of physics. Other European scientists also left regions threatened by Germany and
immigrated to the states, with there being concern over Nazi strategies to create an atomic
weapon.

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 U.S. would eventually initiate the Manhattan Project,
though Einstein would not take 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.

Not long after he began his career at Princeton, 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 a few years later. During WWII, he worked
on Navy-based weapons systems and made big monetary donations to the military by
auctioning off manuscripts worth millions.

Global and Domestic Activism

After learning of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, 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.

Around this time, Einstein also became a member of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, seeing the parallels between the treatment of Jews in
Germany and African Americans in the United States. He corresponded with scholar/activist
W.E.B. Du Bois as well as performing artist Paul Robeson and campaigned for civil rights,
calling racism a "disease" in a 1946 Lincoln University speech.

After the war, Einstein continued to work on his unified field theory and key aspects of the
theory of general relativity, such as wormholes, the possibility of time travel, the existence of
black holes and the creation of the universe. However, he became increasingly isolated from
the rest of the physics community, whose eyes were set 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.

Final Years and Legacy

On April 17, 1955, while working on a speech to honor Israel's seventh anniversary, Einstein
suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was taken to the University Medical Center at
Princeton 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." Einstein
died at the university medical center early the next morningApril 18, 1955at the age of
76.
During the autopsy, Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain, reportedly without the
permission of his family, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience.
Einstein's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location,
following his wishes. After decades of study, Einstein's brain is now located at the Princeton
University Medical Center. 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 Jrgen Neffe, both from 2007. Einstein's own words are presented in the
collection The World as I See It.