Albert Einstein Biography
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18,
1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist widely regarded as the
greatest scientist of the 20th century. He was the author of the general
theory of relativity and contributed much to the theoretical development
of the special theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical
mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for
Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 (his
"miracle year") and "for his services to Theoretical Physics."
After British solar eclipse expeditions in
1919 confirmed that light rays from distant stars were deflected by the
gravity of the sun in the exact amount he predicted in his general
theory of relativity, Einstein became world-famous, an unusual
achievement for a scientist. In his later years, his fame exceeded that
of any other scientist in history. In popular culture, his name has
become synonymous with great intelligence and genius.
****
Biography
Youth and college
Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 at Ulm
in Baden-Württemberg, German Empire, about 100 km east of Stuttgart. His
parents were Hermann Einstein, a featherbed salesman who later ran an
electrochemical works, and Pauline, whose maiden name was Koch. They
were married in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. The family was Jewish
(non-observant); Albert attended a Catholic elementary school and, at
the insistence of his mother, was given violin lessons. Though he
initially disliked (and eventually discontinued) the lessons, he would
later take great solace in Mozart's violin sonatas.
When Albert was five, his father showed him
a pocket compass, and Einstein realized that something in "empty" space
acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience as one of
the most revelatory of his life. Though he built models and mechanical
devices for fun and showed great mathematical faculty early on, he was
considered a slow learner, possibly due to dyslexia, simple shyness, or
the significantly rare and unusual structure of his brain (examined
after his death).1 He later credited his development of the theory of
relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time
later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed
intellect. Some researchers have speculated that Einstein may have
exhibited some traits of mild forms of autism, although they concede
that a reliable posthumous diagnosis is impossible.2
In 1889, a student named Max Talmud
introduced Einstein to key science and philosophy texts including Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. Two of his uncles would further foster his
intellectual interests during his late childhood and early adolescence
by suggesting and providing books on science, mathematics and
philosophy.
Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium
where he received a relatively progressive education. He began to learn
mathematics around age twelve: in 1891, he taught himself Euclidean
plane geometry from a school booklet and began to study calculus. There
is a recurring rumor that he failed mathematics later in his education,
but this is untrue; a change in the way grades were assigned caused
confusion years later. While there, he clashed with authority and
resented the school regimen, believing the spirit of learning and
creative thought were lost in such an endeavor as strict memorization.
In 1894, following the failure of Hermann's
electrochemical business, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia,
Italy (near Milan). Einstein's first scientific work was written therein
(called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields").
Albert remained behind in Munich lodgings to finish school, completing
only one term before leaving the gymnasium in spring 1895 to rejoin his
family in Pavia. He quit without telling his parents and a year and a
half prior to final examinations, Einstein convinced the school to let
him go with a medical note from a friendly doctor, but this meant he had
no secondary-school certificate.3 That year, at the age of 16, he
performed the thought experiment known as Albert Einstein's mirror.
After gazing into a mirror, he examined what would happen to his image
if he were moving at the speed of light; his conclusion that the speed
of light is independent of the observer would later become one of the
two postulates of special relativity.
Despite excelling in the mathematics and
science portion, his failure of the liberal arts portion of the
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH, Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology, in Zurich) entrance exam the following year was a setback;
his family sent him to Aarau, Switzerland, to finish secondary school,
where he studied the seldom-taught Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and
received his diploma in September 1896. During this time he lodged with
Professor Jost Winteler's family and became enamoured with Marie, their
daughter, his first sweetheart. Albert's sister Maja was to later marry
their son Paul, and his friend Michele Besso married their other
daughter Anna.4 Einstein subsequently enrolled at the Eidgenössische
Technische Hochschule in October and moved to Zurich, while Marie moved
to Olsberg for a teaching post. The same year, he renounced his
Württemberg citizenship and became stateless.
In the spring of 1896, the Serbian Mileva
Marić started initially as a medical student at the University of
Zurich, but after a term switched to the same section as Einstein as the
only woman that year to study for the same diploma. Einstein's
relationship with Mileva developed into romance over the next few years.
In 1900, he was granted a teaching diploma
by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH Zurich). Einstein then
wrote his first published paper on the capillary forces of a drinking
straw, wherein he tried to unify the laws of physics, an attempt he
would continually make throughout his life. (It was titled "Folgerungen
aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen," which translated is "Consequences
of the observations of capillarity phenomena," found in "Annalen der
Physik" volume 4, page 513.) Shortly following, Einstein was accepted as
a Swiss citizen in 1901; he kept his Swiss passport for his whole life.
Through his friend Michelle Besso, an engineer, he was presented with
the works of Ernst Mach and later would consider him "the best sounding
board in Europe" for physical ideas. During this time Einstein discussed
his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Besso
and Mileva. The men referred to themselves as the "Olympia Academy." He
and Mileva had an illegitimate daughter Lieserl, born in January 1902.
Work and doctorate
Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a
teaching post, mostly because his brashness as a young man had
apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate
helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the
Swiss Patent Office5 in 1902. There, Einstein judged the worth of
inventors' patent applications for devices that required a knowledge of
physics to understand — in particular he was chiefly charged to evaluate
patents relating to electromagnetic devices.6 He also learned how to
discern the essence of applications despite sometimes poor descriptions,
and was taught by the director how "to express [him]self correctly". He
occasionally rectified their design errors while evaluating the
practicality of their work.
Einstein married Mileva Marić on January 6,
1903. Einstein's marriage to Marić, who was a mathematician, was both a
personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred to Mileva as "a
creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am".
Ronald W. Clark, a biographer of Einstein, claimed that Einstein
depended on the distance that existed in his and Mileva's marriage in
order to have the solitude necessary to accomplish his work; he required
intellectual isolation. Abram Joffe, a Soviet physicist who knew
Einstein, in an obituary of Einstein, wrote, "The author of [the papers
of 1905] was ... a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern,
Einstein-Marić" and this has recently been taken as evidence of a
collaborative relationship. However, according to Alberto A. Martínez of
the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University, Joffe only
ascribed authorship to Einstein, as he believed that it was a Swiss
custom at the time to append the spouse's last name to the husband's
name.7 Whatever the truth, the extent of her influence on Einstein's
work is a highly controversial and debated question.
On May 14, 1904, the couple's first son,
Hans Albert Einstein, was born. In 1903, Einstein's position at the
Swiss Patent Office had been made permanent, though he was passed over
for promotion until he had "fully mastered machine technology".8 He
obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "A new determination
of molecular dimensions" ("Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen")
in 1905.
That same year, he wrote four articles that
provided the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific
literature to which he could refer or many scientific colleagues with
whom he could discuss the theories. Most physicists agree that three of
those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special
relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes. Only the paper on the photoelectric
effect would be mentioned by the Nobel committee in the award. This is
ironic, not only because Einstein is far better-known for relativity,
but also because the photoelectric effect is a quantum phenomenon, and
Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would
take. In each of these papers, Einstein boldly took an idea from
theoretical physics to its logical consequences and managed to explain
experimental results that had baffled scientists for decades.
Annus Mirabilis Papers
For more details on this topic, see Annus
Mirabilis Papers.
Einstein submitted the series of papers to
the "Annalen der Physik". They are commonly referred to as the "Annus
Mirabilis Papers" (from Annus mirabilis, Latin for 'year of wonders').
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) commemorated
the 100th year of the publication of Einstein's extensive work in 1905
as the 'World Year of Physics 2005'.
The first paper, named "On a Heuristic
Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", ("Über
einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden
heuristischen Gesichtspunkt") proposed that "energy quanta" (which are
essentially what we now call photons) were real, and showed how they
could be used to explain such phenomena as the photoelectric effect.
This paper was specifically cited for his Nobel Prize. Max Planck had
made the formal assumption that energy was quantized in deriving his
black-body radiation law, published in 1901, but had considered this to
be no more than a mathematical trick. The photoelectric effect thus
provided a simple confirmation of Max Planck's hypothesis of quanta.
His second article in 1905, named "On the
Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small
Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", ("Über die von der
molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in
ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen") covered his study of
Brownian motion, and provided empirical evidence for the existence of
atoms. Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but
physicists and chemists hotly debated whether atoms were real entities.
Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave
experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary
microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school,
later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to a belief in
atoms by Einstein's complete explanation of Brownian motion. At the same
time as Einstein, Brownian Motion was also described by Smoluchowski.
Einstein's third paper that year, "On the
Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ("Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter
Körper"), was published in September 1905. This paper introduced the
special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and
energy which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force
of gravity. While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to Mileva about
"our work on relative motion", and this has led some to ask whether
Mileva played a part in its development. A few historians of science
believe that Einstein and his wife were both aware that the famous
Frenchman Henri Poincaré had already published the equations of
Relativity, a few weeks before Einstein submitted his paper; most
believe their work independent, especially given Einstein's isolation at
this time.
A fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body
Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", ("Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von
seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?") published late in 1905, showed one
further deduction from relativity's axioms, the famous equation that the
energy of a body at rest (E) equals its mass (m) times the speed of
light (c) squared: E = mc².
Middle years
In 1906, Einstein was promoted to technical
examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was licensed in Bern,
Switzerland, as a Privatdozent (unsalaried teacher at a university).
Einstein's second son, Eduard, was born on July 28, 1910. At this time,
he described why the sky is blue in his paper on the phenomenon of
critical opalescence, which shows the cumulative effect of scattering of
light by individual molecules in the atmosphere. In 1911, Einstein
became first associate professor at the University of Zurich, and
shortly afterwards full professor at the (German) University of Prague,
only to return the following year to Zurich in order to become full
professor at the ETH Zurich. At that time, he worked closely with the
mathematician Marcel Grossmann. In 1912, Einstein started to refer to
time as the fourth dimension (although H.G. Wells had done this earlier,
in 1895 in The Time Machine).
In 1914, just before the start of World War
I, Einstein settled in Berlin as professor at the local university and
became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He took German
citizenship. His pacifism and Jewish origins irritated German
nationalists. After he became world-famous, nationalistic hatred of him
grew and for the first time he was the subject of an organized campaign
to discredit his theories. From 1914 to 1933, he served as director of
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and it was during
this time that he was awarded his Nobel Prize and made his most
groundbreaking discoveries. He was also an extraordinary professor at
the Leiden University from 1920 until officially 1946, where he
regularly gave guest lectures.
In 1917, Einstein published "On the Quantum
Mechanics of Radiation" ("Zur Quantenmechanik der Strahlung",
Physkalische Zeitschrift 18, 121-128). This article introduced the
concept of stimulated emission, the physical principle that allows light
amplification in the laser. He also published a paper that year that
used the general theory of relativity to model the behavior of the
entire universe, setting the stage for modern cosmology. In this work he
created his self-described "worst blunder", the cosmological constant.
Einstein divorced Mileva on February 14,
1919, and married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal (born Einstein: Löwenthal
was the surname of her first husband, Max) on June 2, 1919. Elsa was
Albert's first cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally).
She was three years older than Albert, and had nursed him to health
after he had suffered a partial nervous breakdown combined with a severe
stomach ailment; there were no children from this marriage. The fate of
Albert and Mileva's first child, Lieserl, is unknown. Some believe she
died in infancy, while others believe she was given out for adoption.
They later had two sons: Eduard and Hans Albert. Eduard intended to
practice as a Freudian analyst but was institutionalized for
schizophrenia and died in an asylum. Hans Albert, his older brother,
became a professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of
California, Berkeley, having little interaction with his father.
General relativity
In November 1915, Einstein presented a
series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he
described his theory of gravity, known as general relativity. The final
lecture climaxed with his introduction of an equation that replaced
Newton's law of gravity, the Field Equation.9 This theory considered all
observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In
general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's
law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time.
The theory provided the foundation for the
study of cosmology and gave scientists the tools for understanding many
features of the universe that were discovered well after Einstein's
death. A truly revolutionary theory, general relativity has so far
passed every test posed to it and has become a powerful tool used in the
analysis of many subjects in physics.
Initially, scientists were skeptical
because the theory was derived by mathematical reasoning and rational
analysis, not by experiment or observation. But in 1919, predictions
made using the theory were confirmed by Arthur Eddington's measurements
(during a solar eclipse), of how much the light emanating from a star
was bent by the Sun's gravity when it passed close to the Sun, an effect
called gravitational lensing. The observations were carried out on May
29, 1919, at two locations, one in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil, and another in
the island of Principe, in the west coast of Africa. On November 7, The
Times reported the confirmation, cementing Einstein's fame.
Many scientists were still unconvinced for
various reasons ranging from disagreement with Einstein's interpretation
of the experiments, to not being able to tolerate the absence of an
absolute frame of reference. In Einstein's view, many of them simply
could not understand the mathematics involved. Einstein's public fame
which followed the 1919 article created resentment among these
scientists some of which lasted well into the 1930s.
In the early 1920s Einstein was the lead
figure in a famous weekly physics colloquium at the University of
Berlin. On March 30, 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture
on his new Theory of Relativity, the same year he was awarded the Nobel
Prize. Though he is now most famous for his work on relativity, it was
for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the
Prize, as his work on general relativity was still disputed. The Nobel
committee decided that citing his less-contested theory in the Prize
would gain more acceptance from the scientific community.
Sir Edmund Whittaker(1953) stated that
David Hilbert published the theory of general relativity nearly
simultaneously with Einstein.
The "Copenhagen" interpretation
Einstein's postulation that light can be
described not only as a wave with no kinetic energy, but also as
massless discrete packets of energy called quanta with measurable
kinetic energy (now known as photons) was a landmark break with the
classical physics. In 1909 Einstein presented his first paper on the
quantification of light to a gathering of physicists and told them that
they must find some way to understand waves and particles together.
In the mid-1920s, as the original quantum
theory was replaced with a new theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein
balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations because it
settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical
behaviour. Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available, but
he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e., more deterministic.
He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that
govern "real things", the belief which had led to his successes with
atoms, photons, and gravity.
In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein made
a remark that is now famous:
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing.
But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory
says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the
Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
To this, Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on
quantum theory, retorted, "Stop telling God what He must do!" The
Bohr-Einstein debates on foundational aspects of quantum mechanics
happened during the Solvay conferences.
Einstein was not rejecting probabilistic
theories per se. Einstein himself was a great statistician, using
statistical analysis in his works on Brownian motion and
photoelectricity and in papers published before the miraculous year
1905; Einstein had even discovered Gibbs ensembles. He believed,
however, that at the core reality behaved deterministically. Many
physicists argue that experimental evidence contradicting this belief
was found much later with the discovery of Bell's Theorem and Bell's
inequality. Nonetheless, there is still space for lively discussions
about the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Bose-Einstein statistics
In 1924, Einstein received a short paper
from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose describing light
as a gas of photons and asking for Einstein's assistance in publication.
Einstein realized that the same statistics could be applied to atoms,
and published an article in German (then the lingua franca of physics)
which described Bose's model and explained its implications.
Bose-Einstein statistics now describe any assembly of these
indistinguishable particles known as bosons. The Bose-Einstein
condensate phenomenon was predicted in the 1920s by Bose and Einstein,
based on Bose's work on the statistical mechanics of photons, which was
then formalized and generalized by Einstein. The first such condensate
was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University
of Colorado at Boulder. Einstein's original sketches on this theory were
recovered in August 2005 in the library of Leiden University.10
Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in
the development of the quantum Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical
and quantum mechanical gas model although he realized that this was less
significant than the Bose-Einstein model and declined to have his name
included on the paper.
The Einstein refrigerator
Einstein and former student Leó Szilárd
co-invented a unique type of refrigerator (usually called the Einstein
refrigerator) in 1926.11 On November 11, 1930, U.S. Patent 1,781,541 was
awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd. The patent covered a
thermodynamic refrigeration cycle providing cooling with no moving
parts, at a constant pressure, with only heat as an input. The
refrigeration cycle used ammonia, butane, and water.
World War II
When Adolf Hitler came to power in January
1933, Einstein was a guest professor at Princeton University, a position
which he took in December 1932, after a invitation from the American
educator, Abraham Flexner. In 1933, the Nazis passed "The Law of the
Restoration of the Civil Service" which forced all Jewish university
professors out of their jobs, and throughout the 1930s a campaign to
label Einstein's work as "Jewish physics"—in contrast with "German" or
"Aryan physics"—was led by Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes
Stark. With the assistance of the SS, the Deutsche Physik supporters
worked to publish pamplets and textbooks denigrating Einstein's theories
and attempted to politically blacklist German physicists who taught
them, notably Werner Heisenberg. Einstein renounced his German
citizenship and stayed in the United States, where he was given
permanent residency. He accepted a position at the newly founded
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton Township, New Jersey. He
became an American citizen in 1940, though he still retained Swiss
citizenship.
In 1939, under the encouragement of
Szilárd, Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
urging the study of nuclear fission for military purposes, under fears
that the Nazi government would be first to develop atomic weapons.
Roosevelt started a small investigation into the matter which eventually
became the massive Manhattan Project. Einstein himself did not work on
the bomb project, however.
The International Rescue Committee was
founded 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein to assist opponents of
Adolf Hitler.
For more information, see the section below
on Einstein's political views.
Institute for Advanced Study
His work at the Institute for Advanced
Study focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he
referred to as the Unified Field Theory. He attempted to construct a
model which would describe all of the fundamental forces as different
manifestations of a single force. This took the form of an attempt to
unify the gravitational and electrodynamic forces. His attempt was
hindered because the strong and weak nuclear forces were not understood
independently until around 1970, fifteen years after Einstein's death.
Einstein's goal of unifying the laws of physics under a single model
survives in the current drive for unification of the forces, embodied
most notably by string theory.
Generalized theory
Einstein began to form a generalized theory
of gravitation with the Universal Law of Gravitation and the
electromagnetic force in his first attempt to demonstrate the
unification and simplification of the fundamental forces. In 1950 he
described his work in a Scientific American article. Einstein was guided
by a belief in a single statistical measure of variance for the entire
set of physical laws.
Einstein's Generalized Theory of
Gravitation is a universal mathematical approach to field theory. He
investigated reducing the different phenomena by the process of logic to
something already known or evident. Einstein tried to unify gravity and
electromagnetism in a way that also led to a new subtle understanding of
quantum mechanics.
Einstein postulated a four-dimensional
space-time continuum expressed in axioms represented by five component
vectors. Particles appear in his research as a limited region in space
in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high.
Einstein treated subatomic particles as objects embedded in the unified
field, influencing it and existing as an essential constituent of the
unified field but not of it. Einstein also investigated a natural
generalization of symmetrical tensor fields, treating the combination of
two parts of the field as being a natural procedure of the total field
and not the symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts separately. He
researched a way to delineate the equations and systems to be derived
from a variational principle.
Einstein became increasingly isolated in
his research on a generalised theory of gravitation and was ultimately
unsuccessful in his attempts. In particular, his pursuit of a
unification of the fundamental forces ignored work in the physics
community at large, most notably the discovery of the strong nuclear
force and weak nuclear force.
Final years
In 1948, Einstein served on the original
committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis University. A
portrait of Einstein was taken by Yousuf Karsh on February 11 of that
same year. In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he
take the post of second president. He declined the offer, and remains
the only United States citizen ever to be offered a position as a
foreign head of state. On March 30, 1953, Einstein released a revised
unified field theory.
He died at 1:15 AM in Princeton hospital in
Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955 at the age of 76 from internal
bleeding, which was caused by the rupture of an aortic aneurism, leaving
the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. The only person present
at his deathbed, a hospital nurse, said that just before his death he
mumbled several words in German that she did not understand. He was
cremated without ceremony on the same day he died at Trenton, New
Jersey, in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at an
undisclosed location.
An autopsy was performed on Einstein by Dr.
Thomas Stoltz Harvey, who removed and preserved his brain. Harvey found
nothing unusual with his brain, but in 1999 further analysis by a team
at McMaster University revealed that his parietal operculum region was
missing and, to compensate, his inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider
than normal.12 The inferior parietal region is responsible for
mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.
Einstein's brain also contained 73% more glial cells than the average
brain.
Personality
Albert Einstein was much respected for his
kind and friendly demeanor rooted in his pacifism. He was modest about
his abilities, and had distinctive attitudes and fashions—for example,
he minimized his wardrobe so that he would not need to waste time in
deciding on what to wear. He was captivatingly simple, wearing mothy
sweaters and sweatshirts and sans socks in his old age. He occasionally
had a playful sense of humor, and enjoyed sailing and playing the
violin. He was also the stereotypical bumbling "absent-minded
professor"; he was often forgetful of everyday items, such as keys, and
would focus so intently on solving physics problems that he would often
become oblivious to his surroundings. In his later years, his appearance
inadvertently created (or reflected) another stereotype of scientist in
the process: the researcher with unruly white hair.
Religious views
Although he was raised Jewish, he was not a
believer in the religious aspect of Judaism, though he still considered
himself a Jew. He simply admired the beauty of nature and the universe.
From a letter written in English, dated March 24, 1954, Einstein wrote,
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it."
He also said (in an essay reprinted in
Living Philosophies, vol. 13, 1931): "A knowledge of the existence of
something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason
and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms
are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that
constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and this [sense] alone, I am
a deeply religious man."
The following is a response made to Rabbi
Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York which read,
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony
of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and
actions of human beings." After being pressed on his religious views by
Martin Buber, Einstein exclaimed, "What we [physicists] strive for is
just to draw His lines after Him." He also quoted once "When I read the
Bhagavad Gita, I ask myself how God created the universe. Everything
else seems superfluous." Summarizing his religious beliefs, he once
said: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable
superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to
perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the
Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of
Ethical Culture.
Political views
Einstein considered himself a pacifist14
and humanitarian,15 and in later years, a committed democratic
socialist. He once said, "I believe Gandhi's views were the most
enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do
things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause,
but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil." Einstein's
views on other issues, including socialism, McCarthyism and racism, were
controversial. In a 1949 article entitled "Why Socialism?",16 Albert
Einstein described the "predatory phase of human development",
exemplified by a chaotic capitalist society, as a source of evil to be
overcome. He disapproved of the totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union
and elsewhere, and argued in favor of a democratic socialist system
which would combine a planned economy with a deep respect for human
rights. Einstein was a co-founder of the liberal German Democratic Party
and a member of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union the American Federation of
Teachers.
Einstein was very much involved in the
Civil Rights movement. He was a close friend of Paul Robeson for over 20
years. Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups (including
the Princeton chapter of the NAACP) many of which were headed by Paul
Robeson. He served as co-chair with Paul Robeson of the American Crusade
to End Lynching. When W.E.B. DuBois was frivolously charged with being a
communist spy during the McCarthy era while he was in his 80s, Einstein
volunteered as a character witness in the case. The case was dismissed
shortly after it was announced that he was to appear in that capacity.
Einstein was quoted as saying that "racism is America's greatest
disease".
The U.S. FBI kept a 1,427 page file on his
activities and recommended that he be barred from immigrating to the
United States under the Alien Exclusion Act, alleging that Einstein
"believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches a doctrine which, in a
legal sense, as held by the courts in other cases, 'would allow anarchy
to stalk in unmolested' and result in 'government in name only'", among
other charges. They also alleged that Einstein "was a member, sponsor,
or affiliated with thirty-four communist fronts between 1937-1954" and
"also served as honorary chairman for three communist organizations".17
It should be noted that many of the documents in the file were submitted
to the FBI, mainly by civilian political groups, and not actually
written by FBI officials.
Einstein opposed tyrannical forms of
government, and for this reason (and his Jewish background), opposed the
Nazi regime and fled Germany shortly after it came to power. At the same
time, Einstein's anarchist nephew Carl Einstein, who shared many of his
views, was fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Einstein
initially favored construction of the atomic bomb, in order to ensure
that Hitler did not do so first, and even sent a letter18 to President
Roosevelt (dated August 2, 1939, before World War II broke out, and
probably written by Leó Szilárd) encouraging him to initiate a program
to create a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt responded to this by setting up a
committee for the investigation of using uranium as a weapon, which in a
few years was superseded by the Manhattan Project.
After the war, though, Einstein lobbied for
nuclear disarmament and a world government: "I do not know how the Third
World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the
Fourth—rocks!"
Einstein was a supporter of Zionism. He
supported Jewish settlement of the ancient seat of Judaism and was
active in the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which
published (1930) a volume titled About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by
Professor Albert Einstein, and to which Einstein bequeathed his papers.
However, he opposed nationalism and expressed skepticism about whether a
Jewish nation-state was the best solution. He may have imagined Jews and
Arabs living peacefully in the same land. In later life, in 1952, he was
offered the post of second president of the newly created state of
Israel, but declined the offer, claiming that he lacked the necessary
people skills. Einstein was disturbed by the violence taking place in
the Palestine after the Second World War and expressed that he was
disappointed with the Jewish Ultra-Nationalist Organization (Irgun and
Stern Gang). Nonetheless, Einstein remained deeply committed to the
welfare of Israel and the Jewish people for the rest of his life.
Einstein, along with Albert Schweitzer and
Bertrand Russell, fought against nuclear tests and bombs. As his last
public act, and just days before his death, he signed the
Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which led to the Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs. His letter to Russell read:
Dear Bertrand Russell,
Thank you for your letter of April 5. I am
gladly willing to sign your excellent statement. I also agree with your
choice of the prospective signers.
With kind regards, A. Einstein
Nationality: German, Swiss or American?
Einstein was born a German citizen. At the
age of seventeen, on January 28, 1896, he was released from the German
citizenship by his own request and with the approval of his father. He
remained stateless for five years. On February 21, 1901 he gained Swiss
citizenship, which he never revoked. Einstein regained German
citizenship in April 1914 when he entered German civil service, but due
to the political situation and the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi
Germany, he left civil service in March 1933 and thus also lost the
German citizenship. On October 1, 1940, Einstein became an American
citizen. He remained both an American and a Swiss citizen until his
death on April 18, 1955.
Popularity and cultural impact
Einstein's popularity has led to widespread
use of Einstein in advertising and merchandising, including the
registration of "Albert Einstein" as a trademark.
Entertainment
Albert Einstein has become the subject of a
number of novels, films and plays, including Jean-Claude Carrier's 2005
French novel, Einstein S'il Vous Plait (Please Mr Einstein), Nicolas
Roeg's film Insignificance, Fred Schepisi's film I.Q., Alan Lightman's
novel Einstein's Dreams, and Steve Martin's comedic play "Picasso at the
Lapin Agile". He was the subject of Philip Glass's groundbreaking 1976
opera Einstein on the Beach. His humorous side is also the subject of Ed
Metzger's one-man play Albert Einstein: The Practical Bohemian.
He is often used as a model for depictions
of eccentric scientists in works of fiction; his own character and
distinctive hairstyle suggest eccentricity, or even lunacy and are
widely copied or exaggerated. TIME magazine writer Frederic Golden
referred to Einstein as "a cartoonist's dream come true."
On Einstein's 72nd birthday in 1951, the
UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to coax him into smiling for
the camera. Having done this for the photographer many times that day,
Einstein stuck out his tongue instead.20 The image has become an icon in
pop culture for its contrast of the genius scientist displaying a moment
of levity. Yahoo Serious, an Australian film maker, used the photo as an
inspiration for the intentionally anachronistic movie Young Einstein.
Licensing
Einstein bequeathed his estate, as well as
the use of his image (see personality rights), to the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.21 Einstein actively supported the university during his
life and this support continues with the royalties received from
licensing activities. The Roger Richman Agency licences the commercial
use of the name "Albert Einstein" and associated imagery and likenesses
of Einstein, as agent for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As head
licensee the agency can control commercial usage of Einstein's name
which does not comply with certain standards (e.g., when Einstein's name
is used as a trademark, the ™ symbol must be used)22. As of May, 2005,
the Roger Richman Agency was acquired by Corbis.
Honors
Einstein has received a number of
posthumous honors. For example:
In 1992, he was ranked #10 on Michael H.
Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.
In 1999, he was named Person of the Century
by TIME magazine.
Also in 1999, Gallup recorded him as the
fourth most admired person of the 20th century.
The year 2005 was designated as the "World
Year of Physics" by UNESCO for its coinciding with the centennial of the
"Annus Mirabilis" papers, celebrated at the Einstein Symposium.
Among Einstein's many namesakes are:
a unit used in photochemistry, the einstein.
the chemical element 99, einsteinium.
the asteroid 2001 Einstein.
the Albert Einstein Peace Prize.
the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of
Yeshiva University23 was named after Einstein upon his death in 1955.
the Albert Einstein Medical Center24 in
Philadelphia, PA.
****
****
The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the NGU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
have been removed, including text links such as
"[#]"; (2) The "[Edit]" text and link have been
removed [if you would like to update the article,
you may do so from the original page]; (3) the table
of Contents links and text have been removed; and
(4) all of the sections of the original article have
not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein
Date Article Copied:
March 3, 2006
We
will try to replace this article with an original
biography in the near future, but we hope this will
be of help to our visitors in the mean time.
For
additions & corrections,
Click Here |