Albert Einstein Essay, Research Paper

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Albert Einstein was born in Germany on March 14, 1879.As

a kid he had trouble learning to speak. His parents thought that

he might be mentally retarded. He was not smart in school. He

suffered under the learning methods that they used in the

schools of Germany at that time so he was never able to finish

his studies. In 1894 his father’s business had failed and the

family moved to Milan, Italy. Einstein who had grown interested

in science, went to Zurich, Switzerland, to enter a famous

technical school. There his ability in mathematics and physics

began to show.

When Einstein was graduated in 1900 he was unable to get a

teaching appointment at a university. Instead he got a clerical

job in the patent office at Bern, Switzerland. It was not what

he wanted but it would give him leisure for studying and

thinking. While over there he wrote scientific papers. Einstein

submitted one of his scientific papers to the University of Zurich

to obtain a Ph.D. degree in 1905. In 1908 he sent a second

paper to the University of Bern and became lecturer there. The

next year Einstein received a regular appointment as associate

professor of physics at the University of Zurich. By 1909,

Einstein was recognized throughout Europe as a leading

scientific thinker. In 1909 the fame that resulted from his

theories got Einstein a job at the University of Prague, and in

1913 he was appointed director of a new research institution

opened in Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm Physics Institute.

In 1915, during World War 1, Einstein published a paper

that extended his theories. He put forth new views on the

nature of gravitation. Newton’s theories he said were not

accurate enough. Einstein’s theories seemed to explain the slow

rotation of the entire orbit of the planet Mercury, which

Newton’s theories did not explain. Einstein’s theories also

predicted that light rays passing near the sun would be bent out

of a straight line. When this was verified at the eclipse of 1919,

Einstein was instantly accepted as the great scientific thinker

since Newton.

By now Germany had fallen in the hands of Adolf Hitler and

his Nazis. Albert Einstein was Jewish. In 1933 when the Nazis

came to power, Einstein happened to be in California. He did

not return to Germany. He went to Belgium instead. The Nazis

confiscated his possessions, publicly burned his writings, and

expelled him from all German scientific societies. Einstein came

back to the United States and became a citizen.

The atomic bomb is an explosive device that depends upon

the release of energy in a nuclear reaction known as FISSION,

which is the splitting of atomic nuclei. Einstein sent a letter to

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out that atomic bombs

are possible and that enemy nations must be allowed to make

them first.

Roosevelt agreed with Einstein and funded the Manhattan

Project.

On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died. To his dying day,

he urged the world to come to some agreement that would

make nuclear wars forever impossible.