Einstein Essay, Research Paper

Albert Einstein

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm Germany. He lived there with his parents, Herman and Pauline. After a year in Ulm, due to the failure of his father’s electrical and engineering workshop, the Einstein family moved to Munich (the capital of Bavaria), where after a year in residence there, Einstein’s mother had Maja, Einstein’s sister. Despite the fact that he was Jewish, from age five until age ten, Einstein attended a Catholic School near his home. But, at age 10, Einstein was transferred to the “Luitpold Gymnasium,” where Latin, Greek, History, and Geography were pounded into childrens’ heads. His parents wanted him to finish school, get his diploma so he could go to a University, and then become an electrical engineer. But Einstein had other Ideas for his future. Einstein’s father wanted him to attend a university but he could not because he did not have a diploma from the Gymnasium. But there was a solution to this problem over the Alps, in Zurich, there was The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology which did not require a diploma to attend. The one thing it did require was the applicant to pass an entrance exam. But then yet another problem arose, most scholars were 18 when they entered the institute, and Einstein was only 16. Einstein took the risk, and in the autumn he was dispatched over the Alps. Einstein took the exam, but did not pass. The principal of the school was impressed with his abilities, so he was admitted to the cantontal school at Aarau, with the hope that a year’s study there, would enable him to pass the exam. Einstein enjoyed this school, and it is said that it was here that Einstein began to “open up.”

Toward the end of his stay at Aarau, Einstein had an explosion which was caused by the “antagonism of all things German” that had been building up inside him since he was a child; he refused to be German and announced that he was going to cut off “all formal connection with the Jewish faith.” Albert Einstein has been called the most brilliant person since Newton. This may be because of his “Theory of Relativity,” which contained the famous equation E=mc?; or his major involvement in the Manhattan Project, the making of the atom bomb, probably the most destructive weapon known to man. Einstein has one of the most spectacular uses of geometry in his theory of gravitation, also known as the general theory of relativity. “Einstein discovered that by considering the properties of space as though it were curved, he could account for the effects of gravity of gravity without using the customary “pull” that we intuitively associate with gravity. He found that he could explain the natural world by using geometry” (Stwertka 20). In the general theory of relativity, a large mass such as the sun warps the space around it. Even though this is hard to visualize, if we can think in two dimensions, it is like the depression made by a large ball on top of a sheet of rubber. Any kind of mass near the sun will tend to “fall” into the depression, and move toward the sun. This kind of behavior has the same effect that is said to be caused by the gravitational pull. Now that we know this part of the theory, Einstein’s prediction that a beam of light is deflected by gravity is now easier to explain in the terms of the “warped” space. The deflection of light is caused by the curvature of space itself. As we know, light travels in a straight line. In space they define a straight line, or geodesic, through which they are moving. “Near a mass space time is non-Euclidean, and the line is now curved like a line drawn on a sphere. The curved path followed by light near the sun is really a straight line in the non-Euclidean space around the sun. In a similar way, the rotation of the earth about the sun can be interpreted as the earth traveling along a geodesic in curved space-time” (Stwertka 20-21). This theory has been put to many tests. All of these tests have proven Einstein’s theory to be true.

Einstein has contributed so many things to math, science and life which opened up a new way of thinking. His great mind opened up every bodies eyes and showed us that the universe is not as perfect as it seems.

“Einstein, Albert.” The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 1990 ed. “Einstein, Albert.” The World Book Encyclopedia. 1991 ed. Newman, James R. The World of Mathematics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. Paulos, John Allen. Beyond Numeracy. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1997. Stwertka, Albert. Recent Revolutions in Mathematics. New York: Franklin Watts, 1987.