Albert Einstein Essay, Research Paper

Albert Einstein

Einstein was a German/American physicist who contributed more to the

20th century vision of physical reality than any other scientist. Einstein’s

theory of RELATIVITY seemed to a lot of people to be pure human thought, as did

his other theories.

LIFE

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Einstein’s

parents were nonobservant Jews. They moved to Munich from Ulm when Einstein was

an infant. The family business was to manufacture electrical equipment. When

the business failed in 1894, the family move to Milan, Italy. He decided to

officially give up his German citizenship. With in a year, still not having

completed secondary school, he failed and examination that allow him to follow

studies that would lead to a diploma in electrical engineering at the Swiss

Federal Institute of Technology (the Zurich Polytechnic). He spent the following

year in Aarau where there were excellent teachers and an excellent physics

facility. In 1896 he returned to the Zurich Polytechnic, there he graduated in

1900 as a secondary school teacher of math and physics.

Two years later, he acquired a post at the Swiss patent office in Bern.

While he was employed there from 1902 to 1909, he completed an extraordinary

range of publications in theoretical physics. Most parts of there were written

in his spare time. In 1905 he submitted one of his many scientific papers to the

University of Zurich to obtain a Ph.D. degree. In 1908 he sent another

scientific paper to the University of Bern and became a lecturer there.

In 1914 Einstein returned to Germany but did not reapply for citizenship.

He was one of only handful of German professors who was opposed the use of force

and did not support Germany’s war aims. After the war, the allies wanted the

removal of German scientist from international meetings, but Einstein was a Jew

and traveling with a Swiss passport, he remained an acceptable German delegate.

Albert Einstein’s political views as a pacifist and a Zionist placed him against

conservatives in Germany, who labeled him a traitor and a defeatist.

In Germany there was a rise of fascism, so he moved to the united states

in 1933 and abandoned his pacifism. He unwillingly agreed that the new danger

(the Germans) had to be brought down by force of arms. In 1939 he sent a letter

to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that urged America to continue to develop an

ATOMIC BOMB before the Germans did. This letter was one of many exchanges the

White House and Einstein had. This contributed to Roosevelt’s decision to fund

what became the MANHATAN PROJECT.

Until the end of Einstein’s life he searched for a Unified Field Theory,

by which the phenomena of gravitation and electromagnetism could be derived from

one set of equations. In 1955 Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey,

where he held an analogous research position at the Institute for Advanced Study.

RELATIVITY

Einstein’s theory of relativity had caused major revolution in 20th

century physics and astronomy. It introduced the concept of “relativity” to

science. It is the idea that there is no absolute motion only relative motion.

Consequently replacing Isaac Newton’s 200-year-old theory of mechanics.

“Einstein showed that we do not reside in the flat, Euclidean space and uniform,

absolute time of everyday life, but in another environment; curved-space time.”

The theory played a part in advances in physics. It led to the nuclear era, with

potential for benefit as well as devastation, and made possible an understanding

of the microworld of elementary particles and their interactions.