Albert Einstein and his contributions to physics

¶ … scientific achievements. Albert Einstein is perhaps one of the most famous physicists of all time. He discovered the Theory of Relativity and is often known as the "father" of the atomic bomb. Einstein's life is a model to scientists and physicists today, and a valuable lesson in what one person can accomplish in their lifetime. Without Einstein's discoveries and theories, our world might be a very different place today.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. His father was a merchant and his mother was a homemaker. Einstein was an excellent student, but a quiet and thoughtful boy. He always earned high grades in mathematics. One biographer notes, "In all these years he earned either the highest or the next-highest mark in mathematics and in Latin. But on the whole, he disliked those school years; authoritarian teachers, servile students, rote learning -- none of these agreed with him. Further, 'he had a natural antipathy for... gymnastics and sports...'" (Pais 37). He did not have many friends, and he mostly enjoyed the company of other adults. He read serious texts rather than literature, and enjoyed philosophical discussions with family friends (Pais 37-38). Einstein was always a serious and interested student of mathematics, which would serve him well in later years. Biographer Pais continues, "From age twelve to age sixteen, he studied differential and integral calculus by himself" (Pais 38). As a young man, Einstein and his family lived in Munich and Berlin, and in 1895, they relocated the family and the family business to Italy. He grew into a self-assured young man in Italy, and then traveled to Zurich where he would attend college. He graduated in 1900 with a certificate to teach science and physics. Einstein denounced his German citizenship during this time (he was extremely afraid of being made to serve in the German army), and he became a citizen of Switzerland in 1901, a citizenship he held until his death.

After he graduated, he was unable to find a position in a university, and was forced to return home to Milan to live with his parents, who could barely support him. He did not find a job until mid-1901, when he took a temporary position as a high school physics teacher. In 1902, he moved to Bern, Switzerland to take a job in the patent office there. His father also died in 1902. In 1903 he married Mileva Maria (or Marity), and in mid-1904 they had a son, Hans Albert. He continued his work in physics during his time at the patent office, and he published several professional papers during this time as well. In 1905, he wrote a paper that gained him his PhD degree from the University of Zurich, and wrote a paper that eventually earned him the Nobel Prize, too (Pais 48). Much of Einstein's most important work was done during this time he worked at the patent office. Essentially, he worked alone, carrying on the pattern of isolation that had made up much of his boyhood.

In 1908, Einstein began teaching university courses at the University of Bern part time in addition to his patent office job, which paid very little. In 1909, he resigned his job at the patent office to take a job as a professor at the University of Zurich, and in 1911, he left Zurich and moved to Prague to teach there. A second son, Edward, was also born in 1910. In 1915, he had honed his theory of relativity first introduced in 1905, and presented it, where it became incredibly popular and important in the scientific community. Einstein disliked teaching, he felt it interfered too much with his own thought and work, and in early 1914, he moved back to Berlin to take an appointment that allowed him not to lecture, which he enjoyed far more. In 1914, he also separated from his wife, Mileva. The marriage had not been successful, (his parents had vehemently opposed it at first), and Einstein was a preoccupied father at best. Biographer Pais continues, "But the marriage had been an unhappy one. Einstein never put all the blame for that on Mileva. With inner resistance, he had entered an undertaking which eventually went beyond his strength" (Pais 240). Mileva returned to Zurich with the boys, and subsequently the couple divorced.

He had reconnected with a cousin in Berlin, and had secretly conversed with her before his divorce. Another biographer notes, "He and Elsa wrote each other secret love letters. Telling her that he had been unable to love his own mother and found both her and Mileva 'unlikeable,' he burst out: 'I have to have someone to love, otherwise life is miserable. And this someone is you'" (Lewis 32). In fact, Elsa's presence in Berlin was one of the things that helped convince Einstein to move back to Berlin, and she helped nurse him when he became ill in 1917. He even moved into the apartment next to hers to be close to her before they married. His health fluctuated during 1917 and 1918, and often he was confined to bed with a stomach ulcer, which detracted from the work he loved so well. In early 1919, he was officially divorced from Mileva, and he married Elsa in June of the same year. Mileva never truly reconciled herself to the divorce, and Einstein actually committed all of his Nobel Prize money, actually not won until 1922, to her to entice her to agree to the divorce. Elsa loved him and took care of him, allowing him to concentrate on his work. His biographer writes, "Elsa, gentle, warm, motherly, and prototypically bourgeoisie, loved to take care of her Albertle. She gloried in his fame" (Pais 301). She died in 1936, after Einstein came to America, and he never remarried.

In 1932, the political climate in Europe was rapidly changing. Einstein was an outspoken pacifist and supporter of non-violence, and many feared for his life in Germany, since he was Jewish. He left Germany in December 1932 to accept a professorship at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and he never went back to his birthplace again. He did not officially begin his professorship until the following year. In 1939, his sister Maja joined him in Princeton and lived with him the rest of her life. He died in 1955 at the age of 76.

Throughout his life, Einstein was acclaimed for his science, but he was also intensely devoted to the fate of the Jews. Another writer notes, "There she [his sister] makes a plausible extrapolation: that Einstein's 'religious feeling' found expression in later years in his deep interest and actions to ameliorate the difficulties to which fellow Jews were being subjected, actions ranging from his fights against anti-Semitism to his embrace of Zionism" (Holton). He did work for the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and in fact, he was offered the presidency of the newly formed nation of Israel in 1952, but he turned it down.

Einstein's life was an almost continual search for new information, study, and reflection on his passions - science and physics. Biographer Pais notes, "Einstein's activities related to thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and kinetic theory begin with his very first paper, completed at the end of 1900, and span a quarter of a century, during which time he wrote close to forty articles bearing in varying degree on these subjects" (Pais 55). It is interesting to note that many of his most worthwhile and legendary discoveries came in the earliest part of his career, and after the 1920s, his prolific work slowed down somewhat. He continued to teach, write, and work until his death in 1955, but his lasting legacy all occurred early in his life and his career. Another Einstein biographer notes, "A recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts in 1924" (Editor). All of these occurrences were based on his earlier works on relativity and quantum physics.

Many writers also assert Einstein had a lasting affect on philosophy and social philosophy. One author quotes Einstein, "Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors.... Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations" (Schilpp 649), and believes this sums up Einstein's personal philosophy, that humankind is more important than facts and knowledge. Einstein himself felt he was a philosopher, too. Another biographer writes, "He too regards himself as a philosopher. Often he has said to me, 'I am more a philosopher than a physicist'" (Infeld 115). This idea sets Einstein apart from many scientists, and sums up his interest in pacifism and humanism. In another essay Einstein wrote, "To ponder interminably over the reason for one's own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point-of-view, to be sheer folly" (Einstein et al. 4). Thus, his feelings about humankind were as well thought out as his scientific theories, and he had strong beliefs about both. Einstein made incredible discoveries, but was still a very human and feeling man, and this simply added to his importance and influence in the world of physics.

One of Einstein's most famous discoveries is the Theory of Relativity, which he first developed in 1905, and which many people call "the birth of modern physics" (Infeld 37). Relativity Theory seems complicated, and it is. Einstein was criticized when he first made his theory public and it became known because other scientists felt very few people could actually understand it. Writer Infeld describes the theory in more understandable terms. He writes, "It [Relativity Theory] deduces that energy is not weightless, but has a definite mass. If the amount of energy changes, so does its mass. Energy has mass and mass has energy" (Infeld 38). This explanation is simplified for non-scientists, and seems rather tame today. However, Einstein's theory revolutionized the world of physics, and changed the way the entire scientific world viewed physics and energy in general. Relativity Theory gave the world Einstein's famous equation: "E = mc2 (energy equals mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light)" (Einstein 287). One writer explains Einstein's theory this way.

According to classical physics, a moving body has kinetic energy just because it moves. This energy, like all energy, is weightless, or let us say the same thing differently: the mass of a moving body does not change. But in relativity theory mass must change with speed, or, to put it differently, kinetic energy must have mass, however small (Infeld 40).

Thus, Einstein's theory reformulated classical physics, and physicists along with it. He changed the way science views mass and energy, and because of this, innovation and change was possible.

Einstein was a modest, reclusive man. Amazingly, he did not take full credit for his theory of Relativity. Biographer Pais continues, "He [Einstein] deprecated the idea that the new principle was revolutionary. It was, he told his audience, the direct outcome and, in a sense, the natural completion of the work of Faraday, Maxwell, and Lorentz. Moreover there was nothing specially, certainly nothing intentionally, philosophical about it....'" (Pais 30). He remained low-key about his accomplishments throughout his life and was continually working on new projects and ideas. None of them would ever bring him as much acclaim and notoriety as his theories on Relativity and Quantum physics.

Einstein also helped to develop Quantum Theory, which "deals with the laws that describe how matter is built out of these elementary particles and what the forces are between them as revealed in spectral lines, in radioactive phenomena, or in the process of fission. The story of modern physics is in great part that of quantum theory" (Infeld 85). The use of Quantum Theory and continued study into it by other scientists eventually led to the development of atomic fission, and later, the development of the atomic and bomb. Einstein always regretted the part he played in the development of the bomb, as he was a lifelong pacifist. In fact, he co-wrote a famous book, "Why War?" with Sigmund Freud in 1932 that became classic anti-war literature. Another writer states, "The 'Why War?' letters, organized by Einstein, were written at the behest of the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, a committee of the League of Nations" (Dunn 112). Einstein saw the potential of harnessing atomic principles to create nuclear power, but always felt regret over his role in the atomic arms race. He spent the remainder of his life studying many different projects. One however, eluded him. Another scientist writes, "Einstein, who had already united space, time and gravity in his theories, certainly believed this and spent the latter half of his life seeking -- unsuccessfully -- 'a theory of everything' that would combine quantum physics and relativity" (Mckie). That work today is evolving into another theory of physics - string theory, which shows his influence is still felt around the world today.