a while to become accepted and part of the
Albert Einstein:
Biography,
Theories & Quotes
Famed physicist Albert Einstein at the
blackboard.
Credit: NASA
Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the
most influential scientists of the 20thcentury.
His work helps astronomers study
everything from gravitational waves to
Mercury's orbit.
His equation that helped explain special
relativity E = mc2 is famous even among
those who don't understand the underlying
physics. He also is known for his work on
general relativity and the photoelectric
effect; his work on the latter earned him a
Nobel Prize in 1921.
Einstein also made vain attempts to unify all
the forces of the universe in a single theory,
which he was still working on at the time of
his death.
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"I think he was recognized in his time as
being pretty revolutionary," said Harry Cliff,
an Einstein historian at London's Science
Museum, in a February 2017 interview.
"However, with big, new ideas, it takes them
mainstream."
Early years
Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in
Ulm, Germany, a town that today has a
population of just over 120,000 and has a
small commemorative plaque where
Einstein's house used to stand. (The house
was destroyed during World War II.) The
family moved to Munich shortly after his
birth, then to Italy as his father faced
problems with running his own business.
His father, Hermann, ran an electrochemical
factory and his mother, Pauline, took care of
Albert and his younger sister, Maria.
Einstein would write in his memoirs that two
"wonders" deeply affected his early years,
according to Hans-Josef Kpper, an Albert
Einstein scholar. He encountered his first
wonder a compass at age 5. He was
mystified that invisible forces could deflect
the needle. This would lead to a lifelong
fascination with invisible forces. The second
wonder came at age 12 when he discovered
a book of geometry, which he devoured,
calling it his "holy geometry book."
Contrary to popular belief, young Albert was
a good student. He excelled in physics and
mathematics, but was a more "moderate"
pupil in other subjects, Kpper wrote on his
website. However, Einstein rebelled against
the authoritarian attitude of some of his
teachers and dropped out of school at 16.
He later took an entrance exam for the
Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich,
and while his performances in physics and
math were excellent, his marks in other
areas were not sufficient, and he did not
pass the exam. He took additional courses
to close the gap in his knowledge, and was
admitted to Swiss Polytechnic in 1896. In
1901, he received a diploma (to teach
physics and mathematics).

However, Einstein could not find a teaching
position, and famously began work in a
Bern patent office in 1901, according to his
Nobel Prize biography. It was here, after
analyzing patent applications, that he
developed his work in special relativity and
other parts of physics that made him
famous.
Einstein married Mileva Maric, a longtime
love of his from Zurich, in 1903. Their
children, Hans Albert and Eduard, were
born in 1904 and 1910. (The fate of a child
born to them in 1902 before their marriage,
Lieserl, is unknown.) He divorced Maric in
1919 and subsequently married Elsa
Lwenthal, a cousin on Einstein's father's
and mother's sides. Lwenthal died in 1933.
Albert Einstein in Princeton, USA.
Credit: ESA
Career highlights
Einstein's career was peripatetic. He earned
his doctorate in 1905, and subsequently
took on professor positions in Zurich (1909),
Prague (1911) and Zurich (1912). Next, he
moved to Berlin to become director of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and a
professor at the University of Berlin (1914).
He became a German citizen.
A major validation of Einstein's work came
in 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington,
secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society,
led an expedition to Africa that measured
the position of stars during a total solar
eclipse. The group found that the position of
stars was shifted due to the bending of light
around the sun. Eddington's results rocked
the foundations of science, according to
Rowan Hooper, a film critic for New
Scientist. Set against the backdrop of World
War I, the British Eddington's acceptance of
the German Einstein's theory meant that the
ordered universe of Isaac Newton, also
British, was replaced with an entirely new
philosophy. (In 2008, a BBC/HBO
production dramatized the story in "Einstein
and Eddington.")
"When that was published in the press,
Einstein became this global celebrity," Cliff
told Space.com. "Even today there aren't
many scientists who are household names,
like Stephen Hawking. Einstein was the first
of those [modern] celebrities."
Einstein remained in Germany until 1933,
when dictator Adolf Hitler rose to power.
Einstein then renounced his German
citizenship and moved to the United States
to become a professor of theoretical physics
at Princeton. He became a U.S. citizen in
1940 and retired in 1945.
Einstein remained active in the physics
community through his later years. In 1939,
he famously penned a letter to President
Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that uranium
could be used for an atomic bomb.
"It was one of the key triggers behind the
Manhattan Project," Cliff said, referring to
the successful effort the United States
initiated to build nuclear weapons during
WWII. "That letter persuaded the
government to take it seriously. His voice
was heard at the top of government."
Late in Einstein's life, he engaged in a
series of private debates with physicist Niels
Bohr about the validity of quantum theory.
Bohr's theories held the day, and Einstein
later incorporated quantum theory in his
own calculations.
Einstein's brain
Einstein died of an aortic aneurysm on April
18, 1955. A blood vessel had burst near his
heart, according to the American Museum
of Natural History (AMNH). When asked if
he wanted to have surgery, Einstein
refused. "I want to go when I want to go," he
said. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.
I have done my share; it is time to go. I will
do it elegantly."
Einstein's body most of it, anyway was
cremated and his ashes were spread in an
undisclosed location, according to the
AMNH. However, a doctor at Princeton
Hospital, Thomas Harvey, had performed
an autopsy, apparently without permission,
and removed Einstein's brain and eyeballs,
according to Matt Blitz, who wrote about
Einstein's brain in a 2015 column for Today
I Found Out.
Harvey sliced hundreds of thin sections of
brain tissue to place on microscope slides,
and snapped 14 photos of the brain from
several angles. Harvey moved to Wichita,
Kansas, where he was a medical supervisor
in a biological testing lab. Over the next 30
years, he sent a few slides to other
researchers who wanted to study the brain,
but kept the rest of the brain in two glass
jars, sometimes in a cider box under a beer
cooler. The story of Einstein's brain was
largely forgotten until 1985 when a study
was finally published.
Harvey failed a competency exam in 1988,
and his medical license was revoked, Blitz
wrote. Harvey eventually donated the brain
to Princeton Hospital, where the brain's
journey had begun. Harvey died in
2007. Pieces of Einstein's brain are now on
display at the Mutter Museum in
Philadelphia.
What the studies found
One of the first papers, titled "On the Brain
of a Scientist: Albert Einstein" was
published in 1985 in the
journal Experimental Neurology. The
researchers found that Einstein's brain had
a greater number of glial cells (cells that
support and insulate the nervous system)
per neurons (nerve cells) than other brains
they examined. They concluded that it might
indicate the neurons had a higher
"metabolic need" that they needed and
used more energy and that might explain
why Einstein had better thinking abilities
and conceptual skills.
However, other researchers have pointed
out a few problems with that study,
according to Eric H. Chudler, a
neuroscientist at the University of
Washington. First, for example, the other
brains used in the study were all younger
than Einstein's brain. Second, the
"experimental group" had only one subject
Einstein. Additional studies are needed
to see if these anatomical differences are
found in other people. And third, only a
small part of Einstein's brain was studied.
Another study, published in 1996 in the
journal Neuroscience Letters, found
that Einstein's brain weighed only 1,230
grams, less than the average adult male
brain (about 1,400 g). Also, Einstein's
cerebral cortex was thinner than that of five
control brains, but the density of neurons
was greater.
A study published in 2012 in the journal
Brain revealed that the Einstein's brain had
extra folding in the gray matter, the site of
conscious thinking. In particular, the frontal
lobes, regions tied to abstract thought and
planning, had unusually elaborate folding,
analysis suggested.
Scientific work
Einstein's legacy in physics is significant.
Here are some of his key scientific
principles that he pioneered:
Theory of special relativity: Einstein
showed that physical laws are identical for
all observers, as long as they are not under
acceleration. However, the speed of light in
a vacuum is always the same, no matter at
what speed the observer is travelling. This
work led to his realization that space and
time are linked into what we now call space-
time. So, an event seen by one observer
may be seen at a different time by another
observer.
Theory of general relativity: This was a
reformulation of the law of gravity. In the
1600s, Newton formulated three laws of
motion, among them outlining how gravity
works between two bodies. The force
between them depends on how massive
each object is, and how far apart the objects
are. Einstein determined that when thinking
about space-time, a massive object is a
distortion in space-time (like putting a heavy
ball on a trampoline.) Gravity is exerted
when other objects fall into the "well"
created by the distortion in space-time, like
a marble rolling towards the large ball.
Photoelectric effect: Einstein's work in
1905 proposed that light should be thought
of as a stream of particles (photons) instead
of just a single wave, as was commonly
thought by the time. His work helped explain
some curious results scientists saw at the
time. The photoelectric effect refers to how
electrons are ejected from the surface of a
metal due to incident light. The "wave"
theory of light suggests that the electrons
should be ejected with more energy when
the incident light is increased, but
experiments showed that the energies are
actually independent of the radiation
intensity. "It was a difficult idea to accept at
the time," Cliff said. "It contradicted the 19th-
century wave picture of light."
Unified field theory: Einstein spent much
of his later years trying to merge the fields
of electromagnetism and gravity. He was
unsuccessful, but Encyclopedia Britannica
suggests that Einstein was ahead of his
time because, for example, the strong force
in quantum mechanics was better
understood in the 1970s and 1980s. Other
physicists are still working on this problem.
Applications of
Einstein's work
There are many applications of Einstein's
work, but here are some of the bigger ones
in astronomy:
Gravitational waves: In 2016, the Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO) detected space-time
ripples otherwise known as gravitational
waves that occurred after black holes
collided about 1.4 billion light-years from
Earth. LIGO also made an initial detection of
gravitational waves in 2015, a century after
Einstein predicted these ripples existed. The
waves are a facet of Einstein's theory of
general relativity.
Mercury's orbit: Mercury is a small planet
orbiting close to a very massive object
relative to its size the sun. Its orbit could
not be understood until general relativity
showed that it's the curvature of space-time
that is affecting its motions and changing
the orbit. There is a small chance that over
billions of years, Mercury could be ejected
from our solar system due to these changes
(with an even smaller chance that it could
collide with Earth.)
Gravitational lensing: This is a
phenomenon by which a massive object
(like a galaxy cluster or a black hole) bends
light around it. Astronomers looking at that
region through a telescope can then see
objects directly behind the massive object,
due to the light being bent. A famous
example of this is Einstein's Cross, a quasar
in the constellation Pegasus. A galaxy
roughly 400 million light-years away bends
the light of the quasar so it appears four
times around the galaxy.
On humanity
"Only two things are infinite, the universe
and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about
the former."

Albert Einstein quotes "The difference between stupidity and

genius is that genius has its limits."
Einstein is credited with saying many
"It has become appallingly obvious that our
fascinating things:
technology has exceeded our humanity."
On science
"Only a life lived for others is a life
"Imagination is more important than worthwhile."
knowledge."

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it

would not be called research, would it?"

"The only reason for time is so that

everything doesn't happen at once."

"Everything should be as simple as

possible, but not simpler."

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does

not have to earn one's living at it."

On religion

"God does not play dice with the universe."

"Science without religion is lame, religion

without science is blind."

"Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust,

we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in
the distance by an invisible player."

On war and peace

"I know not with what weapons World War

III will be fought, but World War IV will be
fought with sticks and stones."

"The world is a dangerous place, not

because of those who do evil, but because
of those who look on and do nothing."

"Peace cannot be achieved through

violence, it can only be attained through
understanding."

Albert Einstein
Lived 1879 1955.
Albert Einstein rewrote the laws of nature. He
completely changed the way we understand
the behavior of things as basic as light,
gravity, and time.
Although scientists today are comfortable with
Einsteins ideas, in his time, they were
completely revolutionary. Most people did not
even begin to understand them.
If youre new to science, youll probably find
that some of his ideas take time to get used
to!
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Quick Guide to Albert
Einsteins Scientific
Achievements
Albert Einstein:
provided powerful evidence that atoms and
molecules actually exist, through his analysis
of Brownian motion.
explained the photoelectric effect, proposing
that light came in bundles. Bundles of light (he
called them quanta) with the correct amount of
energy can eject electrons from metals.
proved that everyone, whatever speed we
move at, measures the speed of light to be
300 million meters per second in a vacuum.
This led to the strange new reality that time
passes more slowly for people traveling at
very high speeds compared with people
moving more slowly.
discovered the hugely important and iconic
equation, E = mc2, which showed that energy
and matter can be converted into one another.
rewrote the law of gravitation, which had
been unchallenged since Isaac
Newtonpublished it in 1687. In his General
Theory of Relativity, Einstein:
showed that matter causes space to
curve, which produces gravity.
showed that the path of light follows the
gravitational curve of space.
showed that time passes more slowly
when gravity becomes very strong.
became the 20th centurys most famous
scientist when the strange predictions he
made in his General Theory of Relativity were
verified by scientific observations.
spent his later years trying to find equations
to unite quantum physics with general
relativity. This was an incredibly hard task for
him to set himself. To date, it has still not been
achieved.
His Beginnings
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in
Ulm, Germany. He was not talkative in his
childhood, and until the age of three, he didnt
talk much. He spent his teenage years in
Munich, where his family had an electric
equipment business. As a teenager, he was
interested in nature and showed a high level
of ability in mathematics and physics.
Einstein loved to be creative and innovative.
He loathed the uncreative spirit in his school
at Munich. His familys business failed when
he was aged 15, and they moved to Milan,
Italy. Aged 16, he moved to Switzerland,
where he finished high school.
In 1896 he began to study for a degree at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich. He didnt like the teaching methods
there, so he bunked classes to carry out
experiments in the physics laboratory or play
his violin. With the help of his classmates
notes, he passed his exams; he graduated in
1900.
Einstein was not considered a good student
by his teachers, and they refused to
recommend him for further employment.
Einstein 1903
While studying at the Polytechnic, Einstein
had learned about one of the biggest
problems then baffling physicists. This was
how to marry together Isaac Newtons laws of
motion with James Clerk Maxwellsequations
of electromagnetism.
In 1902 he obtained the post of an examiner
in the Swiss Federal patent office, and, in
1903, he wedded his classmate Mileva Maric.
He had two sons with her but they later
divorced. After some years Einstein married
Elsa Loewenthal.
Early Scientific Publications
Einstein continued to work in the patent office,
during which time he made most of his
greatest scientific breakthroughs. The
University of Zurich awarded him a Ph.D. in
1905 for his thesis A New Determination of
Molecular Dimensions.
1905: The Year of Miracles
In 1905, the same year as he submitted his
doctoral thesis, Albert Einstein published four
immensely important scientific papers dealing
with his analysis of:
Brownian motion
the equivalence of mass and energy
the photoelectric effect
special relativity
Each of these papers on their own was a huge
contribution to science. To publish four such
papers in one year was considered to be
almost miraculous. Einstein was just 26 years
old.
Mass Energy Equivalence
Einstein gave birth in 1905 to what has
become the worlds most famous equation:
E = mc2
The equation says that mass (m) can be
converted to energy (E). A little mass can
make a lot of energy, because mass is
multiplied by c2 where c is the speed of light, a
very large number.
A small amount of mass can make a large amount
of energy. Conversion of mass in atomic nuclei to
energy is the principle behind nuclear weapons
and explains the suns source of energy.
The Photoelectric Effect
If you shine light on metal, the metal may
release some of its electrons. Einstein said
that light is made up of individual particles of
energy, which he called quanta. When these
quanta hit the metal, they give their energy to
electrons, giving the electrons enough energy
to escape from the metal.
Einstein showed that light can behave as a
particle as well as a wave. The energy each
particle of light carries is proportional to the
frequency of the light waves.
Einsteins Special Theory of
Relativity
In Einsteins third paper of 1905 he returned to
the big problem he had heard about at
university how to resolve Newtons laws of
motion with Maxwells equations of light. His
approach was the thought experiment. He
imagined how the world would look if he could
travel at the speed of light.
He realized that the laws of physics are the
same everywhere, and regardless of what you
did whether you moved quickly toward a ray
of light as it approached you, or quickly away
from the ray of light you would always see
the light ray to be moving at the same speed
the speed of light!
This is not obvious, because its not how
things work in everyday life, where, for
example, if you move towards a child
approaching you on a bike he will reach you
sooner than if you move away from him. With
light, it doesnt matter whether you move
towards or away from the light, it will take the
same amount of time to reach you. This isnt
an easy thing to understand, so dont worry
about it if you dont! (Unless youre at
university studying physics.) Every experiment
ever done to test special relativity has
confirmed what Einstein said.
If the speed of light is the same for all
observers regardless of their speed, then it
follows that some other strange things must
be true. In fact, it turns out that time, length,
and mass actually depend on the speed we
are moving at. The nearer the speed of light
we move, the bigger differences we seen in
these quantities compared with someone
moving more slowly. For example, time
passes more and more slowly as we move
faster and faster.
Einstein Becomes Known
to the Wider Physics
Community
As people read Einsteins papers and argued
about their significance, his work gradually
gained acceptance, and his reputation as a
powerful new intellect in the world of physics
grew. In 1908 he began lecturing at the
University of Bern, and the following year
resigned from the Patent Office. In 1911 he
became a professor of physics at the Karl-
Ferdinand University in Prague, before
returning to Zurich in 1912 to a professorship
there.
Working on the general theory of relativity, in
1911 he made his first predictions of how our
suns powerful gravity would bend the path of
light coming from other stars as it traveled
past the sun.
The General Theory of
Relativity Einstein
Becomes Famous
Worldwide
A very, very rough approximation: the earths
mass curves space. The moons speed keeps it
rolling around the curve rather than falling to
Earth. If you are on Earth and wish to leave, you
need to climb out of the gravity well
Einstein published his general theory of
relativity paper in 1915, showing, for example,
how gravity distorts space and time. Light is
deflected by powerful gravity, not because of
its mass (light has no mass) but because
gravity has curved the space that light travels
through.
In 1919 a British expedition traveled to the
West African island of Principe to observe an
eclipse of the sun. During the eclipse they
could test whether light from far away stars
passing close to the sun was deflected. They
found that it was! Just as Einstein had said,
space truly was curved.
He decided it would be a bad idea to return to
Germany, and renounced his German
citizenship. Einstein did not practice Judaism,
but strongly identified with the Jewish people
persecuted by the Nazi Party, favoring a
Jewish homeland in Palestine with the rights
of Arabs protected.

On November 7, 1919, the London Times It was Einsteins wish that people should be
headline read: respected for their humanity and not for their
country of origin or religion. Expressing his
Revolution in science New theory of the cynicism for nationalistic pride, he once said:
Universe Newtonian ideas overthrown.
If relativity is proved right the Germans will
call me a German, the Swiss will call me a
Honors and More Honors Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a
great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize
French will call me Swiss, the Swiss will call
in Physics in 1921. People are sometimes
me a German, and the Germans will call me a
surprised to learn that the award was not
Jew.
made for his work in special or general
relativity, but for his overall services to
theoretical physics and one of the works from
his miracle year specifically the discovery of
the law of the photoelectric effect in 1905.

The Royal Society of London awarded him its

prestigious Copely Medal in 1925 for his
theory of relativity and contributions to the
quantum theory. The Franklin Institute
awarded him with the Franklin medal in 1935
for his work on relativity and the photo-electric
effect.

Universities around the world competed with

one another to award him honorary
doctorates, and the press wrote more about
him than any other scientist Einstein
became a celebrity.

Einsteins Later Years

Einstein made his greatest discoveries when
he was a relatively young man.

In his later years he continued with science,

but made no further groundbreaking
discoveries. He became interested in politics
and the state of the world.

Einstein had been born German and a Jew.

He died an American citizen in 1955. Einstein
was in America when Hitler came to power.