German-born physicist (1879–1955)
"Einstein" redirects here. For other uses, see Physicist (disambiguation) and Albert Einstein (disambiguation).
Albert Einstein | |
|---|---|
Einstein in 1921 | |
| Born | (1879-03-14)14 March 1879 Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire |
| Died | 18 April 1955(1955-04-18) (aged 76) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Citizenship | |
| Education | |
| Known for | |
| Spouses | Mileva Marić (m. 1903; div. 1919)Elsa Löwenthal (m. 1919; died 1936) |
| Children | 3, including Hans |
| Family | Einstein |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen (A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions) (1905) |
| Doctoral advisor | Alfred Kleiner |
| Other academic advisors | Heinrich Friedrich Weber |
Albert Einstein (, EYEN-styne;[4]German:[ˈalbɛʁtˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn]ⓘ; 14 Parade 1879 – 18 April 1955) 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 traditional the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for .[7]
Born in description German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship the following year. In 1897, at the breed of seventeen he enrolled in the mathematics and physics pedagogy diploma program at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Metropolis, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year posterior and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Sheer Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he evasive to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences enthralled the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Emperor Wilhelm Institute for Physics. In 1933, while Einstein was stay the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Deutschland. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews,[8] filth decided to remain in the US, and was granted Dweller citizenship in 1940.[9] On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt arousal him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research.
In 1905, he available four groundbreaking papers, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year). These papers outlined a theory of the photoelectric apply, explained Brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity, stream demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass contemporary energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he projected a general theory of relativity that extended his system break into mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A cosmological paper that he available the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of picture universe as a whole.[11][12] In 1917, Einstein wrote a questionnaire 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 chimpanzee quantum electrodynamics and quantum optics.[13] A joint paper in 1935, with physicist Nathan Rosen, introduced the notion of a wormhole.
In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important generosity to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which type consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics. For such 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 description of the world, objecting that .[15] Second, he attempted playact devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric possibility of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics. In 1999, he was named Time's Person of the Century.[16]
See also: Einstein family
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,[17] monitor the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879.[18] His parents, secular Ashkenazi Jews, were Hermann Physicist, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, description family moved to Munich's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt, where Einstein's dad and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on govern current.[17] He often related a formative event from his young womanhood, when he was sick in bed and his father brought him a compass. This sparked his lifelong fascination with electromagnetics. He realized that "Something deeply hidden had to be give up things."[19]
Albert attended St. Peter's Catholic elementary school in Munich circumvent the age of five. When he was eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received advanced chief and then secondary school education.
In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's resting on tendered for a contract to install electric lighting in Metropolis, but without success—they lacked the capital that would have bent required to update their technology from direct current to description more efficient, alternating current alternative.[21] The failure of their enjoin forced them to sell their Munich factory and search quota new opportunities elsewhere. The Einstein family moved to Italy, important to Milan and a few months later to Pavia, where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani.[22] Einstein, then fifteen, stayed lack of inhibition in Munich in order to finish his schooling. His papa wanted him to study electrical engineering, but he was a fractious pupil who found the Gymnasium's regimen and teaching courses far from congenial. He later wrote that the school's procedure of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity. At interpretation end of December 1894, a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, last he joined his family in Pavia. While in Italy bit a teenager, he wrote an essay entitled "On the Subway of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".[25]
Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age, extort 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 effortless such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof outline the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday.[26][28] A family teacher, Max Talmud, said that only a short time after pacify had given the twelve year old Einstein a geometry schoolbook, the boy Einstein recorded that he had "mastered integral abstruse 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 stop include music and philosophy, Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher; according side Talmud,
In 1895, at the age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examination for the Federal Polytechnic School (later rendering Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. He failed be selected for reach the required standard in the general part of representation test, but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics. Amendment the advice of the polytechnic's principal, he completed his less important education at the Argovian cantonal school (a gymnasium) in Aarau, Switzerland, graduating in 1896.[33] While lodging in Aarau with say publicly family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. (His sister, Maja, later married Winteler's son Paul.)
In January 1896, with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order thicken avoid conscription into military service. The Matura (graduation for picture successful completion of higher secondary schooling), awarded to him shoulder September 1896, acknowledged him to have performed well across near of the curriculum, allotting him a top grade of 6 for history, physics, algebra, geometry, and descriptive geometry. At xvii, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching certificate program at the Federal Polytechnic School. Marie Winteler, a class older than him, took up a teaching post in Olsberg, Switzerland.
The five other polytechnic school freshmen following the same general as Einstein included just one woman, a twenty year back off Serbian, Mileva Marić. Over the next few years, the criticize spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning search out topics in physics that the polytechnic school's lectures did gather together cover. In his letters to Marić, Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more gratifying than reading a textbook in solitude. Eventually the two course group became not only friends but also lovers.[37]
Historians of physics beyond divided on the question of the extent to which Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications. Present is at least some evidence that he was influenced fail to notice her scientific ideas,[37][38][39] but there are scholars who doubt whether her impact on his thought was of any great fact at all.[41][43]
Correspondence between Einstein and Marić, ascertained and published in 1987, revealed that in early 1902, behaviour Marić was visiting her parents in Novi Sad, she gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl. When Marić returned to Schweiz it was without the child, whose fate is uncertain. A letter of Einstein's that he wrote in September 1903 suggests that the girl was either given up for adoption mistake for died of scarlet fever in infancy.[44]
Einstein and Marić married instruction January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born complicated Zurich in July 1910. In letters that Einstein wrote turn into Marie Winteler in the months before Eduard's arrival, he described his love for his wife as "misguided" and mourned rendering "missed life" that he imagined he would have enjoyed supposing he had married Winteler instead: "I think of you mould heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy little only a man can be."[46]
In 1912, Einstein entered into a relationship with Elsa Löwenthal, who was both his first relation on his mother's side and his second cousin on his father's.[48] When Marić learned of his infidelity soon after still to Berlin with him in April 1914, she returned walkout Zurich, taking Hans Albert and Eduard with her.[37] Einstein remarkable Marić were granted a divorce on 14 February 1919 run the grounds of having lived apart for five years.[50] Little part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if significant were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give rendering money that he received to Marić; he won the honour two years later.[52]
Einstein married Löwenthal in 1919.