Albert Einstein
According to the magnificent and rich (for those that have a high opinion of Albert Einstein and are unterested by his life and works)
WEB site : http://www. groups. dcs.st-and. ac.uk/ (Article by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson) from the School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
Born : 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany.
Died : 18 April 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
«Around 1886 Albert Einstein began his school career in Munich. As well as his violin lessons, which he had age six to age thirteen, he also had religious education at home where he was taught Judaism. Two years later he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium and after this his religious education was given at school. He studied mathematics, il particular the calculus, beginning around 1891.»
«In 1894 Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich. In 1895 Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrician engineer at the Eidgenóssische Technischule in Zurich. Einstein renounced German citizenship in 1896 and was to be stateless for a number of years. He did not even apply for Swiss citizenship until 1899, citizenship being granted in 1901.»
«Following the failing of the entrance exam to the ETH, Einstein attended secondary school at Aarau planning to use this route to enter the ETH in Zurich. While at Aarau he wrote an essay (for which was only given a little above half marks !) in which he wrote for his planes : " If I were to have the good fortune to pass my examinations, I would go to Zurich. I would stay there for four years in order to study mathematics and physics. I imagine myself becoming a teatcher in those branches of the natural siences, choosing the theoretical part of them. Here are the reasons which lead me this plan. Above all, it is my disposition for abstract and mathematical thought, and my lack of imagination and practical ability".»
«Indeed Einstein succeded with his plan graduating in 1900 as a teatcher of mathematics and physics. One of this friends at ETH was Marcel Grossmann who was in the same class as Einstein... He did manage to avoid Swiss military service on the grounds that he had flat feet and varicose veins. By mid 1901 he has a temporary job as a teatcher, teaching mathematics at the Technical High School in Winterthur...Another temporary position teaching in a private school in Schaffhausen followed. Then Grossmann's father tried to help Einstein get a job by recommending him to the director of the patent office in Bern. Einstein was appointed as a technical expert third class»
«Einstein worked in this patent office from 1902 to 1909, holding a temporary post when he was first appointed, but by 1904 the position was made permanent and in 1906 he was promoted to technical expert second class. While in the Bern patent office he completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time without the benefit of close contact with scientific literature and colleagues.»
«Einstein earned a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 fot a thesis On a new determination of molecular dimensions. He dedicated the thesis to Grossmann.»
«In the first of three papers, all written in 1905, Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seems to be emitted from radiating objetcs in discrete quantities. The energy of these these quanta was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This seemed to contradict classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics which assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves which could contain any small amount of energy. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe the electromagnetic radiation of light.»
«Einstein's second 1905 paper proposed what is today called the special theory of relativity. He based his new theory on a reinterpretation of the classical principle of relativity, namely that the laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fondamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remainded constant in all frames of reference, as required by Maxwell's theory.»
«Later in 1905 Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent. Einstein was not the first to propose all the components of special theory of relativity. His contribution is unifying important parts of classical mechanics and Maxwell's electrodynamics.»
«The third of Einstein papers of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics, a field that have been studied by Boltzmann and Josiah Gibbs...»
«In 1908 Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern after submitting his Habilitation thesis Consequences for the constitution of radiation following from the energy distribution law of black bodies. The following year he became professor of physics at the University of Zurich, having resigned his lectureship at Bern and his job in the patent office of Bern.»
«By 1909 Einstein was recognised as a leiding scientific thinker and in that year ... He was appointed a full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. In fact 1911 was a very significant year for Einstein since he was able to make preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would to be bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun. This would be highly significant as it would lead to the fist experimental evidence in favour of Einstein's theory.»
«About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational reseach, with the help of his matematician friend Marcel Grosmann, by expressing his work in terms of the tensor calculus of Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro. Einstein called his new work the general theory of relativity. He moved from Prague to Zurich in 1912 and take up a chair at the Eidgennòssische Technische Hoschule in Zurich.»
«Einstein returned to Germany in 1914 but did not reapply for German citizenship. What he accepted an impressive offer. It was a research position in the Prussian Academy of Sciences together a chair (but not teaching duties) at the University of Berlin. He was also offered the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin which was about to be established.»
«After a number of false starts Einstein published late in 1915 the definitive version of general theory. Just before publishing this work he lectured on general relativity at GÖttinguen ... When British eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed his predictions, Einstein was idolised by the popular press.»
«In 1920 Einstein's lectures in Berlin were disturbed by demonstrations which, although officially denied, were almost certainly anti-Jewish... Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. In fact he was not present in December 1922 to receive the prize being on a voyage to Japan. Around this time he made many international visits. He had visited Paris earlier in 1922 and during 1923 he visited Palestine. After making his last major scientific discovery on the association of waves with matter in 1924 he made in 1925, this time in South America...»
«Niels Bohr and Enstein were to carry on a debate on quantum theory which began at the Solvary conference in 1927. Planck, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Heisenberg, SchrÖdinguer and Dirac were at this conference, in addition of Einstein. Einstein had declined to give a paper at the conference and said hardly nothing presenting a very simple objection to the probability interpretation ... Then he fell back into silence...»
«By 1930 he was making international wisits again, back to the United States. A third visit to the United States in 1932 was followed the offer of a post at Princeton. The idea was that Einstein would spend seven months in Berlin, five months at Princeton. Einstein accepted and left Germany in December 1932 for the United States. The following month the Nazis came to power in Germany and Einstein was never to retun there....»
«During 1933 Einstein travelled in Europe visiting Oxford, Glasgow, Brussels and Zurich. Offers of academic posts which he had found it so hard to get in 1901, were plentiful. He received offers from Jerusalem, Leiden, Oxford, Madrid and Paris... At Princeton his work attempted to unify the laws of the physics. However he was attempting problems of great depth and he wrote " I have locked myself into quite hopeless scientific problems - the more so since, as an elderly man, I have remained estranged from the society here ... "»
«In 1940 Einstein became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain his Swiss citizenship. He made many contributions to peace during his life. In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six millions dollars, the manuscrit today being in the Library of Congress.»
«By 1949 Einstein was unwell. A spell in hospital helped him recover but he began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950. He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem...»
«One week before his death Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter to Bertrand Russel in which he agreed that his should go on a manifesto urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons. It is fitting that one his last acts was to argue, as he had done all his life, for international peace.»
«Einstein was cremated at Trenton, New Jersey at 4 pm on 18 April 1955 (the day of his death). His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed place.»
WEB site : http://www.groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/ (Article by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson) from the School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
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