Action item biography of albert einstein

Inhe 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. 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 radiationin which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons. 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 God does not play dice.

As a result, he became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics. Inhe was named Time 's Person of the Century. Inthe family moved to Munich 's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadtwhere Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. This sparked his lifelong fascination with electromagnetism.

He realized that "Something deeply hidden had to be behind things. 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 Gymnasiumwhere he received advanced primary and then secondary school education. InHermann 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.

The Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Paviawhere they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani. His father wanted him to study electrical engineeringbut 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 Decembera letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, and he joined his family in Pavia. 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. 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.

He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow. At thirteen, when his range of enthusiasms had broadened to include music and philosophy, [ 30 ] Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant 's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher; according to Talmud, At the time he was still a child, only thirteen years old, yet Kant's works, incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, seemed to be clear to him.

He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the test, [ 31 ] but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics. His sister, Majalater married Winteler's son Paul. Marie Winteler, a year older than him, took up a teaching post in OlsbergSwitzerland. 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.

Eventually the two students became not only friends but also lovers. 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. 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.

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.

Inshe was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems. She died in December A volume of Einstein's letters released by Hebrew University of Jerusalem in [ 60 ] added some other women with whom he was romantically involved. Following an episode of acute mental illness at about the age of twenty, Einstein's son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Einstein graduated from the Federal Polytechnic School induly certified as competent to teach mathematics and physics. He found that Swiss schools too appeared to have no use for him, failing to offer him a teaching position despite the almost two years that he spent applying for one. Eventually it was with the help of Marcel Grossmann 's father that he secured a post in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office[ 70 ] [ 71 ] as an assistant examiner — level III.

Patent applications that landed on Einstein's desk for his evaluation included ideas for a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter. He arrived at his revolutionary ideas about space, time and light through thought experiments about the transmission of signals and the synchronization of clocks, matters which also figured in some of the inventions submitted to him for assessment.

InEinstein and some friends whom he had met in Bern formed a group that held regular meetings to discuss science and philosophy. Their choice of a name for their club, the Olympia Academywas an ironic comment upon its far from Olympian status. Einstein was formally awarded his PhD on 15 January The publications deeply impressed Einstein's contemporaries.

Einstein's sabbatical as a civil servant approached its end inwhen he secured a junior teaching position at the University of Bern. Ina lecture on relativistic electrodynamics that he gave at the University of Zurich, much admired by Alfred Kleiner, led to Zurich's luring him away from Bern with a newly created associate professorship.

In Julyhe returned to his alma materthe ETH Zurichto take up a chair in theoretical physics. His teaching activities there centred on thermodynamics and analytical mechanics, and his research interests included the molecular theory of heat, continuum mechanics and the development of a relativistic theory of gravitation. In his work on the latter topic, he was assisted by his friend, Marcel Grossmann, whose knowledge of the kind of mathematics required was greater than his own.

In the spring oftwo German visitors, Max Planck and Walther Nernstcalled upon Einstein in Zurich in the hope of persuading him to relocate to Berlin. The outbreak of the First World War in July marked the beginning of Einstein's gradual estrangement from the nation of his birth. When the " Manifesto of the Ninety-Three " was published in October —a document signed by a host of prominent German thinkers that justified Germany's belligerence—Einstein was one of the few German intellectuals to distance himself from it and sign the alternative, eirenic " Manifesto to the Europeans " instead.

Inhe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his actions item biography of albert einstein to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Bose derived the Planck spectrum in Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy in March His accomplishments in Berlin had included the completion of the general theory of relativity, proving the Einstein—de Haas effectcontributing to the quantum theory of radiation, and the development of Bose—Einstein statistics.

InEinstein reached a milestone on his long journey from his special theory of relativity to a new idea of gravitation with the formulation of his equivalence principlewhich asserts that an observer in an infinitesimally small box falling freely in a gravitational field would be unable to find any evidence that the field exists. Inhe used the principle to estimate the amount by which a ray of light from a distant star would be bent by the gravitational pull of the Sun as it passed close to the Sun's photosphere that is, the Sun's apparent surface.

He reworked his calculation inhaving now found a way to model gravitation with the Riemann curvature tensor of a non-Euclidean four-dimensional spacetime. By the fall ofhis reimagining of the mathematics of gravitation in terms of Riemannian geometry was complete, and he applied his new theory not just to the behavior of the Sun as a gravitational lens but also to another astronomical phenomenon, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury a slow drift in the point in Mercury's elliptical orbit at which it approaches the Sun most closely.

Eddington's work was reported at length in newspapers around the world. With Eddington's eclipse observations widely reported not just in academic journals but by the popular press as well, Einstein became perhaps the world's first celebrity scientista genius who had shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the seventeenth century.

Einstein began his new life as an intellectual icon in America, where he arrived on 2 April He returned to Europe via London, where he was the guest of the philosopher and statesman Viscount Haldane. He used his time in the British capital to meet several people prominent in British scientific, political or intellectual life, and to deliver a lecture at King's College.

The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic, and without envy. InEinstein's travels were to the old world rather than the new. After his first public lecture in Tokyo, he met Emperor Yoshihito and his wife at the Imperial Palacewith thousands of spectators thronging the streets in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. In a letter to his sons, he wrote that Japanese people seemed to him to be generally modest, intelligent and considerate, and to have a true appreciation of art.

His journal also contains views of China and India which were uncomplimentary. Of Chinese people, he wrote that even the children are spiritless and look obtuse It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary. Sir Herbert Samuelthe British High Commissioner, welcomed him with a degree of ceremony normally only accorded to a visiting head of state, including a cannon salute.

One reception held in his honor was stormed by people determined to hear him speak: he told them that he was happy that Jews were beginning to be recognized as a force in the world. Einstein's decision to tour the eastern hemisphere in meant that he was unable to go to Stockholm in the December of that year to participate in the Nobel prize ceremony.

His place at the traditional Nobel banquet was taken by a German diplomat, who gave a speech praising him not only as a physicist but also as a campaigner for peace. From untilwith the exception of a few months in andEinstein was a action item biography of albert einstein of the Geneva-based International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nationsa group set up by the League to encourage scientists, artists, scholars, teachers and other people engaged in the life of the mind to work more closely with their counterparts in other countries.

By persuading Secretary General Eric Drummond to deny Einstein the place on the committee reserved for a Swiss thinker, they created an opening for Gonzague de Reynoldwho used his League of Nations position as a platform from which to promote traditional Catholic doctrine. In March and AprilEinstein and his wife visited South America, where they spent about a week in Brazil, a week in Uruguay and a month in Argentina.

In DecemberEinstein began another significant sojourn in the United States, drawn back to the US by the offer of a two month research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech supported him in his wish that he should not be exposed to quite as much attention from the media as he had experienced when visiting the US inand he therefore declined all the invitations to receive prizes or make speeches that his admirers poured down upon him.

But he remained willing to allow his fans at least some of the time with him that they requested. After arriving in New York City, Einstein was taken to various places and events, including Chinatowna lunch with the editors of The New York Timesand a performance of Carmen at the Metropolitan Operawhere he was cheered by the audience on his arrival.

During the days following, he was given the keys to the city by Mayor Jimmy Walker and met Nicholas Murray Butlerthe president of Columbia Universitywho described Einstein as "the ruling monarch of the mind". His friendship with Millikan was awkwardas Millikan had a penchant for patriotic militarismwhere Einstein was a pronounced pacifist. This aversion to war also led Einstein to befriend author Upton Sinclair and film star Charlie Chaplinboth noted for their pacifism.

Carl Laemmlehead of Universal Studiosgave Einstein a tour of his studio and introduced him to Chaplin. They had an instant rapport, with Chaplin inviting Einstein and his wife, Elsa, to his home for dinner. Chaplin said Einstein's outward persona, calm and gentle, seemed to conceal a "highly emotional temperament", from which came his "extraordinary intellectual energy".

Chaplin's film City Lights was to premiere a few days later in Hollywood, and Chaplin invited Einstein and Elsa to join him as his special guests. Walter IsaacsonEinstein's biographer, described this as one of the most memorable scenes in the new era of celebrity. Chaplin speculated that it was possibly used as kindling wood by the Nazis. In Februarywhile on a visit to the United States, Einstein knew he could not return to Germany with the rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

While at American universities in earlyhe undertook his third two-month visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In February and Marchthe Gestapo repeatedly raided his family's apartment in Berlin. Later on, they heard that their cottage had been raided by the Nazis and Einstein's personal sailboat confiscated.

Upon landing in AntwerpBelgium on 28 March, Einstein immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship. In AprilEinstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positionsincluding teaching at universities. A month later, Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burningswith Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming, "Jewish intellectualism is dead.

I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise. Einstein was now without a permanent home, unsure where he would live and work, and equally worried about the fate of countless other scientists still in Germany. In late Julyhe visited England for about six weeks at the invitation of the British Member of Parliament Commander Oliver Locker-Lampsonwho had become friends with him in the preceding years.

To protect Einstein, Locker-Lampson had two bodyguards watch over him; a photo of them carrying shotguns and guarding Einstein was published in the Daily Herald on 24 July British historian Martin Gilbert notes that Churchill responded immediately, and sent his friend, physicist Frederick Lindemannto Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities.

As a result of Einstein's letter, Jewish invitees to Turkey eventually totaled over "1, saved individuals". Locker-Lampson also submitted a bill to parliament to extend British citizenship to Einstein, during which period Einstein made a number of public appearances describing the crisis brewing in Europe. On 3 OctoberEinstein delivered a speech on the importance of academic freedom before a packed audience at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with The Times reporting he was wildly cheered throughout.

Einstein was still undecided about his future. He had offers from several European universities, including Christ Church, Oxfordwhere he stayed for three short periods between May and June [ ] and was offered a five-year research fellowship called a " studentship " at Christ Church[ ] [ ] but inhe arrived at the decision to remain permanently in the United States and apply for citizenship.

Einstein's affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study would last until his death in Bruria Kaufmanhis assistant, later became a physicist. During this period, Einstein tried to develop a unified field theory and to refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physicsboth unsuccessfully. He lived in Princeton at his home from onwards. The group's warnings were discounted.

The letter is believed to be arguably the key stimulus for the U. Some say that as a result of Einstein's letter and his meetings with Roosevelt, the US entered the "race" to develop the bomb, drawing on its "immense material, financial, and scientific resources" to initiate the Manhattan Project. For Einstein, war was a disease By signing the letter to Roosevelt, some argue he went against his pacifist principles.

Einstein became an American citizen in Not long after settling into his career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he expressed his appreciation of the meritocracy in American culture compared to Europe. He recognized the "right of individuals to say and think what they pleased" without social barriers. As a result, individuals were encouraged, he said, to be more creative, a trait he valued from his early education.

He considered racism America's "worst disease", [ ] [ ] seeing it as handed down from one generation to the next. Du Bois and was prepared to testify on his behalf during his trial as an alleged foreign agent in InEinstein visited Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically black collegewhere he was awarded an honorary degree.

Lincoln was the first university in the United States to grant college degrees to African Americans; alumni include Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. Einstein gave a speech about racism in America, adding, I do not intend to be quiet about it. InEinstein was one of the signatories of the founding proclamation of the German Democratic Partya liberal party.

Inhe criticized them for not having a "well-regulated system of government" and called their rule a "regime of terror and a tragedy in human history". He later adopted a more moderated view, criticizing their methods but praising them, which is shown by his remark on Vladimir Lenin :. In Lenin I honor a man, who in total sacrifice of his own person has committed his entire energy to realizing social justice.

I do not find his methods advisable. One thing is certain, however: men like him are the guardians and renewers of mankind's conscience. Einstein offered and was called on to give judgments and opinions on matters often unrelated to theoretical physics or mathematics. Einstein was deeply impressed by Mahatma Gandhiwith whom he corresponded.

He described Gandhi as a role model for the generations to come. Sundaram to meet his friend Einstein at his summer home in the town of Caputh. Sundaram was Gandhi's action item biography of albert einstein and special envoy, whom Wilfrid Israel met while visiting India and visiting the Indian leader's home in During the visit, Einstein wrote a short letter to Gandhi that was delivered to him through his envoy, and Gandhi responded quickly with his own letter.

Although in the end Einstein and Gandhi were unable to meet as they had hoped, the direct connection between them was established through Wilfrid Israel. Einstein was a figurehead leader in the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem[ ] which opened in Einstein was not a nationalist and opposed the creation of an independent Jewish state.

The state of Israel was established without his help in ; Einstein was limited to a marginal role in the Zionist movement. Per Lee SmolinI believe what allowed Einstein to achieve so much was primarily a moral quality. He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics have to explain everything in nature coherently and consistently.

In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York[ ] and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Associationwhich publishes New Humanist in Britain. For the 75th anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culturehe stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism.

He observed, Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can for me change this. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. I cannot see anything ' chosen ' about them. Einstein had been sympathetic toward vegetarianism for a long time. Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle.

Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind. He became a vegetarian himself only during the last part of his life. In March he wrote in a letter: So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way.

It almost seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore. If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music I get most joy in life out of music. His mother played the piano reasonably well and wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to instill in him a love of music but also to help him assimilate into German culture.

According to conductor Leon BotsteinEinstein began playing when he was 5. However, he did not enjoy it at that age. When he turned 13, he discovered Mozart 's violin sonataswhereupon he became enamored of Mozart's compositions and studied music more willingly. Einstein taught himself to play without "ever practicing systematically". He said that love is a better teacher than a sense of duty.

The examiner stated afterward that his playing was remarkable and revealing of 'great insight'. What struck the examiner, writes Botstein, was that Einstein displayed a deep love of the music, a quality that was and remains in short supply. Music possessed an unusual meaning for this student. Music took on a pivotal and permanent role in Einstein's life from that period on.

Although the idea of becoming a professional musician himself was not on his mind at any time, among those with whom Einstein played chamber music were a few professionals, including Kurt Appelbaum, and he performed for private audiences and friends. Chamber music had also become a regular part of his social life while living in Bern, Zurich, and Berlin, where he played with Max Planck and his son, among others.

Inwhile engaged in research at the California Institute of Technology, he visited the Zoellner family conservatory in Los Angeles, where he played some of Beethoven and Mozart's works with members of the Zoellner Quartet. On 17 AprilEinstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysmwhich had previously been reinforced surgically by Rudolph Nissen in Einstein refused surgery, saying, I want to go when I want.

It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly. During the autopsy, the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.

Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn. Einstein bequeathed his personal archives, library, and intellectual assets to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

Throughout his life, Einstein published hundreds of books and articles. Einstein's first paper [ 77 ] [ ] submitted in to Annalen der Physik was on capillary attraction. Two papers he published in — thermodynamics attempted to interpret atomic phenomena from a statistical point of view. These papers were the foundation for the paper on Brownian motion, which showed that Brownian movement can be construed as firm evidence that molecules exist.

His research in and was mainly concerned with the effect of finite atomic size on diffusion phenomena. Einstein returned to the problem of thermodynamic fluctuations, giving a treatment of the density variations in a fluid at its critical point. Ordinarily the density fluctuations are controlled by the second derivative of the free energy with respect to the density.

At the critical point, this derivative is zero, leading to large fluctuations. The effect of density fluctuations is that light of all wavelengths is scattered, making the fluid look milky white. Einstein relates this to Rayleigh scatteringwhich is what happens when the fluctuation size is much smaller than the wavelength, and which explains why the sky is blue.

These four works contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on spacetime, and matter. The four papers are:. It reconciled conflicts between Maxwell's equations the laws of electricity and magnetism and the laws of Newtonian mechanics by introducing changes to the laws of mechanics. The theory developed in this paper later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity.

This paper predicted that, when measured in the frame of a relatively moving observer, a clock carried by a moving body would appear to slow downand the body itself would contract in its direction of motion. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether —one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time—was superfluous.

Einstein originally framed special relativity in terms of kinematics the study of moving bodies. InHermann Minkowski reinterpreted special relativity in geometric terms as a theory of spacetime. Einstein adopted Minkowski's formalism in his general theory of relativity. General relativity GR is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Einstein between and According to it, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of spacetime by those masses.

General relativity has developed into an essential tool in modern astrophysics ; it provides the foundation for the current understanding of black holesregions of space where gravitational attraction is so strong that not even light can escape. As Einstein later said, the reason for the development of general relativity was that the preference of inertial motions within special relativity was unsatisfactory, while a theory which from the outset prefers no state of motion even accelerated ones should appear more satisfactory.

In that article titled "On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn from It", he argued that free fall is really inertial motion, and that for a free-falling observer the rules of special relativity must apply. This argument is called the equivalence principle. In the same article, Einstein also predicted the phenomena of gravitational time dilationgravitational redshift and gravitational lensing.

InEinstein published another article "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light" expanding on the article, in which he estimated the amount of deflection of light by massive bodies. Thus, the theoretical prediction of general relativity could for the first time be tested experimentally. InEinstein predicted gravitational waves[ ] [ ] ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as wavestraveling outward from the source, transporting energy as gravitational radiation.

The existence of gravitational waves is possible under general relativity due to its Lorentz invariance which brings the concept of a finite speed of propagation of the physical interactions of gravity with it. By contrast, gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitationwhich postulates that the physical interactions of gravity propagate at infinite speed.

While developing general relativity, Einstein became confused about the gauge invariance in the theory. He formulated an argument that led him to conclude that a general relativistic field theory is impossible. He gave up looking for fully generally covariant tensor equations and searched for equations that would be invariant under general linear transformations only.

In Junethe Entwurf 'draft' theory was the result of these investigations. As its name suggests, it was a sketch of a theory, less elegant and more difficult than general relativity, with the equations of motion supplemented by additional gauge fixing conditions. After more than two years of intensive work, Einstein realized that the hole argument was mistaken [ ] and abandoned the theory in November InEinstein applied the general theory of relativity to the structure of the universe as a whole.

As observational evidence for a dynamic universe was lacking at the time, Einstein introduced a new term, the cosmological constantinto the field equations, in order to allow the theory to predict a static universe. The modified field equations predicted a static universe of closed curvature, in accordance with Einstein's understanding of Mach's principle in these years.

This model became known as the Einstein World or Einstein's static universe. Following the discovery of the recession of the galaxies by Edwin Hubble inEinstein abandoned his static model of the universe, and proposed two dynamic models of the cosmos, the Friedmann—Einstein universe of [ ] [ ] and the Einstein—de Sitter universe of In many Einstein biographies, it is claimed that Einstein referred to the cosmological constant in later years as his "biggest blunder", based on a letter George Gamow claimed to have received from him.

The astrophysicist Mario Livio has cast doubt on this claim. In latea team led by the Irish physicist Cormac O'Raifeartaigh discovered evidence that, shortly after learning of Hubble's observations of the recession of the galaxies, Einstein considered a steady-state model of the universe. For the density to remain constant, new particles of matter must be continually formed in the volume from space.

It thus appears that Einstein considered a steady-state model of the expanding universe many years before Hoyle, Bondi and Gold. General relativity includes a dynamical spacetime, so it is difficult to see how to identify the conserved energy and momentum. Noether's theorem allows these quantities to be determined from a Lagrangian with translation invariancebut general covariance makes translation invariance into something of a gauge symmetry.

The energy and momentum derived within general relativity by Noether 's prescriptions do not make a real tensor for this reason. Einstein argued that this is true for a fundamental reason: the gravitational field could be made to vanish by a choice of coordinates. He maintained that the non-covariant energy momentum pseudotensor was, in fact, the best description of the energy momentum distribution in a gravitational field.

InEinstein collaborated with Nathan Rosen to produce a model of a wormholeoften called Einstein—Rosen bridges. These solutions cut and pasted Schwarzschild black holes to make a bridge between two patches. Because these solutions included spacetime curvature without the presence of a physical body, Einstein and Rosen suggested that they could provide the beginnings of a theory that avoided the notion of point particles.

However, it was later found that Einstein—Rosen bridges are not stable. In order to incorporate spinning point particles into general relativity, the affine connection needed to be generalized to include an antisymmetric part, called the torsion. This modification was made by Einstein and Cartan in the s. In general relativity, gravitational force is reimagined as curvature of spacetime.

In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory. He died in April at age With his passion for inquiry, Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20 th century. He grew up in a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who, with his brother, founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J.

Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him. Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. He also had what were considered speech challenges. However, he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin, which would stay with him into his later years. Toward the end of the s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Einstein.

Hermann relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mids after his business lost out on a major contract. Einstein was eventually able to gain admission into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, specifically due to his superb mathematics and physics scores on the entrance exam. He was still required to complete his pre-university education first and thus attended a high school in Aarau, Switzerland, helmed by Jost Winteler.

Einstein later renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century. The maximum score of the current version iswith an IQ of or higher ranking in the 99 th percentile. 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.

However, Guinness discontinued the category because of debates about testing accuracy. After graduating from university, Einstein faced major challenges in terms of finding academic positions, having alienated some professors over not attending class more regularly in lieu of studying independently. Einstein eventually found steady work in after receiving a referral for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office.

While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his university studies and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity. Two focused on the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. The theory explains that space and time are actually connected, and Einstein called this joint structure space-time.

Einstein considered this theory the culmination of his life research. It also offered a more expansive, nuanced explanation of how gravitational forces worked. Today, the theories of relativity underpin the accuracy of GPS technology, among other phenomena. Even so, Einstein did make one mistake when developing his general theory, which naturally predicted the universe is either expanding or contracting.

His later theories directly contracted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux. Then, astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe. This equation suggested that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, a discovery that heralded atomic power.

While at Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with his fellow student Mileva Maric, but his parents opposed the match and he lacked the money to marry. The couple had an illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, born in earlyof whom little is known. After finding a position as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein married Maric in ; they would have two more children, Hans Albert born and Eduard born While working at the patent office, Einstein did some of the most creative work of his life, producing no fewer than four groundbreaking articles in alone.

In the first paper, he applied the quantum theory developed by German physicist Max Planck to light in order to explain the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect, by which a material will emit electrically charged particles when hit by light. To do this, Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity, which held that the laws of physics are the same even for objects moving in different inertial frames i.

A fourth paper concerned the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, concepts viewed previously as completely separate. Einstein continued working at the patent office untilwhen he finally found a full-time academic post at the University of Zurich. Inhe arrived at the University of Berlin, where he was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

InEinstein published the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterwork. Another way of expressing this idea is to say that matter can be transformed into energy. Units of mass are used to measure the amount of matter in something. The mass or the amount of matter in something determines how much energy that thing could be changed into.

Energy can also be transformed into mass. If you were pushing a baby buggy at a slow walk and found it easy to push, but pushed it at a fast walk and found it harder to move, then you would wonder what was wrong with the baby buggy. Then if you tried to run and found that moving the buggy at any faster speed was like pushing against a brick wall, you would be very surprised.

The truth is that when something is moved then its mass is increased. Human beings ordinarily do not notice this increase in mass because at the speed humans ordinarily move the increase in mass is almost nothing. As speeds get closer to the speed of light, then the changes in mass become impossible not to notice. The basic experience we all share in daily life is that the harder we push something like a car the faster we can get it going.

But when something we are pushing is already going at some large part of the speed of light we find that it keeps gaining mass, so it gets harder and harder to get it going faster. It is impossible to make any mass go at the speed of light because to do so would take infinite energy. Sometimes a mass will change to energy. Common examples of elements that make these changes we call radioactivity are radium and uranium.

An atom of uranium can lose an alpha particle the atomic nucleus of helium and become a new element with a lighter nucleus. Then that atom will emit two electrons, but it will not be stable yet. It will emit a series of alpha particles and electrons until it finally becomes the element Pb or what we call lead. By throwing out all these particles that have mass it has made its own mass smaller.

It has also produced energy. In most radioactivity, the entire mass of something does not get changed to energy. In an atomic bomb, uranium is transformed into krypton and barium. There is a slight difference in the mass of the resulting krypton and barium, and the mass of the original uranium, but the energy that is released by the change is huge.

One way to express this idea is to write Einstein's equation as:. The c 2 in the equation stands for the speed of light squared. About 60 terajoules were released by the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima. The idea of a Bose-Einstein condensate came out of a collaboration between S. Bose and Prof. Einstein himself did not invent it but, instead, refined the idea and helped it become popular.

In classical physics, momentum is explained by the equation:. When Einstein generalized classical physics to include the increase of mass due to the velocity of the moving matter, he arrived at an equation that predicted energy to be made of two components. One component involves "rest mass" and the other component involves momentum, but momentum is not defined in the classical way.

The equation typically has values greater than zero for both components:. A photon has no rest mass, but it has momentum. Light reflecting from a mirror pushes the mirror with a force that can be measured.

Action item biography of albert einstein

Knowing either frequency or wavelength, you can compute the photon's momentum. Therefore, the quantity "m 0 " used in Einstein's equation is sometimes called the "rest mass. This famous "mass-energy relation" formula usually written action item biography of albert einstein the "0"s suggests that mass has a large amount of energy, so maybe we could convert some mass to a more useful form of energy.

The nuclear power industry is based on that idea. The General Theory of Relativity was published inten years after the special theory of relativity was created. Einstein's general theory of relativity uses the idea of spacetime. Spacetime is the fact that we have a four-dimensional universe, having three spatial space dimensions and one temporal time dimension.

Any physical event happens at some place inside these three space dimensions, and at some moment in time. According to the general theory of relativity, any mass causes spacetime to curve, and any other mass follows these curves. Bigger mass causes more curving. This was a new way to explain gravitation gravity. General relativity explains gravitational lensing, which is light bending when it comes near a massive object.

This explanation was proven correct during a solar eclipsewhen the sun's bending of starlight from distant stars could be measured because of the darkness of the eclipse. General relativity also set the stage for cosmology theories of the structure of our universe at large distances and over long times. Einstein thought that the universe may curve a little bit in both space and time, so that the universe always had existed and always will exist, and so that if an object moved through the universe without bumping into anything, it would return to its starting place, from the other direction, after a very long time.

He even changed his equations to include a "cosmological constant," in order to allow a mathematical model of an unchanging universe. The general theory of relativity also allows the universe to spread out grow larger and less dense forever, and most scientists think that astronomy has proved that this is what happens. When Einstein realized that good models of the universe were possible even without the cosmological constant, he called his use of the cosmological constant his "biggest blunder," and that constant is often left out of the theory.

However, many scientists now believe that the cosmological constant is needed to fit in all that we now know about the universe. A popular theory of cosmology is called the Big Bang. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was formed 15 billion years ago, in what is called a " gravitational singularity ". This singularity was small, dense, and very hot.

According to this theory, all of the matter that we know today came out of this point. Einstein himself did not have the idea of a " black hole ", but later scientists used this name for an object in the universe that bends spacetime so much that not even light can escape it. They think that these ultra-dense objects are formed when giant stars, at least three times the size of our sun, die.

This event can follow what is called a supernova. The formation of black holes may be a major source of gravitational waves, so the search for proof of gravitational waves has become an important scientific pursuit. Many scientists only care about their work, but Einstein also spoke and wrote often about politics and world peace.

He liked the ideas of socialism and of having only one government for the whole world. He also worked for Zionismthe effort to try to create the new country of Israel. In his final days, Einstein faced a crucial decision. Doctors offered surgery to treat his condition, but he chose a different path. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.

For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.