Slide 2

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist, best known for

his Special and General Theory of Relativity and the concept ofmassenergy equivalence expressed by the famous equation,E = mc2. He
received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his services to
theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of
the photoelectric effect and he made some essential contributions to
the early development of quantum theory. He was named "Person of
the Century" by Time magazine in 1999, the fourth most admired
person of the 20th Century according to a 1999 Gallup poll, and the
greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme
intellects of all time according to The 100: A Ranking of the Most
Influential Persons in History in 1978.
Albert Einstein was born into a non-practising Jewish family in Ulm in
the Kingdom of Wrttemberg, Germany on 14 March 1879. He was
always a little different from other children: his head was slightly larger
than normal, and he hardly spoke as a young boy, leading one
housekeeper to consider him "retarded". At an early age, his family
moved to Munich where Einstein attended a Catholic school and
showed an early aptitude for mathematics, particularly geometry and
calculus (although he disliked the school's policy of strict
memorization, which he thought unhelpful). Outside of school, he
explored his own path of learning in mathematics and philosophy with
a medical student and friend of the family, Max Talmud.

Slide 3

At a very young age he showed a very keen sense of curiosity to

everything. It was believed to have started when his father showed
him a pocket compass, and he was amazed by the swing of the needle.
He then thought that there is something behind the needles movement
besides the empty space and could not be observed by the naked
eyes. It convinced him that there is that something behind things,
something which is completely secluded.

Slide 4

At 15, after his fathers electrical equipment business failed, he

followed his family to Pavia, Italy (not wishing to stay and finish his
schooling in Germany), and then on to Aarau, Switzerland, where he

finally finished high school. At the age of just 16, he had already made
his first conceptual breakthrough while looking at a mirror and
wondering what he would see if he were travelling at the speed of
light (a thought experiment sometimes referred to as "Einstein's
Mirror"). In 1896, he renounced his German citizenship in order to
avoid military service, and went to study mathematics and physics at
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zrich, graduating in 1900.
He gained Swiss citizenship in 1901 and never revoked it.
The problem was, he wasnt a very good test-taker and could not get a
job at a University because of it.
Rumor has it that he had even failed a Math test, but some people
question that because of the way grades were assigned back then.

Slide 5

Basically Einsteins theory of relativity is divided into two theries,

namely the Theory of special relativity and general relativity.

Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime. It was introduced in Einstein's 1905 paper
"On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (for the contributions of many other physicists
see History of special relativity). Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory
in classical mechanics:
1. The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion relative to one another
(principle of relativity).
2. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative
motion or of the motion of the light source.
The resultant theory copes with experiment better than classical mechanics. For instance, postulate
2 explains the results of theMichelsonMorley experiment. Moreover, the theory has many surprising
and counterintuitive consequences. Some of these are:

Relativity of simultaneity: Two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be
simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion.

Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's
"stationary" clock.

Relativistic mass

Length contraction: Objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are
moving with respect to the observer.

Massenergy equivalence: E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable.

Maximum speed is finite: No physical object, message or field line can travel faster than the
speed of light in a vacuum.

The defining feature of special relativity is the replacement of the Galilean transformations of
classical mechanics by the Lorentz transformations. (See Maxwell's equations ofelectromagnetism).

General relativity[
General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Einstein in the years 19071915. The
development of general relativity began with the equivalence principle, under which the states
of accelerated motion and being at rest in a gravitational field (for example when standing on the
surface of the Earth) are physically identical. The upshot of this is that free fall is inertial motion: an
object in free fall is falling because that is how objects move when there is no force being exerted on
them, instead of this being due to the force of gravity as is the case in classical mechanics. This is
incompatible with classical mechanics and special relativity because in those theories inertially
moving objects cannot accelerate with respect to each other, but objects in free fall do so. To resolve
this difficulty Einstein first proposed that spacetime is curved. In 1915, he devised the Einstein field
equations which relate the curvature of spacetime with the mass, energy, and momentum within it.
Some of the consequences of general relativity are:

Clocks run slower in deeper gravitational wells.[8] This is called gravitational time dilation.

Orbits precess in a way unexpected in Newton's theory of gravity. (This has been observed
in the orbit of Mercury and in binary pulsars).

Rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field.

Rotating masses "drag along" the spacetime around them; a phenomenon termed "framedragging".

The universe is expanding, and the far parts of it are moving away from us faster than the
speed of light.

Technically, general relativity is a theory of gravitation whose defining feature is its use of
the Einstein field equations. The solutions of the field equations are metric tensors which define
the topology of the spacetime and how objects move inertially.