Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)

In the 1910s, Albert Einstein proposed a series of theories that led to new ways of thinking about space, time, and gravitation. For thefirst time, the scientific world raced far beyond the theories of the seventeenth century English scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who began his study of gravity by observing an apple fall from a tree. Einstein's famous energy-mass equation, which asserts that a particle of matter can be transformed into an astounding quantity of energy, led to the construction of atomic and hydrogen bombs with unimaginable capacities for destruction. In his own time he was widely recognized as one of the most innovative geniuses in human history. Today, in the realm of popular culture, his name is synonymous with genius, and many a young prodigy has been called an "Einstein."

Albert Einstein

He was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, and grew up in Munich, where he was educated in public schools that he found to be boring, as well as highly regimented and intimidating. He showed such little ability as a student that his mother recommended that he study music, and he became an accomplished violinist, playing throughout his life for relaxation, not for public performance. Under the influence of two uncles, the boy Einstein began to develop a curiosity about science and mathematics, and at age 12 he announced that he would concentrate his mind on solving the riddle of the "huge world."

At age 15, with poor grades in languages, history, and geography, he left his German school without a diploma and moved with his family to Milan. He resumed his education at the famous Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zürich, where he completed four years of physics and mathematics. After graduating in the spring of 1900, Einstein began a two month tenure as a mathematics teacher before being employed as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. He continued his research and writing and in 1905 published a thesis entitled A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions that won him a Ph.D. from the University of Zürich. Four more important papers were published that year in the prestigious German journal Annalen der Physik, forever changing man's view of the universe.

Now accepted by his colleagues as one of Europe's leading physicists and much sought-after as a consultant, Einstein left the patent office and returned to teaching in universities in Switzerland and Germany. In 1914 he moved to Berlin, where he worked at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, doing his research on the general theory of relativity and lecturing occasionally at the University of Berlin. He published his findings in 1916 in an article entitled (in translation): "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity." He postulated that gravitation was not a force, as Newton had thought, but a curved field in a space-time continuum. This could be proved, he wrote, by measuring the deflection of starlight during a period of total eclipse. In 1919 British scientists photographed a solar eclipse from Principe Island in the Gulf of Guinea, and their calculations verified Einstein's predictions. Einstein was amazed at the world-wide acclamation he received, but he resented the constant interruptions his new fame brought. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

During the 1920s Einstein worked toward finding a mathematical relationship between electromagnetism and gravitation, thus relating the universal properties of matter and energy into a single equation or formula. This quest for a unified field theory, which occupied the rest of his life, proved futile. The rapidly developing quantum theory showed that the movement of a single particle could not be predicted because of the uncertainty in measuring both its speed and its position at the same time. The first version of the unified field theory was published in 1929, but the tentative, preliminary nature of the work was apparent to the scientific community.

In the 1930s, Einstein spent as much time championing the cause of peace as he did discussing science. He established the Einstein War Resisters International Fund to bring massive public pressure on the World Disarmament Conference, scheduled to meet in Geneva in 1932. After the failure of the conference, which he termed "farcical," Einstein visited Geneva to focus world attention on the failure and on the necessity of reducing the world's firepower.

When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Einstein warned the world that Nazi Germany was preparing for war, then renounced his German citizenship and moved to America. He accepted a full time position at the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. Nazi storm troopers ransacked his summer home near Berlin in reprisal.

His life at Princeton remained the same for the next 20 years. He lived in a simple frame house, daily walking a mile or so to the Institute, where he worked on his unified field theory and talked with colleagues. In a 1994 movie entitled I.Q., Walter Matthau played the role of Einstein enjoying his intellectual life at Princeton. Einstein rarely traveled, preferring to relax with his violin and sail on a local lake. He took no part in the work at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the nuclear fission bombs were being made. When he died in his sleep on April 18, 1955, his wife found an incomplete statement, written to honor Israeli Independence Day, on his desk. It included this statement: "What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice at the risk of pleasing no one."

Brian, Denis. Einstein: A Life. New York, Wiley, 1997.

Holton, Gerald James. Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The Rebellion Against Science at the End of the Twentieth Century. New York, Springer-Verlag, 1995.

Pais, Abraham. "Subtle Is The Lord … ": The Science and Life of Albert Einstein. New York, Oxford, 1982.