ALBERT EINSTEIN: BIOGRAPHY AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE - ARTE - 2024

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) was a theoretical physicist of German origin and one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He developed the theory of relativity, which has been one of the most important foundations for the development of modern physics. In 1921 he won a Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect. Einstein's contribution to science, and in particular to physics, made him one of the most recognized men of his time.

The most popular work Einstein did was that of the equivalence between energy and mass: E = mc ², one of the most recognized equations in the world. He came to this formula in 1905, when he was living in Bern. Later, in 1917, Einstein investigated the properties of light, in these studies he found the bases of his law of the photoelectric effect. He then applied his general theory to the model of the structure of the entire universe.

By Underwood and Underwood, New York, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1896 he renounced his German nationality and several years later applied for Swiss nationality, which he obtained in 1901. Meanwhile, Einstein studied at the Federal Polytechnic School, from which he obtained his diploma in 1900.

From 1912 he began to work as a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich and held that position for approximately two years. So, he was selected for the Prussian Academy of Sciences and moved to Berlin.

Relativity, Walk of Ideas Berlin. By Lienhard Schulz, via Wikimedia Commons

When Adolf Hitler arrived at the German Chancellery, Albert Einstein was in the United States of America; That is why he decided not to return to his country, since the anti-Semitism professed by the Nazi regime was a danger to his integrity.

In 1940 he obtained American citizenship. A short time later, when the United States entered the armed conflict of World War II was imminent, Einstein contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to inform him that Germany could be developing highly destructive weapons.

That information was the trigger for the Manhattan Project to start. However, Einstein never thought that nuclear energy should be used for war, even together with Bertrand Russell he developed the manifesto in which he talked about the dangers of it.

From the time he settled in the United States of America and until his final days, Albert Einstein worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

He is one of the most famous scientists in history and his name is known to most of the western population to this day.

Biography

Early years

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, a city that belonged to the Wüttemberg kingdom of the then German Empire. He was of Jewish descent, his father's name was Hermann Einstein, he was dedicated to business and engineering. His mother was Pauline Koch.

Albert Einstein at age three, via Wikimedia Commons

A year after Albert Einstein was born, his father had the opportunity to found a company in Munich that was responsible for manufacturing electronic devices that operated on direct current.

He had a sister named Maria, who was two years younger than him. Einstein's parents were not religious practitioners, so his upbringing at home had no influence on his early religious devotion.

Little by little he separated himself from his dogmatic beliefs when he realized that what he read in science books was explicitly contradicting what he had learned from religious scriptures.

Einstein and his sister in 1886, via Wikimedia Commons

When he learned about geometry, he was fascinated by science. His interest was fueled by his conversations with Max Talmud, who served as a kind of tutor for young Albert, since he was talking to him about mathematics and philosophy.

Due to financial problems Hermann, Albert's father, had to move to Italy with the rest of the family since he found work there. However, he left the boy in Munich to finish his studies.

Youth

Albert Einstein was reunited with his family in Pavia, to the surprise of his parents. He got a permit signed by a doctor and traveled to meet them again since he was not satisfied with the school, nor with its educational method.

Contrary to popular belief, Einstein was brilliant in mathematics and physics from a very young age, even reaching a level far superior to that of boys his age.

In 1895 he decided to apply to the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich, he could not enter it, but his grades in physics and mathematics were so good that he was recommended to complete his secondary studies in Arau, Switzerland.

Albert Einstein at 16, by Gottfried Wolfsgruber (1859 -), via Wikimedia Commons

The following year he passed the exam with which he would obtain the high school certificate. Later, Einstein decided to enroll in a four-year degree at the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich, where he obtained a diploma as a teacher of mathematics and physics.

Among his classmates he met a young woman named Mileva Marić, who was the only woman in the room. That girl later became Einstein's girlfriend.

During that time they spent a lot of time together discussing physics, so rumors arose as to whether Einstein's early work was a collaboration with Marić, but that theory has never been supported by evidence.

Marriage

In letters that were discovered after Einstein's death it was learned that he and Marić had a daughter in 1902. However, it is not known what happened to the girl. He was born while the mother was at her parents' home in Novi Sad.

In January 1903, Marić and Einstein married and their son Hans Albert Einstein was born the following year in Bern, Switzerland. Six years later they had Eduard, who was born in Zurich. In 1914 they moved to Berlin.

Mileva Marić and Albert Einstein, via Wikimedia Commons

The couple separated when Marić learned that Einstein was in love with his second cousin, Elsa. The formal divorce was obtained on February 14, 1919, but they had been separated for some time.

Their youngest son was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early 20s and was in Marić's care and eventually in special care centers. When his mother died, the boy had to stay in an asylum.

The same year that he divorced, he remarried Elsa Löwenthal, but they had been together since 1912. Albert Einstein and Elsa were cousins ​​on their father and mother's side.

Patent office

A year after graduating, in 1901 Albert Einstein obtained Swiss citizenship, but medical problems prevented him from doing military service to the nation.

He had tried to get a teaching position, but was unsuccessful in any of the places he applied to. Instead he went to work at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, where patents were issued in the city of Bern.

His job was to examine the applications that inventors were entering. At that time Einstein became an expert in the mechanics of these artifacts. It especially had to do with the transmission of electrical signals and electro-mechanical timing.

Einstein c. 1903 (right). by Emil Vollenweider und Sohn (Bern) (b. 18.03.1849 Aeugst ZH; d. 12.05.1921 Berne BE), via Wikimedia Commons

In 1902 Albert's father, Hermann Einstein, passed away. That was a hard blow in the life of the scientist, who always regretted that his father had died while he had not yet achieved success in his profession.

At this time, a small group began to discuss science and philosophy together with other intellectuals. At the same time, he continued to work on personal investigations whose questions were fed by what he saw applied in his work.

Scientific beginnings

In 1900 his first work was published in a specialized magazine known as Annalen der Physik, this work dealt with the phenomenon of capillarity. However, he later realized that what he had proposed was wrong and claimed that it was useless.

Years later, Albert Einstein completed his thesis, which he titled A new determination of the molecular dimension. In this way he obtained a doctorate at the University of Zurich in 1905, his advisor was Alfred Kleiner.

That was the beginning of the miraculous year for the theoretical physicist, since he published other studies that opened the door to the most important scientific circles. At the time, Einstein was 26 years old.

Einstein c. 1905. By Lucien Chavan (1868 - 1942), a friend of Einstein's when he was living in Berne;, via Wikimedia Commons

Among the contributions made by Einstein in 1905 were his works on the photoelectric effect, special relativity and the equivalence between energy and mass.

Although others had addressed the subject of special relativity, what was novel about Einstein's work was to recognize it as a universal law of nature. The theory proposed by Einstein was confirmed by one of the greatest scientists of the time, Max Planck.

It was from then on that Albert Einstein's career in science had a major boost.

Career in Europe

After gaining popularity, Einstein began receiving invitations to work at various European educational institutions. In 1908 Albert Einstein began to work at the University of Bern, where he spent a year.

He then went to the University of Zurich, as associate professor of theoretical physics in 1909. From there he went to Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1911. He then accepted Austrian citizenship in order to work as a university professor.

That time was prolific for the work of Einstein, who wrote more than a dozen studies on different subjects. The following year she returned to Zurich, where she spent two years working at her alma mater, the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich.

In 1913 Albert Einstein became part of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Additionally, he held the post of director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, which was still in the works and was realized in 1917.

From 1914 he joined the faculty of the University of Berlin, a city that became his residence since then. Two years later Einstein became president of the German Physical Society.

Einstein in Berlin during 1920., via Wikimedia Commons

In 1921 Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. The recognition was received for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. From there he received membership in different scientific societies throughout Europe.

First trips

Albert Einstein first set foot on American soil in 1921. That year he participated in activities organized by the universities of Columbia and Princeton. In addition, he visited the White House along with representatives from the National Academy of Science.

Being in the United States, Einstein was very pleased. He thought of his people that they were people of good treatment, that they faced life with enthusiasm and that they were not envious. It seems that this impression differed from what he had thought before meeting the Americans.

Albert and Elsa in New York, 1921. Harris & Ewing Collection, via Wikimedia Commons

After his stay in America, Einstein returned to the Old Continent, and made a stop in Great Britain, where he was received by Richard Haldane. There he met other men of science and appeared before King's College, London.

A year later, in 1922, Einstein continued a six-month tour of Asia and Palestine. In Japan he gave lectures and met the emperors in the Imperial Palace, before the gaze of thousands of people who gathered to witness the meeting.

In 1923 he was in Spain and there he was awarded a diploma in which King Alfonso XIII appointed him a member of the Academy of Spanish Sciences.

The fury that Einstein's visits around the world aroused was impressive. In addition, he was received almost as an official diplomatic visit rather than a scientist, he was treated with honors and he was recognized both for his scientific contributions and for his support of peaceful causes.

U.S

By the early 1930s Albert Einstein had already become a science superstar. He was recognized both by those who had some connection with the matter and by those who did not.

In December 1930 he again visited the United States of America to carry out work at the California Institute of Technology. Upon arriving on American soil, he was showered with invitations to attend social events and interviews throughout the country.

He met with the editors of the New York Times and went to the Metropolitan Opera in the Big Apple. He then received the keys to the city from Mayor Jimmy Walker and met with science personalities in the city.

Einstein and Charles Chaplin during 1931. By Publisher: Photoplay Publishing, via Wikimedia Commons

Then he arrived at what was his original destination, California. There she made friends with relevant figures in science, such as Robert Millikan. In equal measure, he met prominent artists such as Charles Chaplin with whom he got on very well.

Exile

In 1933, as the Nazi regime grew stronger in Germany, Albert Einstein was visiting the United States of America. The scientist did not see fit to return to Germany.

Jews were persecuted by the government of Adolf Hitler. Many of Einstein's colleagues who professed Judaism or came from Jewish families were removed from their university positions.

The texts written by Einstein were included in the book burnings organized by the Nazi party. In addition, a photo of Albert Einstein was published in a German political magazine with a message stating "He has not yet been hanged", as well as a reward on his head.

During 1933, Einstein was in Belgium for a time. From there he went to England where he met Winston Churchill, Austen Chamberlain and Lloyd George. He requested that the German Jewish scientists be rescued from Nazism and located in England.

Churchill responded positively and welcomed Einstein's suggestion. The politician later said that thanks to that the technological quality of the Allies increased and that of Germany was in decline.

Einstein in 1933. By Acme, via Wikimedia Commons

Einstein also did the same with other heads of state, such as the prime minister of Turkey, thanks to these efforts approximately 1,000 lives of Jews were saved.

At the end of 1933 Albert Einstein accepted the proposal of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and remained linked to said institution for more than two decades, until his death.

Manhattan Project

In 1939, Leó Szilárd wanted to warn the United States government about the possibility that German scientists were working on creating a nuclear bomb. However, it was not paid attention at first, so he decided to go to Einstein.

The two scientists then decided to write a letter addressed to the president of the nation, Franklin D. Roosevelt, about the danger to humanity that the fact that only Hitler had this technology could represent.

Many believe that it was because of Einstein's involvement in the nuclear weapons reporting process that the United States began to take that research seriously and the Manhattan Project began in 1942.

Although Einstein regretted having recommended the creation of nuclear weapons, he was comforted by the fact that they had not reached the Nazis first while the rest of the world was unprotected.

Last years

In 1940 Albert Einstein received his American citizenship. His vision about the benefits of American society on issues such as meritocracy always accompanied him. However, he tried to fight racism, which he considered one of the great evils of the country.

He was part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in which the rights of African Americans were promoted. He was also awarded an honorary degree by the University of Lincoln in Pennsylvania.

Photograph by Oren Jack Turner, Princeton, NJ, via Wikimedia Commons

During his last years Einstein was a bit isolated, mainly because he devoted most of his time to two investigations that were not popular at the time and which he could not complete.

The first was to try to prove that Bohr's quantum theory was wrong, through various tests. While the second were his attempts to discover a unified field theory.

Death

Albert Einstein passed away on April 17, 1955, at age 76, in Princeton, New Jersey. The scientist suffered from an internal effusion caused by an aneurysm in the abdominal aorta. Einstein had previously been treated to try to prevent that from happening.

On the second occasion, the physicist refused to enter the operating room again, claiming that his contribution to the world had already been made and that his time had come, since he did not want to maintain an artificial life.

He spent his last moments trying to finish a speech he was supposed to give on the seventh anniversary of the State of Israel. However, he passed away before he could finish that last task.

Albert Einstein's brain was removed and preserved, without permission from the scientist's relatives, in the hope that in the future it could be studied to discover what made it so brilliant. His remains were cremated and the family disposed of them in an undisclosed location.

Among the studies that have been done on Einstein's brain is one that states that glial cells, from which neurons are supplied with food, were of superior quality in the left hemisphere.

The lower parietal lobe in Einstein's case was also found to be 15% wider than average. That area is linked to mathematical reasoning.

Scientific contributions

Albert Einstein's work was not only prolific, it was also invaluable for physics. It is considered that he was very advanced in relation to his contemporaries, so that several of his contributions were not considered immediately.

Other jobs guaranteed him a place in world history, as well as fame and prestige during his lifetime. Einstein won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Also the equation of the equivalence between energy and mass (E = mc ²) has transcended among the works of this scientist originally from Germany, but whose contribution was global.

His contribution led to the creation of the modern cosmological model. Thanks to their contributions, it has been theorized about phenomena that have currently been confirmed by science, such as the expansion of the universe, the existence of black holes or the curvature of space in the presence of mass.

He published a large amount of material, including books and scientific articles. In addition, Einstein also created hundreds of texts on other topics that were not directly related to his work.

The photoelectric effect

In 1905, Albert Einstein carried out a work in which he proposed a mathematical model that explained the emission of electrons from some materials when light falls on them. To make this statement, he postulated the existence of "quanta" of light, which are currently called photons.

In his article entitled "A heuristic point of view on the production and transformation of light," he explained that the quanta or particles of light energy generated a shedding of electrons from the atoms of a material.

Hacker's World, via Wikimedia Commons

Furthermore, his theory showed that this detachment did not depend on the light intensity, but on the frequency of the incident light wave. It also showed that there was a material-dependent minimum frequency below which detachment no longer appeared.

Robert Andrews Millikan, experimentally demonstrated this postulate of Einstein in 1915. Thanks to that, the corpuscular theory of light gained relevance and, it can be said that it prompted the birth of quantum mechanics.

This work was the main reason why Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, in addition to his other contributions, which at that time were not as relevant as that of the photoelectric effect.

Theory of special relativity

Thanks to the Michelson and Morley experiment, it was shown that light can propagate in a vacuum. One of the consequences of this is that by not depending on movement, the speed of light is constant for all observers.

Albert Einstein formulated a theory with which he stated that certain laws of classical physics can vary according to the frame of reference. In other words, for example, there is no absolute simultaneity relationship between events.

It also theoretically confirmed the results of the Michelson and Morley experiment. In the same way, he introduced the idea of ​​the deformation of time and space, which until then were considered something immutable.

Einstein was criticized for not citing other authors in his work, such as Poincaré or Hendrik Lorentz. However, Einstein's approach to the problem differed from what had been previously stated.

In addition, the explanation that Einstein managed to reach was characterized by being founded on fundamental principles of physical laws, which made it go beyond the description of a fact.

Equation of equivalence between mass and energy

Using consequences of the special theory of relativity, Einstein related in 1905, the amount of mass of a body with an "energy at rest", which was not a mechanical energy as traditionally used.

The equation resulting from this work, E = mc ², is one of the most recognized today and some believe it may be the most famous in history. E represents the energy of a body, while m denotes the mass and c the speed of light.

Street art in San Luis de Rosario street, Argentina. By César Pérez, via Wikimedia Commons

This work showed, for example, that the amount of energy emitted by a radioactive material is equal to the difference in masses between the original material, the emitted particles and the resulting material, multiplied by the speed of light squared.

That was one of the bases for the development of nuclear energy, which began to be exploited in the United States of America with the Manhattan Project, which began in 1942, during World War II.

Einstein had signed a letter, together with Leó Szilárd, in which he warned the then president of the United States of America about the possibility that nuclear weapons were being developed by the Germans.

Theory of general relativity

In 1915, Albert Einstein unveiled his theory that there was independence from the frame of reference. That is to say, it was general since it could be applied to static observers, in uniform movement or in accelerated movement.

As a consequence of general relativity, time and space are closely linked and cannot be separated. What gives rise to the concept of space-time. Consisting of three spatial dimensions, which are: length, height, and width, along with time.

With the theory of general relativity, he presented an alternative to what Isaac Newton proposed in the law of gravity. Because it showed that gravity was a consequence of the deformation of space-time due to the presence of mass.

Spacetime lattice analogy By Mysid, via Wikimedia Commons

Universe in motion

Thanks to this approach, it was predicted that the universe was not static as previously thought, but that it should be dynamic, so it was in contraction or expansion. At the time he presented the theory there was no evidence of this phenomenon.

By this movement it was assumed that the universe had an initial state, that is, a beginning. Einstein himself did not believe that the universe was dynamic; However, Edwin Hubble in 1929 published empirical evidence for this fact.

Modern calculations indicate that the age of the universe is close to 14.5 billion years.

Gravitational waves

In 1916 Einstein predicted, based on his theory of general relativity, the existence of gravitational waves. They are produced by the movement of large masses at high speeds in space time. These waves propagate in space-time and carry gravitational energy.

The existence of gravitational waves was confirmed 100 years later, in 2016, by the Gravitational Wave Laser Interferometry Observatory (LIGO), having detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes.

Unified field theory

In his later years, Einstein devoted himself to researching what he called unified field theory. With which he sought to relate electromagnetic fields with gravitational fields.

However, his efforts to clarify the idea of ​​the unified field were unsuccessful. So far, research in this matter continues, with string theory and M theory.

Themes of interest

Albert Einstein quotes.

References

1. Kaku, M. (2019). Albert Einstein - Biography, Education, Discoveries, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: britannica.com.
2. En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Albert Einstein. Available at: en.wikipedia.org.
3. Isaacson, W. (2008). Einstein. Detroit: Gale Cengage.
4. Calaprice, A. and Lipscombe, T. (2005). Albert Einstein. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
5. NobelPrize.org. (2019). Albert Einstein - Biographical The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921. Available at: nobelprize.org.