Albert Einstein(Physicist)

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Albert Einstein
Physicist, 1879 -1955


Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany. Einstein contributed more than any other scientist since Sir Isaac Newton to our understanding of physical reality.


Einstein was slow to learn to talk, not beginning to speak until sometime after his second birthday. His slow verbal development combined with a native rebelliousness toward authority, led one schoolmaster to say that young Albert would never amount to much.


Einstein’s mother, Pauline, was a talented pianist. She introduced Albert to music as a small child, beginning his violin lessons at age six. He labored under unimaginative instruction until discovering the joys of Mozart’s sonatas at age 13. From that point on, although he had no further lessons, his violin remained a constant companion. Einstein said later that, “I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in the form of music.”


When Einstein was 10, a poor student named Max Talmud began dining with the Einstein family once a week. Max would bring illustrated science books for Albert to study, and they would discuss what Albert learned. Max gave him a geometry textbook two years before Albert was to study the subject at school. Max later recalled, “Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high that I could no longer follow.”


In 1896, Einstein entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a physics and mathematics instructor. He graduated in 1901, and unable to find a teaching position, accepted a job as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Einstein worked at the patent office from 1902 to 1909. During this period he completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time, without the benefit of scientific literature or close contact with colleagues.


The most well known of these works is Einstein’s 1905 paper proposing ̴the special theory of relativity.” He based his new theory on the principle that the laws of physics are in the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all frames of reference.


Later in 1905 Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent expressing it in the famous equation: E=mc2 (energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared). This equation became a cornerstone in the development of nuclear energy.


Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity, rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. He worked on at Princeton until the end of his life on an attempt to unify the laws of physics.

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