Alecia whitaker biography of albert einstein
Biography of thomas alva edison: Tests of the General Theory. Mechanical explanation had had great successes, particularly in the theory of heat and in various aspects of optics and electromagnetism; but even the successful mechanical theory of heat had its serious failures and unresolved paradoxes, and physicists had not been able to provide a really satisfactory mechanical foundation for electromagnetic theory. Although he was one of its founding fathers, he rejected its generally accepted probabilistic interpretation because, influenced by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza — , whom he had read in his youth, he was utterly convinced of the causal dependence of all phenomena. The Private Lives of Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein
German-born physicist (–)
"Einstein" redirects here. For other uses, see Einstein (disambiguation) and Albert Einstein (disambiguation).
Albert Einstein | |
|---|---|
Einstein in | |
| Born | ()14 March Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire |
| Died | 18 April () (aged&#;76) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Citizenship | |
| Education | |
| Known&#;for | |
| Spouses | Mileva Marić &#; &#; (m.&#;; div.&#;)&#;Elsa Löwenthal &#; &#; (m.&#;; died&#;)&#; |
| Children | 3, including Hans |
| Family | Einstein |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen (A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions)&#;() |
| Doctoral advisor | Alfred Kleiner |
| Other&#;academic advisors | Heinrich Friedrich Weber |
Albert Einstein (, EYEN-styne;[4]German:[ˈalbɛʁtˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn]ⓘ; 14 March – 18 April ) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity.
Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics.[1][5] His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation".[6] He received the Nobel Prize in Physics for .[7]
Born in the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in , forsaking his German citizenship the following year.
In , at the age of seventeen he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, graduating in He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern.
In , he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In , he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. In , while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews,[8] he decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in [9] On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research.
Biography of albert einstein summary Magazine columnist Marilyn vos Savant has the highest-ever recorded IQ at and was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records in the late s. For example, the same clock might tick at a different speed when it is near a giant object, such as the Sun. Jump to: Einstein's birthday and education Einstein's wives and children How Einstein changed physics Later years and death Gravitational waves and relativity Additional resources. Even then, Einstein did not impress all of his teachers.In , he published four groundbreaking papers, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year). These papers outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity, and demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass and energy are equivalent to each other.
In , he proposed a general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A cosmological paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole.[11][12] In , Einstein wrote a paper which laid the foundations for the concepts of both laser and maser, and contained a trove of information that would be beneficial to developments in physics later on, such as quantum electrodynamics and quantum optics.[13] A joint paper in , with physicist Nathan Rosen, introduced the notion of a wormhole.
In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory.
Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics. For much of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that ultimately proved unsuccessful.
First, he advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's picture of the world, objecting that .[15] Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics.
In , he was named Time's Person of the Century.[16]
Life and career
Childhood, youth and education
See also: Einstein family
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,[17] in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March [18] His parents, secular Ashkenazi Jews, were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch.
In , the family moved to Munich's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt, where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.[17] He often related a formative event from his youth, when he was sick in bed and his father brought him a compass.
This sparked his lifelong fascination with electromagnetism.
Alecia whitaker biography of albert einstein scientist To enumerate at this point the many honors that were bestowed upon Einstein during his lifetime would be to devote space to the kind of public acclamation that mattered so little to Einstein himself. It went far beyond the work Max Planck had done in , in which the energy of certain material oscillators was treated as a discrete variable, capable only of values that were integral multiples of a natural unit proportional to the frequency. On the day that he died, Einstein had asked his secretary for his latest notes on an unfinished project, finding a classical unified field theory for gravity and electromagnetism. He never set foot on German soil again.He realized that "Something deeply hidden had to be behind things."[19]
Albert attended St. Peter's Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of five. When he was eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received advanced primary and then secondary school education.
In , Hermann and Jakob's company tendered for a contract to install electric lighting in Munich, but without success—they lacked the capital that would have been required to update their technology from direct current to the more efficient, alternating current alternative.[21] The failure of their bid forced them to sell their Munich factory and search for new opportunities elsewhere.
The Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia, where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani.[22] Einstein, then fifteen, stayed behind in Munich in order to finish his schooling. His father wanted him to study electrical engineering, but he was a fractious pupil who found the Gymnasium's regimen and teaching methods far from congenial.
He later wrote that the school's policy of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity. At the end of December , a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, and he joined his family in Pavia. While in Italy as a teenager, he wrote an essay entitled "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".[25]
Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age, and soon acquired the mathematical expertise normally only found in a child several years his senior.
Alecia whitaker biography of albert einstein Such was not to be the case, however, since he left the gymnasium after only six more months. As Einstein, in his autobiographical notes, wrote, "through the reading of these books I reached the conclusion that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. 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 to Roosevelt —; served —45 urging government support for research into how to make a bomb using new discoveries about atoms.He began teaching himself algebra, calculus and Euclidean geometry when he was twelve; he made such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday.[26][28] A family tutor, Max Talmud, said that only a short time after he had given the twelve year old Einstein a geometry textbook, the boy Einstein recorded that he had "mastered integral and differential calculus" while still just fourteen.
His love of algebra and geometry was so great that at twelve, he was already confident that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure".
At thirteen, when his range of enthusiasms had broadened to include music and philosophy, Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher; according to Talmud,
In , at the age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examination for the Federal Polytechnic School (later the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland.
He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the test, but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics.
On the advice of the polytechnic's principal, he completed his secondary education at the Argovian cantonal school (a gymnasium) in Aarau, Switzerland, graduating in [33] While lodging in Aarau with the family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. (His sister, Maja, later married Winteler's son Paul.)
In January , with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order to avoid conscription into military service.
The Matura (graduation for the successful completion of higher secondary schooling), awarded to him in September , acknowledged him to have performed well across most of the curriculum, allotting him a top grade of 6 for history, physics, algebra, geometry, and descriptive geometry. At seventeen, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Federal Polytechnic School.
Marie Winteler, a year older than him, took up a teaching post in Olsberg, Switzerland.
The five other polytechnic school freshmen following the same course as Einstein included just one woman, a twenty year old Serbian, Mileva Marić. Over the next few years, the pair spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning about topics in physics that the polytechnic school's lectures did not cover.
Alecia whitaker biography of albert einstein for kids Einstein, , p. Janssen, Michel, John D. On several occasions Einstein had visited the California Institute of Technology , and on his last trip to the United States Abraham Flexner offered Einstein—on Einstein's terms—a position in the newly conceived and funded Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. 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 his letters to Marić, Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more enjoyable than reading a textbook in solitude. Eventually the two students became not only friends but also lovers.[37]
Historians of physics are divided on the question of the extent to which Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications.
There is at least some evidence that he was influenced by her scientific ideas,[37][38][39] but there are scholars who doubt whether her impact on his thought was of any great significance at all.[41][43]
Marriages, relationships and children
Correspondence between Einstein and Marić, discovered and published in , revealed that in early , while Marić was visiting her parents in Novi Sad, she gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl.
When Marić returned to Switzerland it was without the child, whose fate is uncertain. A letter of Einstein's that he wrote in September suggests that the girl was either given up for adoption or died of scarlet fever in infancy.[44]
Einstein and Marić married in January In May , their son Hans Albert was born in Bern, Switzerland.
Their son Eduard was born in Zurich in July In letters that Einstein wrote to Marie Winteler in the months before Eduard's arrival, he described his love for his wife as "misguided" and mourned the "missed life" that he imagined he would have enjoyed if he had married Winteler instead: "I think of you in heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy as only a man can be."[46]
In , Einstein entered into a relationship with Elsa Löwenthal, who was both his first cousin on his mother's side and his second cousin on his father's.[48] When Marić learned of his infidelity soon after moving to Berlin with him in April , she returned to Zurich, taking Hans Albert and Eduard with her.[37] Einstein and Marić were granted a divorce on 14 February on the grounds of having lived apart for five years.[50] As part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if he were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give the money that he received to Marić; he won the prize two years later.[52]
Einstein married Löwenthal in