Albert Einstein

Physicist and Mathematician

Nobel Laureate for Physics 1921
"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as if everything is."
- Albert Einstein -

He was born in the German city of Ulm, but a year later his family moved to
Munich, where he would live until he was 15 years old. With 17 he entered the
Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich to study mathematics and physics.

Conrad Habicht, Maurice Solovine and Einstein, who founded the Olympia Academy

After graduating, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years searching for a
teaching post, but Marcel Grossmann's father helped him secure a job in Bern, at

the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant
examiner. He evaluated patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903,
Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office became permanent, although he was
passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".

1905 was its most fruitful year, the result of the publication of four scientific articles
on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity theory and massenergy equivalence (E = mc).

The first earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, the second the doctor
degree and the last two would consecrate him, in time, as the greatest scientist of
the twentieth century

Einstein was married to Mileva Maric from January 6, 1903. He referred to her 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 marriage to Mileva in order to have the solitude
necessary to accomplish his work; he required intellectual isolation.
In early 1902, Einstein and Mileva Maric had a daughter they named Lieserl, born
in Novi Sad where Maric was staying with her parents. Her fate is unknown, but the
contents of a letter Einstein wrote to Maric in September 1903 suggest that she
was either adopted or died of scarlet fever in infancy.
In May 1904, the couple's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born in Bern,
Switzerland. Their second son, Eduard, was born in Zurich in July 1910. In 1914,
Einstein moved to Berlin, while his wife remained in Zurich with their sons. They
divorced on February 14, 1919, having lived apart for five years.

He had fun

Einstein married Elsa Lowenthal on 2

June

1919,

after

having

had

relationship with her since 1912. She was

his first cousin maternally and his second
cousin paternally. In 1933, they emigrated
to the United States. In 1935, Elsa
Einstein was diagnosed with heart and
kidney problems and died in December
1936.
While traveling, Einstein wrote daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters
Margot and Ilse.

In 1921, Dean Henry Burchard Fine of Princeton University went to New York to
pick up Albert Einstein. who had chosen Princeton for a lecture series on his new
theory of relativity. Scientists all over the United States packed the lecture hall for
five talks. Einstein decided to settle down in Princeton in 1933.

Einstein became an American citizen in

1940. Not long after settling into his
career at Princeton, he expressed his
appreciation of the "meritocracy" in
American culture when compared to Europe.
According to Isaacson, he recognized
the "right of individuals to say and think what
they pleased", without social barriers, and as result, the individual was
"encouraged" to be more creative, a trait he valued from his own early education.
Einstein writes:
What makes the new arrival devoted to this country is the democratic trait among
the people. No one humbles himself before another person or class ... American
youth has the good fortune not to have its outlook troubled by outworn traditions.

On April 17, 1955, Albert Einstein experienced

internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an
abdominal

aortic

aneurysm,

which

had

previously been reinforced surgically by Dr.

Rudolph Nissen in 1948. He took the draft of a
speech he was preparing for a television
appearance commemorating the State of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to
the hospital, but he did not live long enough to complete it.

Einstein refused surgery, saying: "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to

prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."

He died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having
continued to work until near the end.