Hans Albert Einstein (1904-1973) was a Swiss-born engineering pioneer being the son of well-known physicist Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric. Despite having a fairly normal life, his engineering studies, which he carried out inspired by his brother Eduard, led him to achieve great advances in that field and great achievements.
His interest focused on hydrodynamics and his thesis was based on the transport of sediments in a water flow. Thanks to his studies, discoveries and career, the American Society of Civil Engineers instituted an award with his name.
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Beginning in 1988, the Hans Albert Einstein Award began to be awarded to the most renowned engineers, honoring Einstein's outstanding achievements in the center of erosion, sedimentation and the development of aqueducts.
Childhood and early years
Hans Albert Einstein was born in Switzerland, to a German father but with Jewish origins, and a Serbian mother. His father worked in a patent office, but just a year after his birth he presented his famous Theory of Relativity. His mother abandoned her studies in physics and mathematics when she married.
He had a sister, Lieserl, who was born before his parents married and who passed away a few months after his birth. Therefore, Hans is considered the older brother. He also had a brother, Eduard, who was born six years after him. At that time they were in Germany, because due to the strong influence of the Nazi regime they had to flee from Switzerland.
They settled in Berlin, but when their parents divorced in 1919, their mother, Mileva, took her two children back to Switzerland. The two brothers were never able to forgive their father, as they learned that only a few months after the divorce she married another woman, which they interpreted as a betrayal.
Eduard, his brother, was hospitalized several times for schizophrenic outbreaks, which cut short his medical career. This disease marked his entire life and he died at the age of 55 from a stroke in the same clinic where he lived most of the time.
His studies
Despite how hard it was for him to accept his parents' divorce, Hans always stood out as a wonderful student. The comings and goings of his father, who did not want to lose contact with his children, rather than cheer him up, saddened him, since the love and admiration left when the marriage broke up.
However, this anger was channeled by putting all his energy into studies, which he passed with the best grades. She began studying engineering at the Swiss Technical College in Zurich, finishing her studies in 1926. After graduation she began to work in the area of design of steel used for construction in Dortmund, Germany.
Personal life
In 1927 he married Frieda Knecht and they had four children. The first, Bernard Caesar Einstein, followed in his grandfather's footsteps and was a physicist, although he did not achieve any recognized great achievement.
His second son, Klaus Martin, passed away at the age of six due to diphtheria. David was born in 1939, but died only a month later. With the death of two children behind them, they decided to adopt Evelyn in 1941.
In 1958 Frieda passed away and Hans remarried Elizabeth Roboz, a biochemist and neuroscientist who was making great strides in recognizing the causes of multiple sclerosis. She was known to recognize and purify myelin basic protein. With her he had no children.
Your career path
After his marriage and being a father, it seems that Hans was able to forgive his father and have a better relationship with him. In 1937, he decided to go to the United States, perhaps motivated by his father, who was already living there with his second wife, in order to find a job and a house for himself and his family.
A year later, the whole family moved out and Hans began working as a research engineer at the Experimental Farming Station in South Carolina. Later, he did the same job at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, until 1947, the year he moved with his family to Berkeley.
There, he worked as a professor of hydraulics at the University of California, until his retirement in 1971. It was this work that brought him the international fame for which he was known.
His studies
In 1950 his study on sediment carry-over is recognized as one of the most complete in this field. In it he presented a method that allowed to recognize a critical force as a characteristic of the flow that drove the sediments, and allowed to recognize the probabilities of movement or deposit of the sediment particles.
He took into account that in order to assess sediment transport, one had to be aware of both the materials that would rise from the bottom and those that would move in the layer of the bottom.
Thus, by means of graphs and tables, he made it easy to calculate the probabilities that a particle was or was not removed and washed away with the rest of the sediments. This theory is applied to non-cohesive materials and having measurements between 1 and 10 mm.
The expectation that his study created, The bad-load function for sedimentary transported in open channel flows, led him to obtain the Guggenheim Fellowship, which was awarded to professionals who were making great advances in all fields, and which is only available in United States, Canada and Latin America.
Although he did not want to follow in his father's footsteps, in his study he made clear his gift for physics and mathematics, as well as his intelligence and his superior mind, like that of his father. His theory is present in all universities in the world for students of hydraulic engineering.
There is no doubt that the great physicist Albert Einstein left a great legacy of intelligence to his children that have benefited the world.
Death
Hans Albert Einstein passed away at the age of 69 due to heart failure on July 26, 1973, and his remains rest in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
References
- Ettema R, Mutel CF. Hans Albert Einstein: Innovation and Compromise in Formulating Sediment Transport by Rivers. J Hydraul Eng. 2004.
- Albert Einstein to His Son Hans Albert. Phys Today. 2007.
- Wikipedia contributors. (2019, February 2). Hans Albert Einstein. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:32, March 6, 2019.
- Einstein HA. Bed-load transportation in Mountain Creek. Clemson, SC, Greenv sediment load Lab. 1944.
- Hendricks DW. Hans Albert Einstein - his life as a pioneering engineer. J Hydraul Res. 2016.