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Albert Einstein () (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-Jewish theoretical physicist widely regarded as the most important scientist of the 20th century and one of the greatest physicists of all time.e.g. p. 52, "Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time..." He formulated the special and general theories of relativity; moreover, he made significant contributions to quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 (his "wonderful year") and "for his services to Theoretical Physics."

After British solar eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed that light rays from distant stars were deflected by the gravity of the Sun in the amount he had predicted in his theory of relativity, Einstein became world-famous, an unusual achievement for a scientist. In his later years, his fame perhaps exceeded that of any other scientist in history. In popular culture, his name has become synonymous with great intelligence and genius.

Biography

Youth and college

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the city of Ulm in Württemberg, Germany, about 100 km east of Stuttgart. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman who later ran an electrochemical works, and his mother was Pauline, née Koch. They were married in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. Albert's family members were all non-observant Jews and he attended a Catholic elementary school. At the insistence of his mother, he was given violin lessons. Though he initially disliked the lessons, and eventually discontinued them, he would later take great solace in Mozart's violin sonatas.

When Einstein was five, his father showed him a pocket compass, and Einstein realized that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience as one of the most revelatory events of his life. He built models and mechanical devices for fun and showed great mathematical ability early on.

In 1889, a medical student named Max Talmud (later: Talmey) introduced Einstein to key science and philosophy texts, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Two of his uncles would further foster his intellectual interests during his late childhood and early adolescence by recommending and providing books on science, mathematics and philosophy.

Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received a relatively progressive education. He began to learn mathematics around age twelve; in 1891, he taught himself Euclidean plane geometry from a school booklet and began to study calculus. While at the Gymnasium, he clashed with authority and resented the school regimen, believing that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in such endeavors as strict memorization.

In 1894, following the failure of Hermann Einstein's electrochemical business, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia, a city in Italy near Milan. Einstein's first scientific work, called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields", was written contemporaneously. Albert remained behind in Munich lodgings to finish school, completing only one term before leaving the gymnasium in the spring of 1895 to rejoin his family in Pavia. He quit a year and a half prior to final examinations without telling his parents, convincing the school to let him go with a medical note from a friendly doctor, but this meant that he had no secondary-school certificate.Highfield. That year, at the age of 16, he performed the thought experiment known as "Albert Einstein's mirror". After gazing into a mirror, he examined what would happen to his image if he were moving at the speed of light; his conclusion, that the speed of light is independent of the observer, would later become one of the two postulates of special relativity.

Although he excelled in the mathematics and science portion of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zürich) entrance exam the following year, his failure of the liberal arts portion was a setback; his family sent him to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school, and it became clear that he was not going to be an electrical engineer as his father intended for him. There, he studied the seldom-taught Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and received his diploma in September 1896. During this time, he lodged with Professor Jost Winteler's family and became enamoured with Marie, their daughter and his first sweetheart. Einstein's sister, Maja, who was perhaps his closest confidant, was to later marry their son, Paul, and his friend, Michele Besso, married their other daughter, Anna.Ibid. Einstein subsequently enrolled at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in October and moved to Zürich, while Marie moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post. The same year, he renounced his Württemberg citizenship and became stateless.

In the spring of 1896, the Serbian Mileva Marić started initially as a medical student at the University of Zurich, but after a term switched to the same section as Einstein as the only woman that year to study for the same diploma. Einstein's relationship with Marić developed into romance over the next few years, which Einstein's family opposed based on the fact that she was not Jewish, older, and physically "defective."PBS - Einstein's Wife - Families & Allies

In 1900, Einstein was granted a teaching diploma by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH Zurich). Einstein then published his first paper, on the capillary forces of a drinking straw, titled "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen", which translated is "Consequences of the observations of capillarity phenomena" (found in "Annalen der Physik" volume 4, page 513). In it, he tried to unify the laws of physics, an attempt he would continually make throughout his life. Through his friend Michelle Besso, an engineer, Einstein was presented with the works of Ernst Mach, and would later consider him "the best sounding board in Europe" for physical ideas. During this time, Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Besso and Marić. The men referred to themselves as the "Olympia Academy". Einstein and Marić had a daughter out of wedlock, Lieserl Einstein, born in January 1902. Her fate is unknown; some believe she died in infancy, while others believe she was given out for adoption.

Works and doctorate

Einstein could not find a teaching post upon graduation, mostly because his brashness as a young man had apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. There, Einstein judged the worth of inventors' patent applications for devices that required a knowledge of physics to understand — in particular he was chiefly charged to evaluate patents relating to electromagnetic devices.Galison p. 368. He also learned how to discern the essence of applications despite sometimes poor descriptions, and was taught by the director how "to express *self correctly". He occasionally rectified their design errors while evaluating the practicality of their work.

Einstein married Mileva Marić on January 6, 1903. Einstein's marriage to Marić, who was a mathematician, was both a personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred to Mileva as "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am". Ronald W. Clark, a biographer of Einstein, claimed that Einstein depended on the distance that existed in his and Mileva's marriage in order to have the solitude necessary to accomplish his work; he required intellectual isolation. Abram Joffe, a Soviet physicist who knew Einstein, in an obituary of Einstein, wrote, "The author of papers of 1905 was ... a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern, Einstein-Marić" and this has recently been taken as evidence of a collaborative relationship. However, according to Alberto A. Martínez of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University, Joffe only ascribed authorship to Einstein, as he believed that it was a Swiss custom at the time to append the spouse's last name to the husband's name. Whatever the truth, the extent of her influence on Einstein's work is a highly controversial and debated question.

In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office had been made permanent, though he was passed over for promotion until he had "fully mastered machine technology".Galison p. 370. He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "A new determination of molecular dimensions" ("Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen") in 1905.

That same year, in his spare time, he wrote four articles that participated in the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to which he could refer or many scientific colleagues with whom he could discuss the theories. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes. Only the paper on the photoelectric effect would be mentioned by the Nobel committee in the award. The reason for this was that the time of the award, the photoelectric effect had the most unchallenged experimental evidence behind it, although the Nobel committee expressed the opinion that Einstein's other work would be confirmed in due course.

The award for the photoelectric effect is ironic, not only because Einstein is far better-known for relativity, but also because the photoelectric effect is a quantum phenomenon, and Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would take.

Annus Mirabilis Papers

Einstein submitted this series of papers to the "Annalen der Physik". They are commonly referred to as the "Annus Mirabilis Papers" (from Annus mirabilis, Latin for 'year of wonders'). The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) commemorated the 100th year of the publication of Einstein's extensive work in 1905 as the 'World Year of Physics 2005'.

The first paper, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", ("Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt") proposed that "energy quanta" (which are essentially what we now call photons) were real, and showed how they could be used to explain such phenomena as the photoelectric effect. This paper was specifically cited for his Nobel Prize. Max Planck had made the formal assumption that energy was quantized in deriving his black-body radiation law, published in 1901, but had considered this to be no more than a mathematical trick. The photoelectric effect thus provided a simple confirmation of Max Planck's hypothesis of quanta.

His second article in 1905, named "On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", ("Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen") covered his study of Brownian motion, and provided empirical evidence for the existence of atoms. Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists hotly debated whether atoms were real entities. Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school, later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to a belief in atoms by Einstein's complete explanation of Brownian motion.Smoluchowski worked on Brownian motion at the same time as Einstein. He published in 1906 the same formula as Einstein (arrived at by a different method), except for a mistaken factor. See for details.

Einstein's third paper that year, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ("Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper"), was published in June 1905. This paper introduced the special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity. While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to Mileva about "our work on relative motion", and this has led some to ask whether Mileva played a part in its development. A few historians of science believe that Einstein and his wife were both aware that the famous Frenchman Henri Poincaré had already published the equations of Relativity, a few weeks before Einstein submitted his paper; most believe their work was independent. Similarly, it's debatable if he knew the 1904 paper of Lorentz which contained most of the theory and to which Poincaré referred. See also relativity priority dispute.

In a fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", ("Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?"), published late in 1905, he showed that from relativity's axioms, it is possible to deduce the famous equation which shows the equivalence between matter and energy. The energy equivalence (E) of some amount of mass (m) is that mass times the speed of light (c) squared: E = mc².

Middle years

In 1906, Einstein was promoted to technical examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was licensed in Bern, Switzerland, as a Privatdozent (unsalaried teacher at a university). During this time, Einstein described why the sky is blue in his paper on the phenomenon of critical opalescence, which shows the cumulative effect of scattering of light by individual molecules in the atmosphere.PBS - NOVA - Einstein's Big Idea - "Genius Among Geniuses", by Thomas Levenson In 1911, Einstein became first associate professor at the University of Zurich, and shortly afterwards full professor at the (German) University of Prague, only to return the following year to Zurich in order to become full professor at the ETH Zurich. At that time, he worked closely with the mathematician Marcel Grossmann. In 1912, Einstein started to refer to time as the fourth dimension (although H.G. Wells had done this earlier, in 1895 in The Time Machine).

In 1914, just before the start of World War I, Einstein settled in Berlin as professor at the local university and became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He took Prussian citizenship. From 1914 to 1933, he served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin. He also held the position of extraordinary professor at the University of Leiden from 1920 until 1946, where he regularly gave guest lectures.

In 1917, Einstein published "On the Quantum Mechanics of Radiation" ("Zur Quantenmechanik der Strahlung", Physkalische Zeitschrift 18, 121-128). This article introduced the concept of stimulated emission, the physical principle that allows light amplification in the laser. He also published a paper that year that used the general theory of relativity to model the behavior of the entire universe, setting the stage for modern cosmology. In this work he created his self-described "worst blunder", the cosmological constant.

General relativity
In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described his theory of gravity, known as general relativity. The final lecture ended with his introduction of an equation that replaced Newton's law of gravity, the Field Equation.David Hilbert actually published the field equation in an article that was dated five days before Einstein's lecture. But according to Thorne (pp. 117–118), Hilbert had discovered the correct derivation after "mulling over things he had learned" on a recent visit by Einstein to Gottingen. Thorne goes on to say "Quite naturally, and in accord with Hilbert's view of things, the resulting law of warpage was quickly given the name the Einstein field equation rather than being named after Hilbert. .... In fact without Einstein the general relativistic laws of gravity might not have been discovered until several decades later." See Relativity priority disputes for more details. This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time.

During a solar eclipse in 1919, Arthur Eddington supervised measurements of the bending of star light as it passed close to the Sun. This effect is called gravitational lensing and amounts to twice the Newtonian prediction. The observations were carried out in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil, as well as on the island of Principe, at the west coast of Africa. Eddington announced that the results confirmed Einstein's prediction and The Times reported that confirmation on November 7 of that year, thus cementing Einstein's fame.

Many scientists, in Germany in particular, were still unconvinced for various reasons ranging from disagreement with Einstein's interpretation of the experiments, to a belief that an absolute frame of reference was necessary. In Einstein's view, most of the objections were from experimentalists with very little understanding of the theory involved.See esp. Albert Einstein, "My Reply. On the Anti-Relativity Theoretical Co., Ltd. [August 27, 1920," in Klaus Hentschel, ed. Physics and National Socialism: An anthology of primary sources (Basel: Birkhaeuser, 1996), pp.1-5. Einstein's public fame which followed the 1919 article created resentment among these scientists some of which lasted well into the 1930s.There is a good discussion of resentment towards Einstein's fame, especially among those German physicists who would later start the Deutsche Physik anti-Einsteinian movement, in the Introduction to Klaus Hentschel, ed. Physics and National Socialism: An anthology of primary sources (Basel: Birkhaeuser, 1996), on p.lxxi.

On March 30, 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture on his new Theory of Relativity, the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Though he is now most famous for his work on relativity, it was for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the Prize, as his work on general relativity was still disputed. The Nobel committee decided that citing his less-contested theory in the Prize would gain more acceptance from the scientific community.

The "Copenhagen" interpretation
Einstein postulated that light can be described not only as a wave with no kinetic energy, but also as massless discrete packets of energy called quanta with measurable kinetic energy (now known as photons). In 1909 Einstein presented his first paper on the quantization of light to a gathering of physicists and told them that they must find some way to understand the dual wave-particle nature of light (Über die Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung, available in its English translation The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation).

In the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations either because it settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical behaviour, or because it described matter as being in necessarily contradictory states. However, Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available, but he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e., either more deterministic or one that could more fundamentally explain the reason for probabilities in a logical way. He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things", nor could he abandon the belief that there are no explanations that contain contradictions, which had driven him to his successes explaining photons, relativity, atoms, and gravity.

In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein made a remark that is now famous:

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

To this, Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on quantum theory, retorted, "Stop telling God what He must do!" The Bohr-Einstein debates on foundational aspects of quantum mechanics happened during the Solvay Conferences.

Einstein was not rejecting probabilistic theories per se. Einstein himself was a great statisticianThe Economist - Miraculous visions - 100 years of Einstein, using statistical analysis in his works on Brownian motion and photoelectricity and in papers published before 1905; Einstein had even discovered Gibbs ensembles. He believed, however, that at the core reality behaved deterministically. Many physicists argue that experimental evidence contradicting this belief was found much later with the discovery of Bell's Theorem and Bell's inequality.

Bose-Einstein statistics
In 1924, Einstein received a short paper from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose describing light as a gas of photons and asking for Einstein's assistance in publication. Einstein realized that the same statistics could be applied to atoms, and published an article in German (then the lingua franca of physics) which described Bose's model and explained its implications. Bose-Einstein statistics now describe any assembly of these indistinguishable particles known as bosons. The Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon was predicted in the 1920s by Bose and Einstein, based on Bose's work on the statistical mechanics of photons, which was then formalized and generalized by Einstein. The first such condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Einstein's original sketches on this theory were recovered in August 2005 in the library of Leiden University.

Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in the development of the quantum Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model although he realized that this was less significant than the Bose-Einstein model and declined to have his name included on the paper.

The Einstein refrigerator
Einstein and former student Leó Szilárd co-invented a unique type of refrigerator (usually called the Einstein refrigerator) in 1926. On November 11, 1930, was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd. The patent covered a thermodynamic refrigeration cycle providing cooling with no moving parts, at a constant pressure, with only heat as an input. The refrigeration cycle used ammonia, butane, and water.

World War II
When Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, Einstein was a guest professor at Princeton University, a position which he took in December 1932, after an invitation from the American educator, Abraham Flexner. In 1933, the Nazis passed "The Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service" which forced all Jewish university professors out of their jobs, and throughout the 1930s a campaign to label Einstein's work as "Jewish physics"—in contrast with "German" or "Aryan physics"—was led by Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. With the assistance of the SS, the Deutsche Physik supporters worked to publish pamphlets and textbooks denigrating Einstein's theories and attempted to politically blacklist German physicists who taught them, notably Werner Heisenberg. Einstein renounced his Prussian citizenship and stayed in the United States, where he was given permanent residency. He accepted a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He became an American citizen in 1940, though he still retained Swiss citizenship.

In 1939, under the encouragement of Szilárd, Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging the study of nuclear fission for military purposes, under fears that the Nazi government would be first to develop nuclear weapons. Roosevelt started a small investigation into the matter which eventually became the massive Manhattan Project. Einstein himself did not work on the bomb project, however.

The International Rescue Committee was founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein to assist opponents of Adolf Hitler.

For more information, see the section below on Einstein's political views.

Institute for Advanced Study
His work at the Institute for Advanced Study focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he referred to as the Unified Field Theory. He attempted to construct a model which would describe all of the fundamental forces as different manifestations of a single force. This took the form of an attempt to unify the gravitational and electrodynamic forces, but was hindered because the strong and weak nuclear forces were not understood independently until around 1970, 15 years after Einstein's death. Einstein's goal of unifying the laws of physics under a single model survives in the current drive for unification of the forces.

=Generalized theory
= Einstein began to form a generalized theory of gravitation with the Universal Law of Gravitation and the electromagnetic force in his first attempt to demonstrate the unification and simplification of the fundamental forces. In 1950 he described his work in a Scientific American article. Einstein was guided by a belief in a single statistical measure of variance for the entire set of physical laws. Einstein's Generalized Theory of Gravitation is a universal mathematical approach to field theory. He investigated reducing the different phenomena by the process of logic to something already known or evident.

Einstein postulated a four-dimensional space-time continuum expressed in axioms represented by five component vectors. Particles appear in his research as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. Einstein treated subatomic particles as objects embedded in the unified field, influencing it and existing as an essential constituent of the unified field but not of it. Einstein also investigated a natural generalization of symmetrical tensor fields, treating the combination of two parts of the field as being a natural procedure of the total field and not the symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts separately. He researched a way to delineate the equations and systems to be derived from a variational principle.

Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation and was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts. In particular, his pursuit of a unification of the fundamental forces ignored work in the physics community at large, most notably the discovery of the strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force.

Final years

In 1948, Einstein served on the original committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis University. A portrait of Einstein was taken by Yousuf Karsh on February 11 of that same year. In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he take the post of second president. He declined the offer, and is believed to be the only United States citizen ever to have been offered a position as a foreign head of state. On March 30, 1953, Einstein released a revised unified field theory.

He died at 1:15 AMNeuroscience for Kids - "What Became of Albert Einstein's Brain?" in Princeton hospitalHistorical Society of Princeton - "Einstein in Princeton" in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955 at the age of 76 from internal bleeding, which was caused by the rupture of an aortic aneurism, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. The only person present at his deathbed, a hospital nurse, said that just before his death he mumbled several words in German that she did not understand. He was cremated without ceremony on the same day he died at Trenton, New Jersey, in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.

An autopsy was performed on Einstein by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, who removed and preserved his brain. Harvey found nothing unusual with his brain, but in 1999 further analysis by a team at McMaster University revealed that his parietal operculum region was missing and, to compensate, his inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal. The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement. Einstein's brain also contained 73% more glial cells than the average brain.

Personality

Religious views

Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York.

Quotes on his religious Views

  • My first religious training of any kind was in the Catholic catechism.
and:
  • I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve."

  • I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural opposites. In fact, I think that there is a very close connection between the two. Further, I think that science without religion is lame and, conversely, that religion without science is blind. Both are important and should work hand-in-hand.Peter A. Bucky, et. al., The Private Albert Einstein (Kansas City, 1992), p. 85.

  • A Jew who sheds his faith along the way, or who even picks up a different one, is still a Jew.Peter A. Bucky, et. al., The Private Albert Einstein (Kansas City, 1992), p. 87.

As an adult, he called his religion a "cosmic religious sense".

In The World As I See It he wrote:

  • You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man.

  • For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.

  • But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

In response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in 1929: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." Note that Einstein replied in only 25 (German) words. Spinoza was a pantheist.

Scientific philosophy

In this respect, Einstein had more in common with "classical" physicists. He rejected the idea of the universe being fundamentally probabilistic, and believed that the Universe was mechanistic and deterministic - his ongoing arguments with Heisenberg and Bohr are testament to this. Although comfortable with probability, his reasoning was that underlying these phenomena was an essentially deterministic solution.

Einstein wrote:

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past.
and:
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Consequently, he felt physical processes determined absolutely everything, including man's desires, see Physicalism. For example, he said:

I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: “Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills ” accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper."

Einstein believed true theorists are sober-minded metaphysicists, saying:

I believe that every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist, no matter how pure a 'positivist' he may fancy himself. The metaphysicist believes that the logically simple is also the real. The tamed metaphysicist believes that not all that is logically simple is embodied in experienced reality, but that the totality of all sensory experience can be 'comprehended' on the basis of a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity."

Political views

Einstein considered himself a pacifist and humanitarian,Ibid. and in later years, a committed democratic socialist. He once said, "I believe Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil." Einstein's views were sometimes controversial. In a 1949 article entitled "Why Socialism?", Albert Einstein described the "predatory phase of human development", exemplified by a chaotic capitalist society, as a source of evil to be overcome. He disapproved of the totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and argued in favor of a democratic socialist system which would combine a planned economy with a deep respect for human rights. Einstein was a co-founder of the liberal German Democratic Party and a member of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union the American Federation of Teachers.

Einstein was very much involved in the Civil Rights movement. He was a close friend of Paul Robeson for over 20 years. Einstein was a member of several civil rights groups (including the Princeton chapter of the NAACP) many of which were headed by Paul Robeson. He served as co-chair with Paul Robeson of the American Crusade to End Lynching. When W.E.B. DuBois was frivolously charged with being a communist spy during the McCarthy era while he was in his 80s, Einstein volunteered as a character witness in the case. The case was dismissed shortly after it was announced that he was to appear in that capacity. Einstein was quoted as saying that "racism is America's greatest disease".

The U.S. FBI kept a 1,427 page file on his activities and recommended that he be barred from immigrating to the United States under the Alien Exclusion Act, alleging that Einstein "believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches a doctrine which, in a legal sense, as held by the courts in other cases, 'would allow anarchy to stalk in unmolested' and result in 'government in name only'", among other charges. They also alleged that Einstein "was a member, sponsor, or affiliated with thirty-four communist fronts between 1937 and 1954" and "also served as honorary chairman for three communist organizations". It should be noted that many of the documents in the file were submitted to the FBI, mainly by civilian political groups, and not actually written by FBI officials.

Einstein opposed tyrannical forms of government, and for this reason (and his Jewish background), opposed the Nazi regime and fled Germany shortly after it came to power. At the same time, Einstein's anarchist nephew Carl Einstein, who shared many of his views, was fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Einstein initially favored construction of the atomic bomb, in order to ensure that Hitler did not do so first, and even sent a letter to President Roosevelt (dated August 2, 1939, before World War II broke out, and probably written by Leó Szilárd) encouraging him to initiate a program to create a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt responded to this by setting up a committee for the investigation of using uranium as a weapon, which in a few years was superseded by the Manhattan Project.

After the war, though, Einstein lobbied for nuclear disarmament and a world government: "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!"Calaprice p. 173. Other versions of the quote exist.

While Einstein was a supporter of Zionism in the cultural sense, he often expressed reservations regarding its application in terms of nationalism. During a speech at the Commodore Hotel in New York, he told the crowd "My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain."Algemeiner.com - "The Death of Modern Zionism?", by Simon Jacobson He also purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times condemning early Zionists for their treatment of the indigenous Arabs, especially at Deir Yassin (New York Times ad).

Despite these reservations, he was active in the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which published (1930) a volume titled About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein, and to which Einstein bequeathed his papers. In later life, in 1952, he was offered the post of second president of the newly created state of Israel, but declined the offer, saying that he lacked the necessary people skills. However, Einstein was deeply committed to the welfare of Israel and the Jewish people for the rest of his life.

Albert Einstein was closely associated with plans for what the press called "a Jewish-sponsored non-quota university," from August 19, 1946, with the announcement of the formation of the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc. until June 22, 1947, when he withdrew support and barred the use of his name by the foundation. The university opened in 1948 as Brandeis University.

Einstein, along with Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, fought against nuclear tests and bombs. As his last public act, and just days before his death, he signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which led to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. His letter to Russell read:

Dear Bertrand Russell,

Thank you for your letter of April 5. I am gladly willing to sign your excellent statement. I also agree with your choice of the prospective signers.

With kind regards, A. Einstein

Citizenship

Einstein was born a German citizen. At the age of 17, on January 28, 1896, he was released from his German citizenship by his own request and with the approval of his father. He remained stateless for five years. On February 21, 1901 he gained Swiss citizenship, which he never revoked. Einstein obtained Prussian citizenship in April 1914 when he entered the Prussian civil service, but due to the political situation and the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany, he left civil service in March 1933 and thus also lost the Prussian citizenship. On October 1, 1940, Einstein became an American citizen. He remained both an American and a Swiss citizen until his death on April 18, 1955.

Popularity and cultural impact

Einstein's popularity has led to widespread use of Einstein in advertising and merchandising, including the registration of "Albert Einstein" as a trademark.

Entertainment

Albert Einstein has become the subject of a number of novels, films and plays, including Jean-Claude Carrier's 2005 French novel, Einstein S'il Vous Plait (Please Mr Einstein), Nicolas Roeg's film Insignificance, Fred Schepisi's film I.Q. (where he was portrayed by Walter Matthau), Alan Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams, and Steve Martin's comedic play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. He was the subject of Philip Glass's groundbreaking 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach. His humorous side is also the subject of Ed Metzger's one-man play The Practical Bohemian. He also appears in Command and Conquer strategy game series where he was still alive even in 1972. In addition to that, in the first-person shooter, Half-Life, the player will encounter many scientists who resemble Einstein.

He is often used as a model for depictions of mad scientists and absent-minded professors in works of fiction; his own character and distinctive hairstyle suggest eccentricity, or even lunacy and are widely copied or exaggerated. TIME magazine writer Frederic Golden referred to Einstein as "a cartoonist's dream come true."TIME 100: Person of the Century - Albert Einstein

On Einstein's 72nd birthday in 1951, the UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to coax him into smiling for the camera. Having done this for the photographer many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead. The image has become an icon in pop culture for its contrast of the genius scientist displaying a moment of levity. Yahoo Serious, an Australian film maker, used the photo as an inspiration for the intentionally anachronistic movie Young Einstein.

Myths and rumors

There are innumerable legends which suggest that Einstein was a poor student, a slow learner, or a sufferer of autism (such as High-functioning autism, or Asperger syndrome), dyslexia, and/or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. According to the authoritative biography by Pais (page 36, among others), such legends are unfounded. An article in The Washington Post on April 24, 2001 further debunked these legends.

There is a recurring rumor that Einstein failed mathematics later in his education, but this is untrue; a change in the numbering-system used to record grades may have confused some persons who looked at the records years later.

Personal relations

Letters written by Einstein to his relatives and kept at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have revealed that during the course of his life, he had a dozen lovers, two of whom he married. * Barbara Wolff of the Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives has made public about 3,500 pages of correspondence including letters to his first and second wives and children between the years 1912-1955. In letters to his second wife Elsa and her daughter Margot he disclosed that he had been showered with unwanted attention from women. One of his lovers, a Berlin socialite Ethel Michanowski - "followed me England, and her chasing me is getting out of control." His son Eduard's schizophrenia troubled Einstein greatly, and he often expressed the idea that it would have been better if Eduard had not been born. He adored his stepdaughter and in a letter to Elsa in 1924, he writes: "I love her as much as if she were my own daughter, perhaps even more so, since who knows what kind of brat she would have become [had I fathered her."

Licensing

Einstein bequeathed his estate, as well as the use of his image (see personality rights), to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Einstein actively supported the university during his life and this support continues with the royalties received from licensing activities. The Roger Richman Agency licences the commercial use of the name "Albert Einstein" and associated imagery and likenesses of Einstein, as agent for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As head licensee the agency can control commercial usage of Einstein's name which does not comply with certain standards (e.g., when Einstein's name is used as a trademark, the ™ symbol must be used). As of May, 2005, the Roger Richman Agency was acquired by Corbis.

Honors

Einstein has received a number of posthumous honors. For example:

Among Einstein's many namesakes are:

Works by Albert Einstein

Notes

References

  • This is the definitive scientific biography.
  • This book discusses non-science aspects of Einstein; marriages, affairs, illegitimate daughter, public image.
  • Discusses the final disposition of Einstein's brain, hair, and eyes as well as the importance of Einstein and his work in the shaping of science and culture.

See also

External links

Albert Einstein | German physicists | German Jews | Contributors to general relativity | Cosmologists | Dynamicists | Nobel Prize in Physics winners | Manhattan Project | Autodidacts | Erdős number 2 | Formerly stateless people | German-Americans | Humanists | Humanitarians | Natives of Baden-Württemberg | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Patent clerks | German refugees | Social justice | Socialists | World federalists | Swiss-Americans | German vegetarians | American vegetarians | Jewish-American scientists | Jewish American writers | 1879 births | 1955 deaths

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Albert Einstein".

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