Essay, Research Paper: Albert Einstien

Albert Einstein
Recognized in his own time as one of the most creative people in human history, Albert Einstein, in the first 15 years of the 20th century, advanced a series of theories that for the first time asserted the equivalence of mass and energy and proposed entirely new ways of thinking about space, time, and gravitation. His theories of relativity and gravitation were a profound advance over the old Newtonian physics and revolutionized scientific and philosophic inquiry.
He was a self-confessed lone traveller; his mind and heart soared with the cosmos, yet he could not armour himself against the intrusion of the often horrendous events of the human community. Almost reluctantly he admitted that he had a "passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility." His celebrity gave him an influential voice that he used to champion such causes as pacifism, and liberalism. The irony for this idealistic man was that his famous postulation of an energy-mass equation, which states that a particle of matter can be converted into an enormous quantity of energy, had its spectacular proof in the creation of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the most destructive weapons ever known.
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. The following year his family moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein, his father, and Jakob Einstein, his uncle, set up a small electrical plant and engineering works. In Munich Einstein attended rigidly disciplined schools. Under the harsh and pedantic regimentation of 19th-century German education, which he found intimidating and boring, he showed little scholastic ability. At the behest of his mother, Einstein also studied music; though throughout life he played mostly for relaxation, he became an great violinist. It was then only Uncle Jakob who stimulated in Einstein a fascination for mathematics and Uncle Casar Koch who stimulated a consuming curiosity about science. By the age of 12 Einstein had decided to devote himself to solving the riddle of the "huge world." Three years later, with poor grades in history, geography, and languages, he left school with no diploma and went to Milan to rejoin his family, who had recently moved there from Germany because of his father's business setbacks. Albert Einstein resumed his education in Switzerland, culminating in four years of physics and mathematics at the renowned Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zurich. After his graduation in the spring of 1900, he became a Swiss citizen, worked for two months as a mathematics teacher, and then was employed as examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern. With his newfound security, Einstein married his university sweetheart, Mileva Maric, in 1903.
Early in 1905 Einstein published in the prestigious German physics monthly Annalen der Physik a thesis, "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions," that won him a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich. Four more important papers appeared in Annalen that year and forever changed man's view of the universe. The first of these, "On the Motion--Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat--of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", provided a theoretical explanation of Brownian motion. In "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", Einstein postulated that light is composed of individual quanta later called photons, in addition to wavelike behaviour, demonstrate certain properties unique to particles. In a single stroke he thus revolutionized the theory of light and provided an explanation for, among other phenomena, the emission of electrons from some solids when struck by light, called the photoelectric effect. Einstein's special theory of relativity, first printed in "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", had its beginnings in an essay Einstein wrote at age 16. The precise influence of work by other physicists on Einstein's special theory is still controversial. The theory held that, if, for all frames of reference, the speed of light is constant and if all natural laws are the same, then both time and motion are found to be relative to the observer. In the mathematical progression of the theory, Einstein published his fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?".
While Einstein continued to develop his theory, attempting now to encompass with it the phenomenon of gravitation, he left the patent office and returned to teaching--first in Switzerland, briefly at the German University in Prague, where he was awarded a full professorship, and then, in the winter of 1912, back at the Polytechnic in Zurich. He was later remembered from this time as a very happy man, content in his marriage and delighted with his two young sons, Hans Albert and Edward. In April 1914 the family moved to Berlin, where Einstein had accepted a position with the Prussian Academy of Sciences, an arrangement that permitted him to continue his researches with only the occasional diversion of lecturing at the University of Berlin. His wife and two sons vacationed in Switzerland that summer and, with the eruption of World War I, were unable to return to Berlin. A few years later this enforced separation was to lead to divorce. Einstein's attitudes were greatly influenced by the French pacifist and author Romain Rolland, whom he met on a wartime visit to Switzerland. Rolland's diary later provided the best glimpse of Einstein's physical appearance as he reached his middle 30s: Einstein is still a young man, not very tall, with a wide and long face, and a great mane of crispy, frizzled and very black hair, sprinkled with gray and rising high from a lofty brow. His nose is fleshy and prominent, his mouth small, his lips full, his cheeks plump, his chin rounded. He wears a small cropped mustache.
International fame came to Einstein in November 1919, when the Royal Society of London announced that its scientific expedition to Principe Island, in the Gulf of Guinea, had photographed the solar eclipse on May 29 of that year and completed calculations that verified the predictions made in Einstein's general theory of relativity.
After his divorce he had, in the summer of 1919, married Elsa, the widowed daughter of his late father's cousin. He lived quietly with Elsa and her two daughters in Berlin, but, inevitably, his views as a foremost savant were sought on a variety of issues.
In Shanghai a cable reached him announcing that he had been awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics "for your photoelectric law and your work in the field of theoretical physics." Relativity, still the centre of controversy, was not mentioned.
The year of Einstein's 50th birthday, 1929, marked the beginning of the ebb flow of his life's work in a number of aspects. Early in the year the Prussian Academy published the first version of his unified-field theory, but, despite the sensation it caused, its very preliminary nature soon became apparent.
Edward had worshipped his father from a distance but now blamed him for deserting him and for ruining his life. Einstein's sorrow was eased only slightly by the amicable relationship he enjoyed with his older son, Hans Albert. As visiting professor at Oxford University in 1931, Einstein spent as much time espousing pacifism as he did discussing science.
In 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Einstein renounced his German citizenship and left the country. He later accepted a full-time position as a foundation member of the school of mathematics at the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In reprisal, Nazi storm troopers ransacked his beloved summer house at Caputh, near Berlin, and confiscated his sailboat. Einstein was so convinced that Nazi Germany was preparing for war that, to the horror of Romain Rolland and his other pacifist friends, he violated his pacifist ideals and urged free Europe to arm and recruit for defense. He was taken by private yacht from Belgium to England. By the time he arrived in Princeton in October 1933, he had noticeably aged. A friend wrote, It was as if something had deadened in him. He sat in a chair at our place, twisting his white hair in his fingers and talking dreamily about everything under the sun. He was not laughing any more. Later years in the United States. In Princeton Einstein set a pattern that was to vary little for more than 20 years. He lived with his wife in a simple, two-story frame house and most mornings walked a mile or so to the Institute, where he worked on his unified field theory and talked with colleagues. For relaxation he played his violin and sailed on a local lake. Only rarely did he travel, even to New York. In a letter to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, he described his new refuge as a "wonderful little spot, . . . a quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts." Eventually he acquired American citizenship, but he always continued to think of himself as a European. Pursuing his own line of theoretical research outside the mainstream of physics, he took on an air of fixed serenity. "Among my European friends, I am now called The Great Stone Face, a title I well deserve," he said. Even his wife's death late in 1936 did not disturb his outward calm.
With a European war egarded as imminent and fears that Nazi scientists might build an "a-bomb" first, Einstein was persuaded by colleagues to write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging "watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action" on the part of the United States in atomic-bomb research. This recommendation marked the beginning of the Manhattan Project. Although he took no part in the work at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and did not learn that a nuclear-fission bomb had been made until Hiroshima was razed in 1945, Einstein's name was emphatically associated with the advent of the atomic age. He readily joined those scientists seeking ways to prevent any future use of the bomb, his particular and urgent plea being the establishment of a world government under a constitution drafted by the United States, Britain, and Russia. With the spur of the atomic fear that haunted the world, he said "we must not be merely willing, but actively eager to submit ourselves to the binding authority necessary for world security." Once more, Einstein's name surged through the newspapers.
On April 18, 1955, Einstein died in his sleep at Princeton Hospital. On his desk lay his last incomplete statement, written to honour Israeli Independence Day. It read in part: "What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice at the risk of pleasing no one." His contribution to man's understanding of the universe was matchless, and he is established for all time as a giant of science.