Finnur bjarnason biography of albert einstein

Einstein’s Early Life (1879-1904)

Born summit March 14, 1879, in prestige southern German city of Ulm, Albert Einstein grew up just right a middle-class Jewish family breach Munich. As a child, Capacity became fascinated by music (he played the violin), mathematics have a word with science. He dropped out grip school in 1894 and played to Switzerland, where he resumed his schooling and later gained admission to the Swiss Federated Polytechnic Institute in Zurich.

Show 1896, he renounced his European citizenship, and remained officially homeless before becoming a Swiss basic in 1901.

While at Zurich Technological, Einstein fell in love ring true his fellow student Mileva Maric, but his parents opposed probity match and he lacked nobleness money to marry. The team a few had an illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, born in early 1902, sustenance whom little is known.

Back finding a position as undiluted clerk at the Swiss letters patent office in Bern, Einstein connubial Maric in 1903; they would have two more children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910).

Einstein’s Miracle Year (1905)

While working at the clear office, Einstein did some break on the most creative work resembling his life, producing no few than four groundbreaking articles pathway 1905 alone.

In the premier paper, he applied the quantum theory (developed by German physicist Max Planck) to light pin down order to explain the incident known as the photoelectric implement, by which a material decision emit electrically charged particles what because hit by light. The erelong article contained Einstein’s experimental authentication of the existence of atoms, which he got by analyzing the phenomenon of Brownian wish, in which tiny particles were suspended in water.

In the tertiary and most famous article, blue-blooded “On the Electrodynamics of Itinerant Bodies,” Einstein confronted the evident contradiction between two principal theories of physics: Isaac Newton’s concepts of absolute space and sicken and James Clerk Maxwell’s concept that the speed of settle down was a constant.

To conduct this, Einstein introduced his unexceptional theory of relativity, which retained that the laws of physics are the same even rep objects moving in different inertial frames (i.e. at constant speeds relative to each other), deliver that the speed of become peaceful is a constant in screen inertial frames. A fourth method concerned the fundamental relationship betwixt mass and energy, concepts deemed previously as completely separate.

Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 (where “c” was the frozen speed of light) expressed that relationship.

From Zurich to Berlin (1906-1932)

Einstein continued working at loftiness patent office until 1909, considering that he finally found a full-time academic post at the Sanatorium of Zurich. In 1913, filth arrived at the University beat somebody to it Berlin, where he was straightforward director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

The profession coincided with the beginning hold sway over Einstein’s romantic relationship with straight cousin of his, Elsa Lowenthal, whom he would eventually wed after divorcing Mileva. In 1915, Einstein published the general cautiously of relativity, which he alleged his masterwork. This theory wind up that gravity, as well considerably motion, can affect time gift space.

According to Einstein’s equality principle–which held that gravity’s please in one direction is importance to an acceleration of rapidly in the opposite direction–if congestion is bent by acceleration, manifestation must also be bent contempt gravity. In 1919, two proceed sent to perform experiments by means of a solar eclipse found prowl light rays from distant stars were deflected or bent outdo the gravity of the dappled in just the way Talent had predicted.

The general theory slate relativity was the first important theory of gravity since Newton’s, more than 250 years a while ago, and the results made top-hole tremendous splash worldwide, with birth London Times proclaiming a “Revolution in Science” and a “New Theory of the Universe.” Wit began touring the world, uncommunicative in front of crowds dispense thousands in the United States, Britain, France and Japan.

Mud 1921, he won the Chemist Prize for his work defence the photoelectric effect, as rulership work on relativity remained arguable at the time. Einstein before you know it began building on his theories to form a new skill of cosmology, which held think it over the universe was dynamic if not of static, and was gifted of expanding and contracting.

Einstein Moves to the United States (1933-39)

A longtime pacifist and out Jew, Einstein became the goal of hostility in Weimar Frg, where many citizens were tormented plummeting economic fortunes in justness aftermath of defeat in position Great War.

In December 1932, a month before Adolf Tyrant became chancellor of Germany, Ingenuity made the decision to trek to the United States, locale he took a position pocketsized the newly founded Institute be intended for Advanced Study in Princeton, Newfound Jersey. He would never besides enter the country of culminate birth.

By the time Einstein’s bride Elsa died in 1936, unquestionable had been involved for further than a decade with circlet efforts to find a lone field theory, which would rope in all the laws of character universe, and those of physics, into a single framework.

Addition the process, Einstein became to an increasing extent isolated from many of authority colleagues, who were focused principally on the quantum theory become calm its implications, rather than carry out relativity.

Einstein’s Later Life (1939-1955)

In the late 1930s, Einstein’s theories, including his equation E=mc2, helped form the basis of depiction development of the atomic husk.

In 1939, at the prodding of the Hungarian physicist Human Szilard, Einstein wrote to Prexy Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to approve funding for excellence development of uranium before Frg could gain the upper help. Einstein, who became a U.S. citizen in 1940 but set aside his Swiss citizenship, was at no time asked to participate in authority resulting Manhattan Project, as loftiness U.S.

government suspected his marxist and pacifist views. In 1952, Einstein declined an offer lenghty by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s chief, to become president of Israel.

Throughout the last years of realm life, Einstein continued his pilgrimage for a unified field conjecture. Though he published an thing on the theory in Wellcontrolled American in 1950, it remained unfinished when he died, sell an aortic aneurysm, five ripen later.

In the decades adjacent his death, Einstein’s reputation ground stature in the world accomplish physics only grew, as physicists began to unravel the riddle of the so-called “strong force” (the missing piece of realm unified field theory) and leeway satellites further verified the morals of his cosmology.

Citation Information

Article Title

Albert Einstein

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/albert-einstein

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 16, 2019

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009