Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (Born::March 14, 1879 — Died::April 18, 1955) was a German-born physicist who is best known for his theories of General and Special Relativity. He shaped modern science through his various theories, observations, and discoveries, and is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to the field of physics, specifically his study on the photoelectric effect. He discovered the energy constant (E=mc²) and provided an explanation for the space-time continuum.

Biography and Personal Life

Albert Einstein at the age of 3 in 1882.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 to Hermann and Pauline Einstein, who were secular Jews, in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. He lived with his parents and younger sister, Maria or Maja Einstein, born two years after Albert. He was a taciturn child, hardly speaking until he reached the age of three. Because he was an unusual young child with an abnormally large head, one of their housekeepers believed Albert was retarded. However, he began to show signs of academic intelligence and understanding at a very early age.

The Einsteins moved to Munich, Germany in 1886 to where Albert’s father and uncle founded an electrochemical factory, the Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie Company. In Munich, Albert started his educational career and attended a Catholic school at the age of five where he began to show his brilliance in mathematics. After three years of Catholic education, he transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium Post to complete his advanced primary and secondary schooling. He grew very fond of his geometry textbook, referring to it as his “sacred little geometry book.” His love for mathematics and physics developed as he built models and complex, mechanical devices in his spare time. He was extremely fascinated with the works of Max Talmud who later became his friend and tutor. Talmud’s influence also stroke wonder into Einstein’s brain about light and electricity. Einstein grew to be extremely religious at the age of twelve, but that changed when he read science textbooks that completely contradicted his religious beliefs.

Hermann Einstein’s electrochemical factory went out of business, causing the Einsteins to move to Milan, Italy in 1894, then onto Pavia, Italy in the following months. However, fifteen-year-old Einstein remained in Munich, Germany with expectations from his father to complete his formal education in Luitpold Gymnasium. The inflexible intelligence of Luitpold clashed with Einstein’s longing for creative learning. He dropped out six months later and rejoined his family in Pavia at the age of sixteen. Because Einstein dropped out of school and failed to complete his formal education, his chance of getting a job was at risk. He was able to apply to a school in Zurich, the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule, to study electrical engineering. Unfortunately, he failed the school's entrance exam to the school. On the test, Einstein failed all subjects except mathematics and physics. However, the principal of Eidgenössische was highly impressed with Einstein’s math and physics scores, causing him to make a deal with Albert. He proposed that if Albert finished formal schooling, he would allow entrance to the school. Therefore, Albert enrolled in Aargau Cantonal School in Aarau, Switzerland to finish his secondary schooling and graduated in 1896. He graduated from Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule in 1900 as a teacher of mathematics and physics. While in Zurich, he published his first paper called “The Consequenes of the Observations of Capillarity Phenomena.” The following year, he gained Swiss Citizenship.

Einstein claimed his life in Zurich to be the happiest of times. There he met his first love, Marie Winteler, the daughter of Einstein’s lifelong friends, the Winteler Family. He also claimed to have met several fellow students who became loyal friends. He later met his first wife, Mileva Maric, who originated from Serbia. They married in January 1903 and conceived a daughter, Lieseri, and two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard. Lieseri’s fate is unknown; she was thought to have been given up for adoption or dead from Scarlet Fever. Mileva and Albert divorced on February 14, 1919, but Albert remarried the same year to Elsa Löwenthal, a woman he has secretly been in a relationship with since 1912. Albert and Elsa immigrated to America in 1933, but unfortunately, Elsa passed away in 1936 due to kidney and heart failure.

On April 17, 1955, Einstein ruptured an abdominal aortic aneurysm and sustained internal bleeding. Dr. Rudolph Nissen performed surgery on him in 1948, but the problems continued. Einstein was taken to Princeton Hospital, but refused to go through with any surgery. He thought it was pointless to repeat the same procedures over and over. He willingly passed away on April 18, 1955.

Scientific Career

Einstein accepting his certificate to U.S citizenship from Judge Phillip Forman.

After Albert Einstein’s graduation from Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule in 1900, he greatly struggled with finding a job. He desperately took jobs tutoring poor children, but was unfortunately fired. The father of his long time friend and former classmate from Zurich, Marcel Grossman, recommended him for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office in Bern 1902. His patent job gave him an easy and steady income. He often finished his work quickly, giving himself much time to dwell upon theories dealing with the familiar study of light. In school, Einstein extensively studied the nature of light, which helped him to later conclude and develop the principle of relativity, “the speed of light is a constant in any inertial frame (constantly moving frame).” In the 19th century, both Newton’s law of motion and Maxwell’s theory of light were solid scientific discoveries. However, when Einstein realized that light contradicted Netwon’s law, he proposed his principle.

1905 was Eintein’s “annus mirabilis” or “miracle year.” In that year, his scientific career sky-rocketed. He wrote and published four innovational papers that dealt with the Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity. Those papers completely changed the face of science because of his theories and their accuracy. Einstein’s brilliant papers, however, were not immediately accepted in the scientific community. After Max Planck, founder of the quantum theory, gave Einstein a chance, Einstein proved his theories were correct and became tremendously famous. He became a lecturer at the University of Bern and, in 1909, he became a physics professor at the University of Zurich. He traveled on the road several times to speak at international conferences about his theories, which unfortunately ruined his first marriage with Mileva Maric. Countries around the world longed for him to speak. He toured countries such as France, the United States, England, and Japan. In 1911, he took a full-time job as a professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague and in 1914, Einstein returned to Germany to be appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physics and professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Einstein then became president of the German Physical Society and joined the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Albert spent much of his time at the California Institute of Technology during the 1930’s. He also lectured in the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey. When Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933, Einstein moved to the United States and became a permanent citizen in 1940.

Many claim Einstein’s work contributed to the discovery of nuclear fission. Einstein also wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, president in 1939, and requested permission to create a weapon such as the atomic bomb for military use, which causes severe metropolitan issues today. Einstein claimed that he was regretful in signing that letter and, with the help of Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, moved to stop all nuclear experimentation.

Achievements

The basic outline of the inside of Einstein's invention, Einstein's Refrigerator, depicting the use of ammonia, butane, and water.

Einstein analyzed and discussed the movement of molecules and proved their existence through the Brownian motion (the random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a liquid or gas, caused by collisions between these particles and the molecules of the liquid or gas). He also questioned the nature of light, leading to his discovery of the photoelectric effect (emission, or ejection, of electrons from the surface of, generally, a metal in response to incident light) by the quantum theory (a theory of matter and energy based on the concept of quanta, especially quantum mechanics) to light. Light energy came into photons, or quanta. Researchers began to view the concept of light very differently. Einstein's most well-known discovery regarded the special theory of relativity. He wrote two papers called, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” and “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”

His famous Theory of Relativity stated that time is not constant, but variable. The speed of time passing is relative to the person experiencing it. In fact, Einstein argued, the only physical constant in the universe is light. And it is an object's relation to another in light that dictates the speed that time passes for that object relative to the speed it passes for the other. The theory was summed up in the famous equation:

E=MC²

Or "Energy ('everything') = Mass multiplied by The Speed of Light multiplied by itself".

Why is the sky blue? Einstein validly answered this question by defining critical opalescence. He “. . .[examined] the cumulative effect of the scattering of light by individual molecules in the atmosphere.”

In November 1915, Einstein replaced Newton’s Law of Gravity with his theory of gravity (General Relativity). The theory explained how gravity affects time and space and how gravity, rather than the light’s mass, deflects light. Gravity curves the space in which the light travels. In all, Einstein believed space was curved. Many scientists were not confident in Einstein’s theory because of its lack of physical observation and evidence. However, it was proved scientifically correct in 1919 through the observation of the sun’s gravity and the stars. Light from certain stars were deflected as they came closer to the sun.

In 1943, Einstein developed the Bose-Einstein statistics when, Satyendra Nath Bose, an Indian physicist, sent Einstein one of his papers, which described light as photons, for publication help. However, Einstein applied Bose’s theory to atoms and published an article of his own. The statistics explained bosons, indistinguishable particles.

With the help of Leó Szilárd, Einstein created what is now commonly referred to as the Einstein Refrigerator in 1926. The refrigerator utilized ammonia, butane, and water to keep things cool. It became very popular because of its portability, reliability, and silent refrigeration. Currently, the Einstein Refrigerator is mostly used for camping. Einstein’s discoveries and inventions shaped and changed the scientific world into what it is today.

Speed of Light

The speed of light, both as a constant and as the maximum speed for any particle, is largely credited to Einstein's work. However, Einstein did not specifically measure the speed of light without using a reflective surface. Many anomalous behaviors, such as quantum entanglement, defy the notion that light speed is a constant or is the upper speed limit for the cosmos

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That light requires the same time to traverse the path A > M as for the path B > M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity (Einstein 1961, p. 23) [emphasis is in the original].

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Einstein simply "chose" the constant speed of light to simplify his mathematics. This doesn't mean the speed of light is actually constant, only that is it mathematically constant in the equations at hand.

The equation for speed: S=d/t (speed = distance/time) requires time as one of the variables. As noted elsewhere on this page, Einstein attempted to prove time is relative. Clearly if a variable in "speed" is relative, the "speed" itself is relative and cannot be constant. If we declare time to be constant (and deny Einstein) we will have a constant speed of light. Either choice denies Einstein.

Nobody has ever measured the "one way speed" of light. It always requires a round-trip. Light does not however, simply "reflect" from a surface. The photons are absorbed and re-emitted . Depending on the reflective surface, light loses power. If the speed of the photon was faster than the atom's ability to absorb-and-re-transmit, it may be that the point of reflection incidentally downgrades the speed. Moreover, instruments used to measure the speed of light also have a propagation delay built on the speed of light, so this may introduce problems as well.

The question at hand is the "synchrony convention". If we choose Einstein's synchrony convention, with the speed of light as constant, we will find the speed of light itself declaring vast ages for the cosmos. The selection of a convention however, is akin to selecting English or Metric. Choosing another convention does not change the nature of light.

For example, the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention holds that light behaves in one manner coming from the cosmos and another manner closer to human observers. Light therefore arrives to earth more quickly than what is measured locally. Clearly this convention aligns with the first chapter of Genesis, where God placed stars in the heavens for immediate use (as a clock) by humankind. The first humans didn't have to wait 4 years for the first light from Alpha or Proxima Centauri. Is there precedent in Einstein's work to support this? The equation E=mc2 presumes energy and matter are interchangeable but makes no assertion about "pure" energy, that is, energy with no mass. If we accept Einstein, particles with mass traveling at the speed of light experience zero-duration in their travel. That is, photons depart and arrive simultaneously at vast distances across the cosmos. This aligns with quantum entanglement where particles respond to each other across vast distances. A chief objection to this notion is "photons have rest mass" which is simply a rescue device for the Einstein Synchrony Convention. No such rescue device is required. The one who chooses the convention must live within the constraints of the convention and does not regard other conventions.

In black hole theory, the light of a black hole cannot escape because gravity is too high and not even light can reach escape velocity. Gravity however, can only operate on bodies with mass, clearly assenting that the escaping photons have mass. In addition, the black hole allows gravity to escape but not light, meaning gravity is faster than the speed of light

The Sun's light ostensibly requires 8 minutes to arrive on earth. If the Sun were to blink-out right now, we would not know it for 8 minutes. But if the Sun's mass disappeared, would Earth start to drift 8 minutes later, or right away? This is not theoretical, since the Sun moves in the rotating arm of the Milky Way, itself zooming through space. The question at hand: Is the earth revolving around the Sun where it actually is, or is it revolving around a point in space where the Sun was 8 minutes ago? If the latter, we should see generous orbital decay and inevitable drift into open space. That we don't see these things, strongly suggests gravity is faster than the speed of light, or another force (not gravity) is in play.

Cosmological Principle

Einstein proposed no matter where a person is standing in the entire cosmos, the surrounding starscape would look similar from every angle.

This principle was effectively refuted upon the discovery of a supercluster of quasars .

Quasars themselves are considered players in the notion of long-ages for the cosmos because of their apparent high red shift. Recent discoveries have cast significant doubt on this (the Hubble Law) as scientists continue to find high-red-shift quasars in near space. If red shift is intrinsic to the body and not indicative of distance, the whole notion of red shift for distance is in question.

Motion and Relativity

Einstein proposed a simple assertion: If I am standing on a platform with a train approaching, I may consider myself at rest and the train approaching me in motion. Likewise if I am sitting in the train, I may consider myself at rest and the platform is approaching me in motion. Einstein declared both concepts interchangeable.

But this ran afoul with the Twins Paradox where one twin age 25 travels at a relativistic speed in a spaceship while the second remains stationary at home. When the first twin returns, he is still 25 but his brother is 95. This time dilation was dramatically demonstrated in the movie Interstellar using a black hole to dilate time. However, according to Einstein's very simple assertion about motion, the twin in the spaceship may "regard" himself as standing still while the twin on earth moves away at a relativistic speed. In this case, the twin in the spaceship should age faster. The various resolutions of the paradox explain the spaceship in terms of two frames, one departing and one leaving. This explanation denies Einstein, who claimed it would work either way based on motion alone, and the point of view of the observers, no special "extra" frame required.

In other words, the paradox isn't whether one of the twins ages through time dilation. The paradox is that depending which of the twins regards himself stationary, and which of the twins regards himself in motion, the other twin will experience the accelerated aging. All based on how the twins "regard" their position and motion, and that of the other, not whether the spaceship turns around or not. In fact, focusing on the spaceship alone ignores Einstein's assertion that both points of view are equivalent. The spaceship can be regarded as standing still while the Earth moves away. Does then the Earth have a first frame (moving away) and a second frame (coming back)? Of course it does, so splitting the problem into a departing and returning frame does not resolve the paradox.

Awards

Einstein's first official portrait taken after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1921.

Einstein won numerous awards throughout his lifetime for his discoveries that changed the course of science. On November 12, 1919, the University of Rostock gave Albert and Max Planck the honorary doctorate. Although the Rostock doctorate was the first and only one he received in Germany, he received many other honorary doctorates in several colleges and universities around the world:

• Princeton University on May 9, 1921.
  
• University of Madrid on March 8, 1923.
  
• The Department of Mathematics nominated Einstein for the honorary doctorate in Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), his former school. He received the doctorate on November 7, 1930
  
• Oxford University gave him the honorary doctorate of science on May 23, 1931.
  
• Yeshiva College in New York on October 8, 1934.
  
• Harvard University, one of the most important ivy league schools in the United States, gave Einstein an honorary doctorate on June 20, 1935.
  

Besides receiving many honorary doctorates, Einstein also received medals:

• He received the Genootschaps Medal on December 13,1923 from a Dutch society called Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde, which supports medicinal and scientific productivity.
  
• Sir Charles Sherrington from the Royal Society of London gave Einstein the Copley Medal on November 30, 1925.
  
• Weeks after the Copley Medal, Einstein received the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society on February 12, 1926.
  
• On June 28, 1929, Einstein received the Max-Planck Medal from the German Physical Society. Max Planck personally presented the medal to Einstein in the ceremony.
  
• The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia gave Einstein the Franklin Medal on May 15, 1935 for his works on the theory of relativity and photoelectric effects especially.
  

Albert Einstein’s most significant award and honor was the Nobel Prize in 1921. He was given the award for his contributions to the field of physics. Ironically, this was for his work with the photoelectric effect, not relativity. Einstein's assertions on relativity had enough questions unanswered then (as now) that science at large would not honor the theory this way. The primary problem is the nature of matter, energy and gravity, none of which has a definition as to "what it is". Their behavior can be measured and observed, but nobody has an answer for "what is energy?", "what is matter?", "what is gravity?" and until these are resolved, relativity has to wait. The Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, however, stated that Nobel laureates do not receive their prize money until they physically hold the award. Einstein officially received the award on December 10, 1922 and recited his speech on July 11, 1923 in the Jubilee Hall. Thousands of people, including the king of Goeteborg, listened to his speech. Einstein shared his prize money, which consisted of 180, 000 Swiss Francs, with his family.

Faith

Philosophically Einstein made it clear that, while he could not eliminate the possibility of a cosmic creator (a.k.a. God), he was skeptical of such a concept and he was completely averse to the notion of a personal God (e.g. one who answers prayers, performs miracles, etc).

Quotes

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That light requires the same time to traverse the path A > M as for the path B > M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity (Einstein 1961, p. 23) [emphasis is in the original]

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How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. [1]

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Even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind... a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. [2]

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What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life. [3]

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Additional Quotes

A cartooned version of Albert Einstein saying one of his famous quotes, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

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The true sign of intelligene is not knowledge but imagination.

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Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

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Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

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When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

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Video

A deeper look into Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity

See Also

• General Relativity
• Special Relativity