albert einstein research work

Albert Einstein

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 16, 2019 | Original: October 27, 2009

The German-born physicist Albert Einstein developed the first of his groundbreaking theories while working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern. After making his name with four scientific articles published in 1905, he went on to win worldwide fame for his general theory of relativity and a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his explanation of the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect. An outspoken pacifist who was publicly identified with the Zionist movement, Einstein emigrated from Germany to the United States when the Nazis took power before World War II. He lived and worked in Princeton, New Jersey, for the remainder of his life.

Einstein’s Early Life (1879-1904)

Born on March 14, 1879, in the southern German city of Ulm, Albert Einstein grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Munich. As a child, Einstein became fascinated by music (he played the violin), mathematics and science. He dropped out of school in 1894 and moved to Switzerland, where he resumed his schooling and later gained admission to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. In 1896, he renounced his German citizenship, and remained officially stateless before becoming a Swiss citizen in 1901.

Did you know? Almost immediately after Albert Einstein learned of the atomic bomb's use in Japan, he became an advocate for nuclear disarmament. He formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and backed Manhattan Project scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer in his opposition to the hydrogen bomb.

While at Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with his fellow student Mileva Maric, but his parents opposed the match and he lacked the money to marry. The couple had an illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, born in early 1902, of whom little is known. After finding a position as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein married Maric in 1903; they would have two more children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910).

Einstein’s Miracle Year (1905)

While working at the patent office, Einstein did some of the most creative work of his life, producing no fewer than four groundbreaking articles in 1905 alone. In the first paper, he applied the quantum theory (developed by German physicist Max Planck) to light in order to explain the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect, by which a material will emit electrically charged particles when hit by light. The second article contained Einstein’s experimental proof of the existence of atoms, which he got by analyzing the phenomenon of Brownian motion, in which tiny particles were suspended in water.

In the third and most famous article, titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein confronted the apparent contradiction between two principal theories of physics: Isaac Newton’s concepts of absolute space and time and James Clerk Maxwell’s idea that the speed of light was a constant. To do this, Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity, which held that the laws of physics are the same even for objects moving in different inertial frames (i.e. at constant speeds relative to each other), and that the speed of light is a constant in all inertial frames. A fourth paper concerned the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, concepts viewed previously as completely separate. Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 (where “c” was the constant speed of light) expressed this relationship.

From Zurich to Berlin (1906-1932)

Einstein continued working at the patent office until 1909, when he finally found a full-time academic post at the University of Zurich. In 1913, he arrived at the University of Berlin, where he was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. The move coincided with the beginning of Einstein’s romantic relationship with a cousin of his, Elsa Lowenthal, whom he would eventually marry after divorcing Mileva. In 1915, Einstein published the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterwork. This theory found that gravity, as well as motion, can affect time and space. According to Einstein’s equivalence principle–which held that gravity’s pull in one direction is equivalent to an acceleration of speed in the opposite direction–if light is bent by acceleration, it must also be bent by gravity. In 1919, two expeditions sent to perform experiments during a solar eclipse found that light rays from distant stars were deflected or bent by the gravity of the sun in just the way Einstein had predicted.

The general theory of relativity was the first major theory of gravity since Newton’s, more than 250 years before, and the results made a tremendous splash worldwide, with the London Times proclaiming a “Revolution in Science” and a “New Theory of the Universe.” Einstein began touring the world, speaking in front of crowds of thousands in the United States, Britain, France and Japan. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, as his work on relativity remained controversial at the time. Einstein soon began building on his theories to form a new science of cosmology, which held that the universe was dynamic instead of static, and was capable of expanding and contracting.

Einstein Moves to the United States (1933-39)

A longtime pacifist and a Jew, Einstein became the target of hostility in Weimar Germany, where many citizens were suffering plummeting economic fortunes in the aftermath of defeat in the Great War. In December 1932, a month before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Einstein made the decision to emigrate to the United States, where he took a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . He would never again enter the country of his birth.

By the time Einstein’s wife Elsa died in 1936, he had been involved for more than a decade with his efforts to find a unified field theory, which would incorporate all the laws of the universe, and those of physics, into a single framework. In the process, Einstein became increasingly isolated from many of his colleagues, who were focused mainly on the quantum theory and its implications, rather than on relativity.

Einstein’s Later Life (1939-1955)

In the late 1930s, Einstein’s theories, including his equation E=mc2, helped form the basis of the development of the atomic bomb. In 1939, at the urging of the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to approve funding for the development of uranium before Germany could gain the upper hand. Einstein, who became a U.S. citizen in 1940 but retained his Swiss citizenship, was never asked to participate in the resulting Manhattan Project , as the U.S. government suspected his socialist and pacifist views. In 1952, Einstein declined an offer extended by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s premier, to become president of Israel .

Throughout the last years of his life, Einstein continued his quest for a unified field theory. Though he published an article on the theory in Scientific American in 1950, it remained unfinished when he died, of an aortic aneurysm, five years later. In the decades following his death, Einstein’s reputation and stature in the world of physics only grew, as physicists began to unravel the mystery of the so-called “strong force” (the missing piece of his unified field theory) and space satellites further verified the principles of his cosmology.

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Albert Einstein

One of the most influential scientists of the 20 th century, Albert Einstein was a physicist who developed the theory of relativity.

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Who Was Albert Einstein?

Quick facts, early life, family, and education, einstein’s iq, patent clerk, inventions and discoveries, nobel prize in physics, wives and children, travel diaries, becoming a u.s. citizen, einstein and the atomic bomb, time travel and quantum theory, personal life, death and final words, einstein’s brain, einstein in books and movies: "oppenheimer" and more.

Albert Einstein was a German mathematician and physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. In the following decade, he immigrated to the United States after being targeted by the German Nazi Party. His work also had a major impact on the development of atomic energy. In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory. He died in April 1955 at age 76. With his passion for inquiry, Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20 th century.

FULL NAME: Albert Einstein BORN: March 14, 1879 DIED: April 18, 1955 BIRTHPLACE: Ulm, Württemberg, Germany SPOUSES: Mileva Einstein-Maric (1903-1919) and Elsa Einstein (1919-1936) CHILDREN: Lieserl, Hans, and Eduard ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. He grew up in a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who, with his brother, founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-based company that mass-produced electrical equipment. Einstein’s mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him.

Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. However, he felt alienated there and struggled with the institution’s rigid pedagogical style. He also had what were considered speech challenges. However, he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin, which would stay with him into his later years. Most significantly, Einstein’s youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry.

Toward the end of the 1880s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Einstein. Talmud had introduced his pupil to a children’s science text that inspired Einstein to dream about the nature of light. Thus, during his teens, Einstein penned what would be seen as his first major paper, “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.”

Hermann relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after his business lost out on a major contract. Einstein was left at a relative’s boarding house in Munich to complete his schooling at the Luitpold.

Faced with military duty when he turned of age, Einstein allegedly withdrew from classes, using a doctor’s note to excuse himself and claim nervous exhaustion. With their son rejoining them in Italy, his parents understood Einstein’s perspective but were concerned about his future prospects as a school dropout and draft dodger.

Einstein was eventually able to gain admission into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, specifically due to his superb mathematics and physics scores on the entrance exam. He was still required to complete his pre-university education first and thus attended a high school in Aarau, Switzerland, helmed by Jost Winteler. Einstein lived with the schoolmaster’s family and fell in love with Winteler’s daughter Marie. Einstein later renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century.

Einstein’s intelligence quotient was estimated to be around 160, but there are no indications he was ever actually tested.

Psychologist David Wechsler didn’t release the first edition of the WAIS cognitive test, which evolved into the WAIS-IV test commonly used today, until 1955—shortly before Einstein’s death. The maximum score of the current version is 160, with an IQ of 135 or higher ranking in the 99 th percentile.

Magazine columnist Marilyn vos Savant has the highest-ever recorded IQ at 228 and was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records in the late 1980s. However, Guinness discontinued the category because of debates about testing accuracy. According to Parade , individuals believed to have higher IQs than Einstein include Leonardo Da Vinci , Marie Curie , Nikola Tesla , and Nicolaus Copernicus .

After graduating from university, Einstein faced major challenges in terms of finding academic positions, having alienated some professors over not attending class more regularly in lieu of studying independently.

Einstein eventually found steady work in 1902 after receiving a referral for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his university studies and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

In 1905—seen by many as a “miracle year” for the theorist—Einstein had four papers published in the Annalen der Physik , one of the best-known physics journals of the era. Two focused on the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. The two others, which outlined E=MC 2 and the special theory of relativity, were defining for Einstein’s career and the course of the study of physics.

As a physicist, Einstein had many discoveries, but he is perhaps best known for his theory of relativity and the equation E=MC 2 , which foreshadowed the development of atomic power and the atomic bomb.

Theory of Relativity

Einstein first proposed a special theory of relativity in 1905 in his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which took physics in an electrifying new direction. The theory explains that space and time are actually connected, and Einstein called this joint structure space-time.

By November 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which accounted for gravity’s relationship to space-time. Einstein considered this theory the culmination of his life research. He was convinced of the merits of general relativity because it allowed for a more accurate prediction of planetary orbits around the sun, which fell short in Isaac Newton ’s theory. It also offered a more expansive, nuanced explanation of how gravitational forces worked.

Einstein’s assertions were affirmed via observations and measurements by British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson and Sir Arthur Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse, and thus a global science icon was born. Today, the theories of relativity underpin the accuracy of GPS technology, among other phenomena.

Even so, Einstein did make one mistake when developing his general theory, which naturally predicted the universe is either expanding or contracting. Einstein didn’t believe this prediction initially, instead holding onto the belief that the universe was a fixed, static entity. To account for, this he factored in a “cosmological constant” to his equation. His later theories directly contracted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux. Then, astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe. Hubble and Einstein met at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1931.

Decades after Einstein’s death, in 2018, a team of scientists confirmed one aspect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity: that the light from a star passing close to a black hole would be stretched to longer wavelengths by the overwhelming gravitational field. Tracking star S2, their measurements indicated that the star’s orbital velocity increased to over 25 million kph as it neared the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, its appearance shifting from blue to red as its wavelengths stretched to escape the pull of gravity.

Einstein’s E=MC²

Einstein’s 1905 paper on the matter-energy relationship proposed the equation E=MC²: the energy of a body (E) is equal to the mass (M) of that body times the speed of light squared (C²). This equation suggested that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, a discovery that heralded atomic power.

Famed quantum theorist Max Planck backed up the assertions of Einstein, who thus became a star of the lecture circuit and academia, taking on various positions before becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (today is known as the Max Planck Institute for Physics) from 1917 to 1933.

In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, since his ideas on relativity were still considered questionable. He wasn’t actually given the award until the following year due to a bureaucratic ruling, and during his acceptance speech, he still opted to speak about relativity.

Einstein married Mileva Maric on January 6, 1903. While attending school in Zurich, Einstein met Maric, a Serbian physics student. Einstein continued to grow closer to Maric, but his parents were strongly against the relationship due to her ethnic background.

Nonetheless, Einstein continued to see her, with the two developing a correspondence via letters in which he expressed many of his scientific ideas. Einstein’s father passed away in 1902, and the couple married shortly thereafter.

Einstein and Mavic had three children. Their daughter, Lieserl, was born in 1902 before their wedding and might have been later raised by Maric’s relatives or given up for adoption. Her ultimate fate and whereabouts remain a mystery. The couple also had two sons: Hans Albert Einstein, who became a well-known hydraulic engineer, and Eduard “Tete” Einstein, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man.

The Einsteins’ marriage would not be a happy one, with the two divorcing in 1919 and Maric having an emotional breakdown in connection to the split. Einstein, as part of a settlement, agreed to give Maric any funds he might receive from possibly winning the Nobel Prize in the future.

During his marriage to Maric, Einstein had also begun an affair some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal . The couple wed in 1919, the same year of Einstein’s divorce. He would continue to see other women throughout his second marriage, which ended with Löwenthal’s death in 1936.

In his 40s, Einstein traveled extensively and journaled about his experiences. Some of his unfiltered private thoughts are shared two volumes of The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein .

The first volume , published in 2018, focuses on his five-and-a-half month trip to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain. The scientist started a sea journey to Japan in Marseille, France, in autumn of 1922, accompanied by his second wife, Elsa. They journeyed through the Suez Canal, then to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Japan. The couple returned to Germany via Palestine and Spain in March 1923.

The second volume , released in 2023, covers three months that he spent lecturing and traveling in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in 1925.

The Travel Diaries contain unflattering analyses of the people he came across, including the Chinese, Sri Lankans, and Argentinians, a surprise coming from a man known for vehemently denouncing racism in his later years. In an entry for November 1922, Einstein refers to residents of Hong Kong as “industrious, filthy, lethargic people.”

In 1933, Einstein took on a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he would spend the rest of his life.

At the time the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler , were gaining prominence with violent propaganda and vitriol in an impoverished post-World War I Germany. The Nazi Party influenced other scientists to label Einstein’s work “Jewish physics.” Jewish citizens were barred from university work and other official jobs, and Einstein himself was targeted to be killed. Meanwhile, other European scientists also left regions threatened by Germany and immigrated to the United States, with concern over Nazi strategies to create an atomic weapon.

Not long after moving and beginning his career at IAS, Einstein expressed an appreciation for American meritocracy and the opportunities people had for free thought, a stark contrast to his own experiences coming of age. In 1935, Einstein was granted permanent residency in his adopted country and became an American citizen five years later.

In America, Einstein mostly devoted himself to working on a unified field theory, an all-embracing paradigm meant to unify the varied laws of physics. However, during World War II, he worked on Navy-based weapons systems and made big monetary donations to the military by auctioning off manuscripts worth millions.

In 1939, Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb and to galvanize the United States to create its own nuclear weapons.

The United States would eventually initiate the Manhattan Project , though Einstein wouldn’t take a direct part in its implementation due to his pacifist and socialist affiliations. Einstein was also the recipient of much scrutiny and major distrust from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover . In July 1940, the U.S. Army Intelligence office denied Einstein a security clearance to participate in the project, meaning J. Robert Oppenheimer and the scientists working in Los Alamos were forbidden from consulting with him.

Einstein had no knowledge of the U.S. plan to use atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. When he heard of the first bombing at Hiroshima, he reportedly said, “Ach! The world is not ready for it.”

Einstein became a major player in efforts to curtail usage of the A-bomb. The following year, he and Szilard founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, and in 1947, via an essay for The Atlantic Monthly , Einstein espoused working with the United Nations to maintain nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conflict.

After World War II, Einstein continued to work on his unified field theory and key aspects of his general theory of relativity, including time travel, wormholes, black holes, and the origins of the universe.

However, he felt isolated in his endeavors since the majority of his colleagues had begun focusing their attention on quantum theory. In the last decade of his life, Einstein, who had always seen himself as a loner, withdrew even further from any sort of spotlight, preferring to stay close to Princeton and immerse himself in processing ideas with colleagues.

In the late 1940s, Einstein became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), seeing the parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany and Black people in the United States. He corresponded with scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois as well as performer Paul Robeson and campaigned for civil rights, calling racism a “disease” in a 1946 Lincoln University speech.

Einstein was very particular about his sleep schedule, claiming he needed 10 hours of sleep per day to function well. His theory of relativity allegedly came to him in a dream about cows being electrocuted. He was also known to take regular naps. He is said to have held objects like a spoon or pencil in his hand while falling asleep. That way, he could wake up before hitting the second stage of sleep—a hypnagogic process believed to boost creativity and capture sleep-inspired ideas.

Although sleep was important to Einstein, socks were not. He was famous for refusing to wear them. According to a letter he wrote to future wife Elsa, he stopped wearing them because he was annoyed by his big toe pushing through the material and creating a hole.

One of the most recognizable photos of the 20 th century shows Einstein sticking out his tongue while leaving his 72 nd birthday party on March 14, 1951.

According to Discovery.com , Einstein was leaving his party at Princeton when a swarm of reporters and photographers approached and asked him to smile. Tired from doing so all night, he refused and rebelliously stuck his tongue out at the crowd for a moment before turning away. UPI photographer Arthur Sasse captured the shot.

Einstein was amused by the picture and ordered several prints to give to his friends. He also signed a copy of the photo that sold for $125,000 at a 2017 auction.

Einstein died on April 18, 1955, at age 76 at the University Medical Center at Princeton. The previous day, while working on a speech to honor Israel’s seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

He was taken to the hospital for treatment but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate. “I want to go when I want,” he stated at the time. “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”

According to the BBC, Einstein muttered a few words in German at the moment of his death. However, the nurse on duty didn’t speak German so their translation was lost forever.

In a 2014 interview , Life magazine photographer Ralph Morse said the hospital was swarmed by journalists, photographers, and onlookers once word of Einstein’s death spread. Morse decided to travel to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies, offering the superintendent alcohol to gain access. He was able to photograph the office just as Einstein left it.

After an autopsy, Einstein’s corpse was moved to a Princeton funeral home later that afternoon and then taken to Trenton, New Jersey, for a cremation ceremony. Morse said he was the only photographer present for the cremation, but Life managing editor Ed Thompson decided not to publish an exclusive story at the request of Einstein’s son Hans.

During Einstein’s autopsy, pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey had removed his brain, reportedly without his family’s consent, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience.

However, during his life, Einstein participated in brain studies, and at least one biography claimed he hoped researchers would study his brain after he died. Einstein’s brain is now located at the Princeton University Medical Center. In keeping with his wishes, the rest of his body was cremated and the ashes scattered in a secret location.

In 1999, Canadian scientists who were studying Einstein’s brain found that his inferior parietal lobe, the area that processes spatial relationships, 3D-visualization, and mathematical thought, was 15 percent wider than in people who possess normal intelligence. According to The New York Times , the researchers believe it might help explain why Einstein was so intelligent.

In 2011, the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia received thin slices of Einstein’s brain from Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams, a neuropathologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and put them on display. Rorke-Adams said she received the brain slides from Harvey.

Since Einstein’s death, a veritable mountain of books have been written on the iconic thinker’s life, including Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe, both from 2007. Einstein’s own words are presented in the collection The World As I See It .

Einstein has also been portrayed on screen. Michael Emil played a character called “The Professor,” clearly based on Einstein, in the 1985 film Insignificance —in which alternate versions of Einstein, Marilyn Monroe , Joe DiMaggio , and Joseph McCarthy cross paths in a New York City hotel.

Walter Matthau portrayed Einstein in the fictional 1994 comedy I.Q. , in which he plays matchmaker for his niece played by Meg Ryan . Einstein was also a character in the obscure comedy films I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen (1970) and Young Einstein (1988).

A much more historically accurate depiction of Einstein came in 2017, when he was the subject of the first season of Genius , a 10-part scripted miniseries by National Geographic. Johnny Flynn played a younger version of the scientist, while Geoffrey Rush portrayed Einstein in his later years after he had fled Germany. Ron Howard was the director.

Tom Conti plays Einstein in the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer , directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy as scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer during his involvement with the Manhattan Project.

• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or are the others crazy?
• A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
• I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
• If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
• Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.
• [T]he distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.
• Living in this “great age,” it is hard to understand that we belong to this mad, degenerate species, which imputes free will to itself. If only there were somewhere an island for the benevolent and the prudent! Then also I would want to be an ardent patriot.
• I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] is not playing at dice.
• How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.
• I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.
• I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
• My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault and no merit of my own.
• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
• An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
• My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family.
• Everybody is a genius.

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Albert Einstein (1879–1955), one of the foremost scientists and public figures of the 20th century, revolutionized our views of time and space, matter and light, gravitation and the universe. The Einstein Papers Project is engaged in one of the most ambitious scholarly publishing ventures undertaken in the history of science. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein provides the first complete picture of Einstein's massive written legacy.

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"Here in Pasadena it is like Paradise. Always sunshine and clear air, gardens with palms and pepper trees and friendly people who smile at one and ask for autographs." - Albert Einstein ( U.S. Travel Diary, 1930-31, p. 28 )

Einstein's legacy

Although Albert Einstein was never on the faculty at Princeton, he occupied an office in the University's mathematics building in the 1930s while waiting for construction of the Institute for Advanced Study, and his ideas have inspired generations of physicists and mathematicians at Princeton and around the world. 

The year 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the most profound of Einstein's intellectual feats, general relativity , a theory that explains the relationship between gravity and matter. With this work, Einstein unleashed extraordinary new concepts such as black holes, the Big Bang, the bending of light by galaxies, and the rippling of gravitational waves through space, all consequences of the theory and the mathematical equations that describe it. 

Albert Einstein (Photo by Hermann Landshoff/ Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie, Archiv Landshoff)

Einstein's theory explains how matter, in the form of galaxies, suns, planets and other objects, creates gravitational fields in the fabric of the universe and how these gravitational fields in turn control the behavior of matter. His ideas, set forth in a series of lectures in late 1915, were almost immediately applied to describe, for example, the unconventional orbit of the planet Mercury. 

But although the theory is easy to explain in words, the underlying math, in the form of partial differential equations, is considerably more complicated. "Einstein's equations provide a tremendous number of deep problems for mathematicians," said  Sergiu Klainerman , the Eugene Higgins Professor of  Mathematics . "These are some of the most difficult equations there are, by far."

Klainerman is one of a group of Princeton mathematicians working on general relativity that includes  Igor Rodnianski , professor of mathematics;  Mihalis Dafermos , the Thomas D. Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics;  Alexandru Ionescu , professor of mathematics;  Stefanos Aretakis , assistant professor of mathematics; and several postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.

Finding new ways to understand these equations could aid in the understanding of black holes, regions of extremely dense gravity that were predicted by Einstein's equations long before they were observed in the universe. One of the outstanding problems in general relativity is to explain mathematically how a process called gravitational collapse results in a black hole. "We want to understand what it is about the present that tells us a black hole will form in the future," Rodnianski said. 

Another area of research is cosmic censorship, first posed by physicist Roger Penrose, which can be roughly translated as, "Whatever happens in a black hole stays in a black hole." In other words, mathematicians want to find proof that the intense gravity in a black hole cannot come out to wreak havoc in the universe. "It is a very comforting thought," Klainerman said, "but it is a very difficult mathematical problem, and one of our long-term objectives is to prove it or disprove it."

This article was originally published in the University's annual research magazine " Discovery: Research at Princeton ."

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The announcement Feb. 11 of the detection of gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein some 100 years ago, created a surge of excitement among physicists worldwide, including many with ties to Princeton University. Researchers hope to use the waves to learn more about black holes and other massive objects in the universe, but also to study how the universe was formed and how gravity behaves.

Princeton scientists say Einstein's theory applies beyond the solar system .

A team led by Princeton University scientists has tested Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity to see if it holds true at cosmic scales. And, after two years of analyzing astronomical data, the scientists have concluded that Einstein's theory, which describes the interplay between gravity, space and time, works as well in vast distances as in more local regions of space.

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September 1, 2015

How Einstein Changed the World

The fruits of one mind shaped civilization more than seems possible

By Brian Greene

Albert Einstein once said that there are only two things that might be infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And, he confessed, he wasn't sure about the universe.

When we hear that, we chuckle. Or at least we smile. We do not take offense. The reason is that the name “Einstein” conjures an image of a warm-hearted, avuncular sage of an earlier era. We see the good-natured, wild-haired scientific genius whose iconic portraits—riding a bike, sticking out his tongue, staring at us with those penetrating eyes—are emblazoned in our collective cultural memory. Einstein has come to symbolize the purity and power of intellectual exploration.

Einstein shot to fame within the scientific community in 1905, a year christened as his annus mirabilis. While working eight hours days, six days a week at the Swiss patent office in Bern, he wrote four papers in his spare time that changed the course of physics. In March of that year he argued that light, long described as a wave, is actually composed of particles, called photons, an observation that launched quantum mechanics. Two months later, in May, Einstein's calculations provided testable predictions of the atomic hypothesis, later confirmed experimentally, cinching the case that matter is made of atoms. In June he completed the special theory of relativity, revealing that space and time behave in astonishing ways no one had ever anticipated—in short, that distances, speeds and durations are all relative depending on the observer. And to cap it off, in September 1905 Einstein derived a consequence of special relativity, an equation that would become the world's most famous: E = mc 2 .

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Science usually progresses incrementally. Few and far between are contributions that sound the scientific alert that a radical upheaval is at hand. But here one man in one year rang the bell four times, an astonishing outpouring of creative insight. Almost immediately, the scientific establishment could sense that reverberations of Einstein's work were shifting the bedrock understanding of reality. For the wider public, however, Einstein had not yet become Einstein.

That would change on November 6, 1919.

In special relativity, Einstein established that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This set the stage for a confrontation with Newton's theory of gravity, in which gravity exerts its influence across space instantaneously. Driven by this looming contradiction, Einstein brazenly sought to rewrite the centuries-old rules of Newtonian gravity, a daunting task that even his ardent supporters considered quixotic. Max Planck, the dean of German science, intoned, “As an older friend, I must advise you against it.... You will not succeed, and even if you succeed, no one will believe you.” Never one to yield to authority, Einstein pressed on. And on. For nearly a decade.

Finally, in 1915, Einstein announced his general theory of relativity, which offered a profound recasting of gravity in terms of a startling new idea: warps and curves in space and time. Instead of Earth grabbing hold of a teacup that slips from your hand and pulling it to an untimely demise on the floor, general relativity says that the planet dents the surrounding environment, causing the cup to slide along a spacetime chute that directs it to the floor. Gravity, Einstein declared, is imprinted in the geometry of the universe.

During the 100 years since Einstein proposed the theory, physicists and historians have pieced together a coherent, if complex, story of its genesis [see “ How Einstein Reinvented Reality ,” by Walter Isaacson]. In some of my own general-level writings, I've had the pleasure of retracing Einstein's climb, from elegant maneuvers to pieds en canard to his final summit. Far from demystifying Einstein's creative leaps, however, perusing his process only adds luster to the astonishing novelty and overwhelming beauty of the proposal.

On November 6, 1919, four years after Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, newspapers the world over trumpeted just released astronomical measurements establishing that the positions of stars in the heavens were slightly different than what Newton's laws would have us expect, just as Einstein had predicted. The results triumphantly confirmed Einstein's theory and rocketed him to icon status overnight. He became the man who had toppled Newton and who, in the process, had ushered our species one giant step closer to nature's eternal truths.

To top it off, Einstein made for great copy. While squinting in the limelight and paying lip service to an ardent desire for solitude, he knew how to entice the world's interest in his mysterious but momentous dominion. He would throw out clever quips (“I am a militant pacifist”) and gleefully play the public part of the bemused genius of geniuses. At the premiere of City Lights , while the cameras on the red carpet flashed, Charlie Chaplin whispered to Einstein something along the lines of, “The people applaud me because everybody understands me, and they applaud you because no one understands you.” It was a role Einstein wore well. And the wider public, weary from World War I, embraced him wholeheartedly.

As Einstein glided through society, his ideas about relativity, at least the version broadly reported, seemed to resonate with other cultural upheavals. James Joyce and T. S. Eliot were splintering the sentence. Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp were cleaving the canvas. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky were shattering the scale. Einstein was unshackling space and time from outmoded models of reality.

Some have gone further, portraying Einstein as the central inspiration for the avant-garde movement of the 20th century, the scientific wellspring that necessitated a cultural rethink. It's romantic to believe that nature's truths set off a tidal wave that swept away the dusty vestiges of an entrenched culture. But I've never seen convincing evidence pinning these upheavals to Einstein's science. A widespread misinterpretation of relativity—that it eliminated objective truth—is responsible for many unjustified invocations of Einstein's theories in the realm of culture. Curiously, Einstein himself had conventional tastes: he preferred Bach and Mozart to modern composers and refused a gift of new Bauhaus furniture in favor of the well-worn traditional decor he already owned.

It is fair to say that many revolutionary ideas were wafting through the early 20th century, and they surely commingled. And just as surely, Einstein was a prime example of how breaking from long-held assumptions could uncover breathtaking new landscapes.

A century later the landscapes Einstein revealed remain remarkably vibrant and fertile. General relativity gave birth in the 1920s to modern cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the entire universe. Russian mathematician Aleksandr Friedmann and, independently, Belgian physicist and priest Georges Lemaître used Einstein's equations to show that space should be expanding. Einstein resisted this conclusion and even modified the equations by inserting the infamous “cosmological constant” to ensure a static universe. But subsequent observations by Edwin Hubble showing that distant galaxies are all rushing away convinced Einstein to return to his original equations and accept that space is stretching. An expanding universe today means an ever smaller universe in the past, implying that the cosmos emanated from the swelling of a primordial speck, a “primeval atom” as Lemaître called it. The big bang theory was born.

In the decades since, the big bang theory has been substantially developed (today the most widely held version is inflationary theory) and, through various refinements, has aced a spectrum of observational tests. One such observation, which received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, revealed that for the past seven billion years not only has space been expanding, but the rate of expansion has been speeding up. The best explanation? The big bang theory augmented by a version of Einstein's long-ago-discarded cosmological constant. The lesson? If you wait long enough, even some of Einstein's wrong ideas turn out to be right [see “ What Einstein Got Wrong ,” by Lawrence M. Krauss].

An even earlier insight from general relativity originated in an analysis carried out by German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild during his stint at the Russian front in the midst of World War I. Taking a break from calculating artillery trajectories, Schwarzschild derived the first exact solution of Einstein's equations, giving a precise description of the warped spacetime produced by a spherical body like the sun. As a by-product, Schwarzschild's result revealed something peculiar. Compress any object to a sufficiently small size—the sun, say, to three miles across—and the resulting spacetime warp will be so severe that anything approaching too closely, including light itself, will be trapped. In modern language, Schwarzschild had revealed the possibility of black holes.

At the time, black holes seemed far-fetched, a mathematical oddity that many expected to have no relevance to reality. But observation, not expectation, dictates what is right, and astronomical data have now established that black holes are real and plentiful. They are too far away for direct exploration at the moment, but as theoretical laboratories, black holes are indispensable. Beginning with Stephen Hawking's influential calculations in the 1970s, physicists have become increasingly convinced that the extreme nature of black holes makes them an ideal proving ground for attempts to push general relativity forward and, most notably, to meld it with quantum mechanics [see “ The Black Hole Test ,” by Dimitrios Psaltis and Sheperd S. Doeleman]. Indeed, one of today's most hotly debated issues concerns how quantum processes may affect our understanding of the outer edge of a black hole—its event horizon—as well as the nature of a black hole's interior.

Which is all just to say that the centenary of general relativity is a far cry from a backward glance of historical interest. Einstein's general relativity is tightly woven into the tapestry of today's leading-edge research.

How, then, did Einstein do it? How did he contribute so much of such lasting importance? Whereas we can dismiss Einstein as the source of Cubism or atonal music, he is why we imagine that someone can, in the privacy of his or her own mind, think hard and reveal cosmic truths. Einstein was social as a scientist, but his big breakthroughs were solitary aha! moments. Did those insights emerge because his brain had an unusual architecture? Because of a nonconformist perspective? Because of a tenacious and uncompromising ability to focus? Maybe. Yes. Probably. The reality, of course, is that no one knows. We can tell stories of why someone may have had this or that idea, but the bottom line is that thought and insight are shaped by influences too numerous to analyze.

Eschewing hyperbole, the best we can say is that Einstein had the right mind at the right moment to crack a collection of deep problems of physics. And what a moment it was. His numerous but comparatively modest contributions in the decades after the discovery of general relativity suggest that the timeliness of the particular intellectual nexus he brought to bear on physics had passed.

With all that he accomplished, and the continuing legacy he spawned, there's an urge to ask another speculative question: Could there be another Einstein? If one means another über genius who will powerfully push science forward, then the answer is surely yes. In the past half a century since Einstein's death, there have indeed been such scientists. But if one means an über genius to whom the world will look not because of accomplishments in sports or entertainment but as a thrilling example of what the human mind can accomplish, well, that question speaks to us—to what we as a civilization will deem precious.

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University who researches superstring theory. He is author of numerous books and co-founder and chairman of the board of the World Science Festival.

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Albert Einstein summary

Explore the life of albert einstein and his famous discoveries.

Albert Einstein , (born March 14, 1879, Ulm, Württemberg, Ger.—died April 18, 1955, Princeton, N.J., U.S.), German-born Swiss-U.S. scientist. Born to a Jewish family in Germany, he grew up in Munich, and in 1894 he moved to Aarau, Switz. He attended a technical school in Zürich (graduating in 1900) and during this period renounced his German citizenship; stateless for some years, he became a Swiss citizen in 1901. Einstein became a junior examiner (or clerk) at the Swiss patent office in 1902 and began producing original theoretical work that laid many of the foundations for 20th-century physics. He received his doctorate from the University of Zürich in 1905, the same year he won international fame with the publication of four articles: one on Brownian motion , which he explained in terms of molecular kinetic energy; one on the photoelectric effect , in which he demonstrated the particle nature of light; and two on his special theory of relativity , the second of which included his formulation of the equivalence of mass and energy ( E = m c 2 ). Einstein held several professorships before becoming director of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1913. In 1915 he published his general theory of relativity, which was confirmed experimentally during a solar eclipse in 1919 with observations of the deflection of light passing near the Sun. He received a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect, his work on relativity still being controversial. For decades he sought to discover the mathematical relationship between electromagnetism and gravitation , which he believed would be a first step toward discovering the common laws governing the behaviour of everything in the universe, but such a unified field theory eluded him. His theories of relativity and gravitation represented a profound advance over Newtonian physics and revolutionized scientific and philosophical inquiry. He resigned his position at the Prussian Academy when Adolf Hitler came to power and moved to Princeton, N.J., where he joined the Institute for Advanced Study. Though a longtime pacifist, he was instrumental in persuading Pres. Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 to initiate the Manhattan Project for the production of an atomic bomb, a technology his own theories greatly furthered, though he did not work on the project himself. Einstein became a U.S. citizen in 1940 but retained his Swiss citizenship. The most eminent scientist in the world in the postwar years, he declined an offer to become the first prime minister of Israel and became a strong advocate for nuclear disarmament.

Albert Einstein: His life, theories and impact on science

Where would science be without Albert Einstein?

• Early years

Career highlights

Einstein's remarkable brain, einstein's scientific legacy.

• Astronomical legacy

Additional resources

Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His work continues to help astronomers study everything from gravitational waves to Mercury 's orbit. 

The scientist's equation that helped explain special relativity – E = mc^2 – is famous even among those who don't understand its underlying physics. Einstein is also known for his theory of general relativity (an explanation of gravity ), and the photoelectric effect (which explains the behavior of electrons under certain circumstances); his work on the latter earned him a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

Einstein also tried in vain to unify all the forces of the universe in a single theory, or a theory of everything, which he was still working on at the time of his death.

Related: What is the Theory of Everything?

Einstein's early years

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, a town that today has a population of just more than 120,000. There is a small commemorative plaque where his house used to stand (it was destroyed during World War II). The family moved to Munich shortly after his birth, according to the Nobel Prize website , and later to Italy when his father faced problems with running his own business. Einstein's father, Hermann, ran an electrochemical factory and his mother Pauline took care of Albert and his younger sister, Maria.

— What is wormhole theory?

— Was Einstein wrong? Why some astrophysicists are questioning the theory of space-time

— Albert Einstein: Before and after relativity

Einstein would write in his memoirs that  two "wonders"  deeply affected his early years, according to Hans-Josef Küpper, an Albert Einstein scholar. Young Einstein 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 unseen forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he worshipped, calling it his "holy geometry book."

Contrary to popular belief, young Albert was a good student, according to an online archive . He  excelled in physics and mathematics , but was a more "moderate" pupil in other subjects, Küpper 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 subpar, and he did not pass the exam. The aspiring physicist took additional courses to close the gap in his knowledge and was admitted to the Swiss Polytechnic in 1896. In 1901 he received his diploma to teach physics and mathematics. 

However, Einstein could not find a teaching position, and began work in a Bern patent office in 1901, according to his Nobel Prize biography . It was while there that, in between analyzing patent applications, he developed his work in special relativity and other areas of physics that later 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.) Einstein divorced Maric in 1919 and soon after married Elsa Löwenthal. Löwenthal died in 1933.

Einstein's career sent him to multiple countries. He earned his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 and subsequently took on professor positions in Zurich (1909), Prague (1911) and Zurich again (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 also 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 . (In 2008, a BBC/HBO production dramatized the story in " Einstein and Eddington .") 

Einstein remained in Germany until 1933 when dictator Adolf Hitler rose to power. The physicist 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 throughout 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. 

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 into his own calculations. 

Einstein's death

Einstein died of an aortic aneurysm on April 18, 1955. A blood vessel 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; his ashes were spread in an undisclosed location, according to the AMNH. However, a doctor at Princeton Hospital, Thomas Harvey, had controversially performed an autopsy, and removed Einstein's brain and eyeballs, according to the BBC .

Harvey sliced hundreds of thin sections of brain tissue to place on microscope slides and  snapped 14 photos  of the brain from several angles. He took the brain tissue, slides and images with him when he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he was a medical supervisor in a biological testing lab.

Over the next 30 years, Harvey sent a few slides to other researchers who requested them, 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 Harvey and his colleagues published their study results in the journal Experimental Neurology .

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 at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Live Science reported .

Harvey's 1985 study authors reported that Einstein's brain had a higher number of glial cells (those 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 — in other words, Einstein's brain cells needed and used more energy, which could have been why he had such advanced 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, which is less than the average adult male brain (about 1,400 g). Also, the scientist's cerebral cortex was thinner than that of five control brains, but the density of neurons was higher.

A study published in 2012 in the journal Brain revealed that 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.

Einstein's legacy in physics is significant. Here are some of the 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 traveling. This work led to his realization that space and time are linked to what we now call space-time . So, an event seen by one observer may also 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 causes 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 a large ball. General relativity passed a major test in 2019 in an experiment involving a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way .

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 at the time. His work helped decipher curious results scientists were previously unable to explain. 

Unified field theory : Einstein spent much of his later years trying to merge the fields of electromagnetism and gravity. He was unsuccessful but may have been ahead of his time. Other physicists are still working on this problem.

Einstein's astronomical legacy

There are many applications of Einstein's work, but here are some of the most notable 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 the curvature of space-time is affecting Mercury's motions and changing its 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 that it appears four times around the galaxy.

Black holes : In April 2019, the Event Horizon telescope showed the first-ever images of a black hole . The photos again confirmed several facets of general relativity, including not only that black holes exist, but also that they have a circular event horizon — a point at which nothing can escape, not even light.

To find the answers to frequently asked questions about Albert Einstein , visit The Nobel Prize website. Additionally, you can learn about The Einstein Memorial at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.  

Bibliography

"Einstein: The Life and Times". American Journal of Physics (1973). https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1

"On the brain of a scientist: Albert Einstein". Experimental Neurology (1985). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3979509/

"The fascinating life and theory of Albert Einstein". Mih, W. C. Nova Publishers (2000).   https://books.google.co.uk/books

"Alterations in cortical thickness and neuronal density in the frontal cortex of Albert Einstein". Neuroscience Letters (1996). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8805120/

"The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs". Brain, Volume 136, Issue 4 (2012). https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/136/4/1304/356614?login=true

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• Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) first gained worldwide prominence in 1919, when British astronomers verified predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity through measurements taken during a total eclipse. Einstein’s theories expanded upon, and in some cases refuted, universal laws formulated by Newton in the late seventeenth century.

Einstein captured the world’s imagination with his blend of brilliant scientific theories and humanitarian concern. The public is still intrigued by Einstein. Visitors come to Princeton from throughout the world to see where Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life.

Einstein Furniture Collection

In 2003, the Historical Society was the proud recipient of a gift of 65 pieces of Albert Einstein’s furniture from his home on Mercer Street, donated by the Institute for Advanced Study. An eclectic collection, the gift includes tables, chairs, chests, cabinets, a bed and other items from the 18th through 20th centuries.

The furniture is representative of several styles and eras. One of the earliest pieces is a Queen Anne table made in Austria between 1730 and 1770. An upholstered tub armchair from the early 20th century appears frequently in photos of Einstein at home. According to James R. Blackwood’s “Einstein in the Rear-view Mirror,” which appeared in Volume 14 of Princeton History, it was local jeweler Isadore Braveman who kept the Einstein’s 19th century Biedermeier-style clock in working order. Blackwood also described the efforts of the underground to send the furniture from Germany to the United States under a fictitious name, which led to difficulties with suspicious customs officials when the Einsteins went to New York to claim their things.

The Historical Society currently displays several outstanding pieces from the Einsten Funiture Collection in the Einstein Salon and Innovators Gallery at the Updike Farmstead, detailing how the furniture arrived in the United States and describing Einstein’s life in Princeton. In the spring and summer of 2005, his desk used in his Berlin study was on loan from the Historical Society to the Max Planck Institute in Berlin for their exhibition Albert Einstein: Engineer of the Universe . In fall 2005, an ensemble of a table, chair and lamp was displayed at the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

A grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, Department of State, allowed the Society to catalog the collection and hire a professional conservator to undertake a preliminary survey to assess the conservation needs of each piece. The conservator’s report indicates that over $60,000 must be raised to undo the toll taken by time and use on the furnishings.

Gillett Griffin Collection

In April of 2016, Gillett G. Griffin made a significant gift to the Historical Society of Princeton of over 50 pieces of material related to Albert Einstein, previously in his personal collection.

Griffin was formerly the Curator of Pre-Columbian Art at the Princeton University Art Museum. He had been a personal friend of Einstein’s from 1953 until Einstein’s death in 1955, frequenting Einstein’s home on 112 Mercer Street, where he also became acquainted with the physicist’s stepdaughter Margot Einstein and friend and confidante, Johanna (Hanna) Fantova.

The collection gifted to the Historical Society includes several personal belongings and accoutrements of Einstein’s, including a drawing of Gandhi that used to hang in Einstein’s study and three small handheld puzzle games that Einstein reportedly used to thrust into the hands of acquaintances to solve upon first meeting them. The collection also includes Einstein’s compass – Einstein explained that his interest in physics arose from compasses he played with as a child – and Einstein’s pipe. The only other intact pipe of Einstein’s that is on public display is in the Smithsonian Institution, and it is the most heavily requested object for research and loans in the Institution’s Modern Physics Collection, according to the Collection’s Curator. Gillett received the puzzles and pipe as a gift directly from Margot.

The collection also contains the original snapshot of Einstein sitting on his Mercer Street porch wearing large fuzzy slippers (seen above), as well as the only known self-portrait of Einstein. The drawing, scrawled on a sheet of equations, features Hanna Fantova on a beach, holding an umbrella and smoking a cigarette, with Einstein’s face beside her. Above his head is the exclamation, “Ich hab’s!!,” which translates to, “I’ve got it!” Fantova gave the sketch to Griffin as a gift in 1955, the year of Einstein’s death, because “she thought he would like the design,” according to Griffin.

The photographs, manuscript material, sculptures, books, newspaper clippings, personal possessions, and ephemera that comprise the collection are featured in the Historical Society’s permanent Einstein Salon and Innovators Gallery and can be made available for public research by appointment.

Einstein in Princeton Scientist, Humanitarian, Cultural Icon

March 5, 1995 – September 15, 1995 Einstein: Scientist

Scientific Work

“REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE New Theory of the Universe Newtonian Ideas Overthrown” – The London Times , November 7, 1919

Einstein’s initial prominence stemmed from his spectacular, yet controversial, advances in theoretical physics, in particular his Special Theory of Relativity (1905) and his General Theory of Relativity (1916), in which he demonstrated the relationship between mass, energy, and gravitation. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for his work in theoretical physics and, in particular, for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Einstein’s early work became popularized through the equation E=mc2.

Einstein’s contributions to physics also included advances in statistical mechanics and quantum theory, especially the quantum theory of radiation. During his years in Princeton, Einstein worked on a unified field theory, which sought to discover the relationship between two fundamental interactions of nature – gravitation and electromagnetism. Despite criticism from contemporary physicists and years of unsuccessful research, Einstein never relinquished his search for a unified field theory.

Although Einstein was best known for his theories and writings, he also applied science to daily life through his patents for a noiseless refrigerator, a light intensity self-adjusting camera, and a hearing aid.

Institute for Advanced Study

“. . .a haven where scholars and scientists may regard the world and its phenomena as their laboratory without being carried off in the maelstrom of the immediate.” – Abraham Flexner, 1931

The Institute for Advanced Study was founded in 1930 by noted educator Abraham Flexner, with funding from department store magnate Louis Bamberger and his sister Mrs. Felix Fuld. Advised to begin this experiment with one field of study, Flexner chose mathematics because it was a fundamental subject which required the smallest investment in buildings or books; there was also greater agreement on the identity of the most eminent mathematicians than on leading scholars in other disciplines.

Flexner first recruited noted mathematicians from Princeton University to join the Institute, such as Oswald Veblen, a Princeton University mathematician and the Institute’s first faculty member. Einstein, recruited directly from Europe, accepted a faculty position in August, 1932. During the 1930s, Flexner broadened the scope of the Institute by including established scholars in economics, politics, and humanistic studies.

Throughout his tenure at the Institute, Einstein worked closely with numerous assistants on his unified field theory. Although Einstein officially retired from the Institute in 1945, he continued his research there until his death in 1955.

Nuclear Energy

“I do not consider myself the father of the release of atomic energy.” – Albert Einstein, Atomic War or Peace , 1945

In the late 1930s, rapid advances in physics led to the discovery of the fission process, making possible a controlled chain reaction; this meant that the release of atomic power could be sustained at a controllable rate. Many physicists believed that this energy could be harnessed in a powerful nuclear weapon. As political conditions in Europe continued to deteriorate, many scientists became concerned that the German government might have access to the knowledge and materials needed to construct such a weapon. Under the leadership of Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, scientists, including Einstein, sought to warn the United States government of the need “for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration.”

Einstein collaborated with fellow physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller on a letter in August, 1939, informing President Roosevelt of recent discoveries that indicated it might be possible to build “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” Motivated by a host of factors, including Einstein’s letter, President Roosevelt initiated programs that led to the Manhattan Project and the eventual development of the atomic bomb.

Einstein’s role in the development and use of nuclear weapons has attained mythic proportions. As Einstein stated after World War II, “My participation in the production of the atomic bomb consisted of one single act: I signed a letter to President Roosevelt . . . in which I emphasized the necessity of conducting large-scale experimentation with regard to the feasibility of producing an atom bomb. . . I saw no alternative but to act as I did, although I have always been a convinced pacifist.”

Einstein opposed the use of the atomic bomb; he urged the United States to demonstrate the weapon to foreign governments rather than use it on an actual target. He was at the forefront of the campaign waged by atomic scientists beginning in the mid-1940s to educate the public and the leaders of the world about the implications of nuclear energy and the absolute necessity of not developing nuclear weapons. As late as the spring of 1955, Einstein worked with Bertrand Russell to launch a project to start a worldwide movement among scientists to reverse the Cold War trend toward nuclear war.

Einstein: Humanitarian

112 mercer street.

In 1932 Albert Einstein accepted a position at the newly-created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Coming to Princeton in October 1933, he and his wife Elsa, along with his personal secretary Helen Dukas, spent ten days at the Peacock Inn, while Elsa looked for a suitable house and Einstein dodged reporters.

The Einsteins’ first two years in Princeton were spent in a two-family house at 2 Library Place. By 1935 Einstein had decided to remain in Princeton and began the formal process of obtaining permanent residency in the United States. The family moved to the white, two-story house at 112 Mercer Street, which would become their permanent home.

After Einstein’s death in 1955 (Elsa had died in 1936), his daughter Margot and Helen Dukas remained in the house until their deaths in 1986 and 1982, respectively. At Einstein’s request the house has never been turned into a museum or public shrine; today it is owned by the Institute for Advanced Study and is used as a private residence.

“. . . these two old people sitting together with their bushy hair, in complete agreement, understanding and love.” -Lily Kahler, a close family friend, describing Einstein and his sister Maja

After Elsa Einstein’s death, Helen Dukas took charge of the household, which consisted of Einstein, his daughter Margot, and his sister Maja. Einstein was devoted to his sister, who lived with him from 1939 until her death in 1951, reading to her nightly after she was bedridden from a stroke.

Einstein had two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, from his first marriage to Mileva Maric, which ended in divorce. In 1919 he married his cousin, Elsa Einstein Löwenthal, and adopted her two daughters, Ilse and Margot. (Ilse died of an illness in 1934.) Margot, an artist and sculptor, shared a deep love of nature with her father.

Devoting the majority of his time to scientific work, Einstein also found enjoyment in sailing, often taking advantage of Princeton’s Lake Carnegie, and music, especially the work of Mozart. Einstein was a well-known figure in Princeton, due in no small part to his shock of white hair, his refusal to wear socks, and his total absorption in scientific problems. Many Princeton residents have fond memories of spotting the famous physicist, lost in thought, walking to and from his office at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Celebrations and Commemorations

“. . . especially when he has, through no will of his own, become a kind of legend in his own lifetime. All manner of fable is being attached to his personality, and there is no end to the number of ingeniously devised tales.” -Einstein describing himself in a 1954 letter to his lifelong friend Elizabeth, the Queen Mother of Belgium

Einstein’s scientific achievements, coupled with his unpretentious attitude and concern for humanity, made him a beloved, world-renowned figure. Wherever he traveled he was mobbed by people hoping to catch a glimpse of or even touch the genius who had changed their perception of the universe. Einstein himself never understood the public’s fascination with his every word and deed, saying once: “Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me?”

Every year on March 14, Einstein would receive cards, letters, and telegrams with birthday wishes from throughout the world. Even on the centennial of his birth, in 1979, the world celebrated with newspaper and magazine articles, symposiums, publications, and commemorative stamps.

Einstein died on April 18, 1955 in Princeton Hospital; he was cremated and his ashes scattered in an undisclosed location. The worldwide fascination with this kind and gentle genius has not dissipated to this day.

Jewish Saint

“. . . my relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.” -Einstein in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, November 18, 1952

In the early 1930s Einstein recognized the threat that Hitler posed to Jews living in Germany and to himself in particular as a world-famous Jew. In 1932 Einstein left his country of birth never to return. Throughout the thirties Einstein was deluged with pleas for help from relatives and strangers desperate to flee fascism in Europe. Working against harsh immigration quotas imposed against Jews, Einstein wrote affidavits and enlisted the help of friends in assisting as many refugees as possible. By the end of the 1930s, Einstein had written so many affidavits that his signature on a document no longer carried any weight.

At the same time, Einstein was busy raising funds for organizations such as the United Jewish Appeal, and working toward securing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which was realized in 1948 by the creation of the State of Israel. When Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel and an old friend of Einstein’s, died in 1952 Einstein was offered the Presidency. He regretfully declined, writing: “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.”

Enfant Terrible

“. . . I have become a kind of enfant terrible in my new homeland, due to my inability to keep silent and to swallow everything that happens there.” -Einstein in a 1954 letter to his lifelong friend Elizabeth, the Queen Mother of Belgium

Einstein was a lifelong pacifist dedicated to the establishment of a World Government, which he felt would allow nations to work together and abolish the need for war. He could not keep silent about the ills he saw in society; during the anti-communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s Einstein spoke out against the persecution of those who were accused of being “unAmerican,” urging them to commit civil disobedience. He saw a parallel between the American political climate of the postwar period and the fascism of Europe in the thirties.

In answer to a request for advice from William Frauenglass, a Brooklyn high school teacher under investigation by the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, Einstein wrote a letter which was published in The New York Times on June 12, 1953. It read, in part: “Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify, i.e., he must be prepared for jail and economic ruin, in short, for the sacrifice of his personal welfare in the interest of the cultural welfare of his country.”

Einstein: Cultural Icon

Einstein in popular culture.

“…the public image of Albert Einstein has come to represent intelligence in general, and the scientific mind in particular.” Alan J. Friedman and Carol C. Donley, Einstein as Myth and Muse

A well-known image in marketing and advertising, Albert Einstein graces magazine ads, T-shirts, mugs, cartoons, calendars, and post cards, and is featured in popular films. The wild-haired, sockless, disheveled, eccentric genius with a heart–our popular culture hero, Einstein–is the currently accepted symbol of intelligence.

Einstein’s image in the mass media evolved during and after his lifetime. Overwhelmingly positive views of Einstein as an intellectual hero prior to the Second World War gave way to tragic portrayals linking him to the development of the atom bomb in the years following the war. Though E=mc2 had no crucial role in the unleashing of atomic energy, Einstein was portrayed in popular culture as the sorrowful father of the atomic age, whose genius was used to tragic ends.

As this mythical connection between Einstein and the atomic bomb was gradually refuted, his name and face once again became the symbol of genius. His status as an icon evolved from intellectual hero to intellectual victim and back again. Today, Einstein is again a popular culture hero.

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Biography: Albert Einstein

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Legendary scientist Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) first gained worldwide prominence in 1919 after British astronomers verified predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity through measurements taken during a total eclipse. Einstein's theories expanded upon universal laws formulated by physicist Isaac Newton in the late seventeenth century.

Before E=MC2

Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. Growing up, he enjoyed classical music and played the violin. One story Einstein liked to tell about his childhood was when he came across a magnetic compass. The needle's invariable northward swing, guided by an invisible force, profoundly impressed him as a child. The compass convinced him that there had to be "something behind things, something deeply hidden."

Even as a small boy Einstein was self-sufficient and thoughtful. According to one account, he was a slow talker, often pausing to consider what he would say next. His sister would recount the concentration and perseverance with which he would build houses of cards.

Einstein's first job was that of patent clerk. In 1933, he joined the staff of the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He accepted this position for life, and lived there until his death. Einstein is probably familiar to most people for his mathematical equation about the nature of energy, E = MC2.

E = MC2, Light and Heat

The formula E=MC2 is probably the most famous calculation from Einstein's special theory of relativity . The formula basically states that energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared (2). In essence, it means mass is just one form of energy. Since the speed of light squared is an enormous number, a small amount of mass can be converted to a phenomenal amount of energy. Or if there's a lot of energy available, some energy can be converted to mass and a new particle can be created. Nuclear reactors, for instance, work because nuclear reactions convert small amounts of mass into large amounts of energy.

Einstein wrote a paper based on the new understanding of the structure of light. He argued that light can act as though it consists of discrete, independent particles of energy similar to particles of a gas. A few years before, Max Planck's work had contained the first suggestion of discrete particles in energy. Einstein went far beyond this though and his revolutionary proposal seemed to contradict the universally accepted theory that light consists of smoothly oscillating electromagnetic waves. Einstein showed that light quanta, as he called the particles of energy, could help to explain phenomena being studied by experimental physicists. For example, he explained how light ejects electrons from metals.

While there was a well-known kinetic energy theory that explained heat as an effect of the ceaseless motion of atoms, it was Einstein who proposed a way to put the theory to a new and crucial experimental test. If tiny but visible particles were suspended in a liquid, he argued, the irregular bombardment by the liquid's invisible atoms should cause the suspended particles to move in a random jittering pattern. This should be observable through a microscope. If the predicted motion is not seen, the whole kinetic theory would be in grave danger. But such a random dance of microscopic particles had long since been observed. With the motion demonstrated in detail, Einstein had reinforced the kinetic theory and created a powerful new tool for studying the movement of atoms.

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Case Files: Albert Einstein

Introduction

Though he described himself as a "mathematical ignoramus," Albert Einstein's thinking was so complex that accomplished members of the scientific community still struggle to wrap their minds around the meaning and implications of his theories. Born in Germany in 1879, the frizzy-haired physicist conducted some of his most important research in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the later years of his life. Perhaps best known for his Theory of Relativity and his equation E=mc2, Einstein's work revolutionized the field of theoretical physics and made him a celebrity throughout the globe.

As he presented Einstein at Medal Day exercises, Dr. Frederick Palmer, Jr. of The Franklin Institute's Committee on Science and the Arts said: "The romance of his achievement has been such that mathematical physics has become popular with the public."

Who was Albert Einstein? What were his achievements in the field of physics?

The Nature of a Genius

Before he was known as a genius whose work profoundly changed the way the world thinks about physics, Albert Einstein thought of himself as "merely curious." In his youth, his curiosity lead him to explore the field of natural science through private reading outside of his high school classes, and to apply his knowledge to his own thoughts and questions about the nature of the cosmos.

Einstein was a philosopher and a human rights activist as well as a scientist. During his lifetime he witnessed two world wars and predicted the invention of the atomic bomb in a now-famous letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Einstein eloquently recorded his thoughts on religion, science and human rights, and the pages of his writings are imbued with the complex emotions and musings of a man who witnessed profound changes in the world around him, and whose direct involvement in major scientific breakthroughs inspired him to think about the extent to which developments in science effect society at large.

Despite the fame brought to him by his theories and research, Einstein's sense of humility remained intact. Though anecdotal episodes from his youth show some signs of arrogance and frustration with his fame, his adulthood is marked by a mature gratitude for his abilities and a resigned acceptance of his celebrity status. Reflecting on his success in his later years Einstein wrote, "For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it."

The "Lone Traveler" Sets Out

Albert began his schooling in Germany, where his teachers disciplined him and his classmates were disrespectful to the young Einstein. His primary school classes emphasized memorization and learning by rote. Albert was reprimanded by his German elementary school teachers for thinking too much about the meaning of their questions and failing to produce responses as quickly as his peers. At home, Albert obediently completed his homework before engaging in solitary games. One of his favorite pastimes as a child was constructing houses of cards, which sometimes was able to reach four stories. Even as a young child Einstein valued solitude, and in 1930 he would reflect: "I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, and even my immediate family with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude—feelings which increase with the years" (qtd in Cassidy 64).

Working Ahead

In the fall of 1888, when Einstein was nine years old, he entered a secondary school in Munich, Germany called the Luitpold-Gymnasium. This school emphasized non-scientific subjects like Latin and ancient Greek. While he did earn good grades in his classes, they did not spark his interest. It was during these secondary school days that Albert began to diverge from the curriculum prescribed for him, engaging in his own private reading. At age thirteen he asked his parents to purchase the mathematics textbook that he would be using the following year, and proceeded to work his way through the entire mathematics program at the Lutipold-Gymnasium in a matter of months. He indulged his passion for physics and physical phenomena by reading textbooks that were, at the time, key writings on the natural sciences.

In Need of a Liberal Arts Education

As his thoughts shifted towards college and more advanced studies, Albert was determined to apply to the Federal Institute of Technology (FIT) in Zurich, Switzerland. He disliked the Lutipold-Gymnasium and did not complete his studies there. He instead committed himself to a period of self-study, during which he acquired knowledge of theoretical physics. He took the FIT's competitive entrance exam at age sixteen, more than a year younger than the other students who sat for the exam at the same time. The results of his exam revealed that he had done well on the mathematical-physical section of the test, while he had failed the general portion of the exam which tested his knowledge of literary and political history and of foreign language. Albert was thus required to attend a secondary school in the nearby Swiss town of Aarau before he was admitted to the FIT.

Einstein began his studies at the Federal Institute of Technology (FIT) in October of 1896. As a college student he often skipped lectures and studied for tests by borrowing notes from his classmates, and would later describe himself as a mediocre university student. While not an avid participant in his classes, Albert's genuine interest in theoretical physics inspired him to devote large periods of time to its study. He participated in a number of physics experiments while a student, and consistently strove to unite the abstract concepts of theoretical physics with practical matters. His doctoral thesis made strides towards such unification, combining the theoretical claim for the existence of molecules with a description of the physical law governing the behavior of molecules. Einstein used experimental data to further describe this law and to further develop the relationship between the theoretical and the practical.

Princeton Days

After he completed his degree at the FIT, Einstein found work as an assistant professor and eventually as a full professor of theoretical physics. He preferred researching to teaching, and in 1914 he accepted a paid research position in Berlin, Germany, which was considered the "capital city" of physics at that point in time. In 1933 the rise of Nazi power in Germany prompted Einstein to resign from his position in Berlin and flee to the United States, where he took up residence at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey and assumed a position on the faculty of Princeton's  Institute for Advanced Study .

Oswald Veblen, the first professor in the Institute for Advanced Study, helped select and relocate Einstein and other foreign mathematicians after Hitler's rise to power in Europe. Veblen was a leading geometer and served a term as president of the American Mathematical Society and of the International Congress of Mathematicians, held at Harvard. Though highly respected as a scholar, Veblen valued his relationships with his students and helped design common spaces in Princeton buildings in order to help encourage the formation of student-faculty relationships. The verification and publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity in 1919 brought him instant celebrity status. 

Under Investigation

In August of 1939 Einstein mailed a letter to the White House, informing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the potential threat posed by the discovery of and subsequent experimentation with nuclear fission in Berlin, Germany. His ominous prediction read:

"This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory."

History indicates that Einstein sent four letters to President Roosevelt, each expressing an increased urgency for action. In December of 1941, Roosevelt heeded Einstein's warning and convened the American investigation into nuclear fission and the development of such a bomb known as the Manhattan Project. This top secret project went underway in a laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Four years later, in 1945, the United States dropped the newly-developed atomic bomb, devastating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Despite his role in alerting the President to the possibility of nuclear weapons, Einstein did not participate in the Manhattan Project. Though he was granted American citizenship in 1940, his involvement with liberal organizations whose missions called for world peace made Einstein a "radical" in the eyes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In response to the perceived threat posed by Einstein, the FBI compiled an extensive secret file on the scientist, monitoring and recording his movements. His status as a security threat prevented Einstein from gaining the security clearance necessary to enter the secret laboratory in New Mexico. It is very likely that this was not a source of disappointment for Einstein, who publicly declared his dedication to pacifism. He was quite distressed when the public mind associated him with the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 and the subsequent civilian casualties.

Interested in learning more about Albert Einstein? Learn More About His Benjamin Franklin Award

Personal Commitments

Einstein committed to his family, and throughout the course of his life he married twice and had three children. All three children were a product of his relationship with Mileva Maric, whom he encountered while he was a university student. Mileva was a classmate and a fellow scientist, and evidence suggests that she was instrumental in the development of some of her husband's theories. Einstein's children were named Lieserl, Hans Albert and Eduard, who was known as "Tete." Einstein eventually divorced Mileva, marrying his cousin Else Löwenthal four months later.

Einstein was also deeply committed to his Jewish faith. His religious beliefs inspired him to grapple with philosophical thoughts and to champion the cause of Zionists and their quest for a Jewish home state in Palestine. He was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, though he declined this honor. He died three years later of an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, bequeathing much of his writings and photographs to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

An Eternal Riddle

Though he is conceived of as a genius in modern society, Einstein's ways of thinking diverged sharply from those of a majority of other scientists when he initially penned some of his most famous theories. In the early years of the 20th Century, theorists were not regarded with great respect, but Einstein viewed theoretical work as a high calling. Contemplating theoretical physics, Einstein wrote, "I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential...Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle."

Electromagnetic Waves

Some scientists in the late 1800s and early 1900s believed in and described an entity known as "the ether." The ether was thought to be a backdrop at a state of absolute rest against which the movement of elements of the cosmos occurred. Einstein disagreed with the existence of the ether, which will be seen during the discussion of his theory of special relativity. However, an understanding of the ether is important for understanding the theory of electromagnetic phenomena which preceded Einstein's theory of relativity.

During the 19th Century, scientists Michael Farady, James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz formulated a theory that described electromagnetic phenomena. This theory indicated that electric and magnetic forces resulted from the effect of electric and magnetic fields existing in space between electric charges. These electric charges were produced by the ether, which was thought to be able to exert electric forces on ordinary matter. Hertz showed that moving electromagnetic fields could break away from ordinary matter and propagate through the ether as independent electromagnetic waves carrying energy. These electromagnetic waves come in both visible and invisible forms. Hertz showed that visible light is one visible form of the electromagnetic wave. Invisible electromagnetic waves include radio waves, x-rays and microwaves. The concept of such waves moving through the ether can be likened to the waves that spread over a pond after a stone is thrown into the water. The ripples in the pond can be thought of as the equivalent of electromagnetic waves, and the still water as the equivalent of the ether. In a pond, the force of the stone hitting the water results in the ripples. One of the things puzzling the scientists of Einstein's time was what exactly caused the formation of electromagnetic fields whose independent movement resulted in the electromagnetic waves which they conceived of as moving through space.

The Electron

In 1897, the source of electromagnetic fields was discovered: the electron. At the time of its discovery, the electron possessed the smallest mass known. It also carried the smallest electric charge known. Because of its charge, it was found to be the source of electromagnetic fields. However, the electron posed a problem for scientists grappling with electromagnetic theory. As is discussed above, electromagnetic theory dealt with fields and waves, entities that were thought to be continuous and without mass. Electrons are neither continuous nor without mass: they are individual, charged particles that have mass. Electrons thus did not "fit into" electromagnetic theory as it was understood in the late 19th Century. They posed yet another riddle for Einstein and his contemporaries.

A Quantum Leap

In 1905, Einstein challenged the concept that visible light, one form of the electromagnetic wave, always behaved as a continuous wave. Einstein argued that in certain cases light behaves as individual particles. He called these particles "light quanta," and said that each "light quanta" carries a "quantum," meaning a fixed quantity of energy. A light beam is thus composed of many "light quanta" which are observed as one continuous wave. The total energy of a light beam, Einstein said, is the sum total of the individual energies of the distinct "light quanta." Today, these "light quanta" are called "photons." Theories that treat total energy as "quantized" (meaning that total energy is calculated by adding together the fixed energies of the individual "quanta" of which the overall energy is composed) are known as quantum theories.

It's (Photo) Electric!

Einstein's light quantum hypothesis helped to explain certain visible light behavior which could not be explained if visible light were understood to exist in the form of a wave, rather than in the form of tiny individual particles. One of these phenomena was known as the photoelectric effect. Scientists had observed that, when light hit metal, electrons were ejected from the surface of the metal. Einstein's light quanta could eject electrons from the surface of the metal by changing the energy states of the electrons they hit. Light quanta are little bundles of energy, and according to electron theory, electrons absorb energy. The act of absorbing energy takes an electron to a higher energy state, causing it to jump. When it returns to its state of rest, it emits the energy it has absorbed in the form of light. This results in the observable ejection of electrons from the metal's surface known as the photoelectric effect.

Galileo and Relativity

Though Einstein is the scientist most frequently associated with the theory of relativity, there are several thinkers who are responsible for its formulation. The first known person to theorize about relativity was Galileo, who articulated the first "relativity principle" in the seventeenth century. In generating his relativity principle, Galileo removed the distinction between stationary and moving observers, arguing that people on earth cannot tell if they are really at rest or if they are moving with the rotation of the earth each day. To demonstrate this, Galileo used the example of a cannonball falling from the top of a ship's mast. He noted that the cannonball will land at the base of the mast whether the ship is moving steadily through the ocean, or whether it is at rest in a dock. Even if they observe the falling ball, people on the ship cannot tell if they are really at rest or if they are moving with the ship. They cannot distinguish their state of rest from the ship's state by observing motion that takes place within the "reference frame" of the ship. In other words, a person at rest on the deck of a ship cannot determine whether the ship is at rest or moving at a steady speed through the ocean by observing actions that happen on the ship itself. That person must observe the ship relative to its surrounding environment in order to make such a determination.

A Matter of Principle

In 1905, Einstein wrote a paper entitled, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." This paper served as the foundation for his theory of relativity. It also included many of the theories and results of scientists whose work had preceded Einstein, so much so that many of his contemporaries had a difficult time distinguishing Einstein's "theory of special relativity" from other accepted theories of the time. The main difference between Einstein's theories and other prevalent scientific theories of the 1900s lies in how Einstein went about deriving his theories. While many of his contemporaries drew "constructive theories," Einstein drew "principle theories."  Einstein's theories were not hypotheses built on data reached through experimentation. Rather, they were universal principles intended to impact all of physics. Throughout his life, Einstein was driven by a desire to isolate a single theory that would unify gravitation and electromagnetic fields. Though this single theory has not yet been found, Einstein's work has inspired physicists of today to continue the search for a unified theory.

Special Relativity

Einstein's theory of special relativity is fundamentally a theory of measurement. He qualified the theory as "special" because it refers only to uniform velocities (meaning to objects either at rest or moving at a constant speed). In formulating his theory, Einstein dismissed the concept of the "ether," and with it the "idea of absolute rest." Prior to the generation of Einstein's theory of special relativity, physicists had understood motion to occur against a backdrop of absolute rest (the "ether"), with this backdrop acting as a reference point for all motion. In dismissing the concept of this backdrop, Einstein called for a reconsideration of all motion. According to his theory, all motion is relative and every concept that incorporates space and time must be considered in relative terms. This means that there is no constant point of reference against which to measure motion. Measurement of motion is never absolute, but relative to a given position in space and time. Returning to Galileo's cannonball, Einstein considered this: the cannonball falling from the mast of the ship would appear to an observer standing on the deck of that ship as though it dropped straight down; however, to an observer standing on the shore, the cannonball would appear to follow a curved trajectory on its way to the base of the mast. Which trajectory did the ball actually follow? According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, the answer is, both—and neither. Each observer's observation is valid in its own reference frame, yet each is no more than an artifact of the measurement, or observation, undertaken by the observer.

Implications of Relativity

Einstein's theory of special relativity has many complex consequences, which confuse even scientists of the present. One of the most famous consequences of this theory is the formula E=mc 2 . This theory relates energy to mass times the square of the speed of light. Often considered the "speed limit" of the universe, the speed of light is equivalent to about 186,000 miles per second.

Four-Dimensional Space

In 1904, mathematician Hermann Minowski succeeded in representing Einstein's theory of special relativity mathematically. He did so by introducing the concept of four dimensions: three of space and one of time. Using his mathematical representation, he was able to describe the positions and motions of objects such as speeding electrons as they moved through space. Minowski's four-dimensional space-time helped Einstein to develop his theory of general relativity, which he would come to regard as his greatest achievement.

Principle of Equivalence

Special relativity applies only to cases in which objects are moving at a uniform velocity. General relativity, however, is applicable to all forms of accelerated motion. This theory of general relativity arose from Einstein's principle of equivalence. Einstein formulated this principle by examining a given mass in two different states. The first state occurs when the mass in question is acted on by gravity, and the second when the mass is in a state of inertia (when it resists forces and accelerations). According to Einstein's principle of equivalence, the given mass is equivalent in both states. Take, for example, a spinning top. According to the principle of equivalence, the top has the same mass whether it is falling off a desk (being acted on by gravity) or whether it is spinning atop a desk (in a state of inertia). This principle may seem obvious, and in fact people since Newton's time had simply assumed it to be true. However, the implications of the principle of equivalence are far from obvious, and Einstein was the first to realize those implications.

General Relativity

Einstein's theory of general relativity unites his theory of special relativity with the concept of gravity conceived of by Sir Isaac Newton. Einstein's key insight was that gravitation is not the result of a force. It is rather a manifestation of curved space and time. Einstein's theory of general relativity can be understood by considering the following scenario. An astronaut sitting in a space capsule waiting to launch at Cape Canaveral feels his normal weight. While in space, free from gravitational pull, the astronaut feels weightless. However, if the space capsule were to accelerate upwards in space at exactly the acceleration of gravity back on earth, the astronaut would be pushed into his seat with a force exactly equivalent to his own weight. The astronaut would be unable to distinguish between the sensation of sitting in the space capsule prior to launch in Cape Canaveral, and the sensation of sitting in the space capsule as it accelerates upwards in space at exactly the acceleration of gravity. He could only distinguish between the two by looking out the window.

Curved Space

Einstein's theory of general relativity describes space as curved, with the "curved space" being the four-dimensional space-time conceived of by Minowski. The curvature of space results in the effects of gravity. This notion of curved space becomes more tangible by thinking again about the astronaut and the space capsule, but this time introducing a beam of light into the capsule. If a beam of light is shone from the top of one capsule wall to the opposite wall while the capsule is accelerating upwards in space, the light will appear curved. This is because, in the time it takes for the light beam to move across the cabin to the opposite wall, the cabin will have accelerated upwards and the beam will appear to curve across the cabin and hit below the spot directly across from where it started. The light will also appear to curve across the top of the space capsule if the capsule is at rest in Cape Canaveral. In other words, the light beam acts as if it is being pulled down by gravity. The space-time through which it moves can be understood to be curved by the presence of a massive body: in this case, the earth. In space, the curvature of space itself causes all objects, such as light or planets or spaceships, to follow the curvature. In both cases, the gravitational effect occurs because of the curvature of space.

Acknowledgement

Albert Einstein was awarded a 1935 Franklin Medal by The Franklin Institute "In recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics, especially his work on Relativity and the Photo-Electric effect."

Additionally, Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine, and philosophy from many European and American universities. He was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world.

A few of Albert Einstein's notable prizes include the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, the 1925 Royal Society Copley Medal, and the 1929 Max Planck Medal.

Many inquisitive schoolchildren mailed letters to Albert Einstein, asking the famous physicist questions about science and about his personal life. Einstein's letters to and from children are bound together in a book entitled  Dear Professor Einstein , and the abbreviated text of one of these exchanges is reproduced below. You can follow the example of the children who sent their questions to Dr. Einstein by writing to your own favorite scientists. Talk to your teacher about the kinds of questions you could ask, and how you should go about contacting the scientists whose work is of interest to you.

Cape Town, South Africa 10th July, 1946

I am awfully interested in Science, so are quite a lot of people in my form at school. My best friends are the Wilson twins. Every night after Lights Out at school, Pat Wilson and I lean out of our cubicle windows, which are next to each other, and discuss Astronomy, which we both prefer to anything as far as work goes. Pat has a telescope and we study those stars that we can see. We usually have to creep past the prefect's room to other parts of the building to carry on our observations. We have been caught a few times now, though, so it is rather difficult.

What worries me most is How can Space go on forever? I have read many books on the subject, but they all say they could not possibly explain, as no ordinary reader would understand. If you do not mind me saying so, I do not really see how it could be spiral. But then, of course you obviously know what you are saying, and I could not contradict!

I trust you are well, and will continue to make many more great Scientific discoveries.

I remain, Yours obediently, Tyfanny

August 25, 1946

Dear Tyfanny,

Thank you for your letter of July 10th.

Be not worried about "curved space." You will understand at a later time that for it this status is the easiest it could possibly have. Used in the right sense the word "curved" has not exactly the same meaning as in everyday language.

I hope that yours and your friend's future astronomical investigations will not be discovered anymore by the eyes and ears of your school-government. This is the attitude taken by most good citizens toward their government and I think rightly so.

Yours sincerely, Albert Einstein

View Einstein's Case File Bibliography

The Albert Einstein presentation was made possible by support from The Barra Foundation and Unisys. Special thanks to the Archives of the  Institute for Advanced Study , Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Special thanks to University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. [ Portfolio ] Thanks to Roberta Fedder for  German to English translation  of letter from Albert Einstein.

Read the Committee on Science and the Arts Report on Albert Einstein’s early life and his Quantum Theory and Theory of Relativity.

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7 ways Einstein changed the world

There are many ways Einstein changed the world, and his ideas have shaped the way we see and interact with the universe.

1. Space-time

2. einstein's equation: e = mc^2, 4. black holes and wormholes, 5. the expanding universe, 6. the atomic bomb, 7. gravitational waves, additional resources.

We take a look at seven ways Einstein changed the world. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is one of the most famous scientists of all time, and his name has become almost synonymous with the word "genius." There are many ways Einstein changed the world, we explore some of our favorites here. While his reputation owes something to his eccentric appearance and occasional pronouncements on philosophy, world politics and other non-scientific topics, his real claim to fame comes from his contributions to modern physics, which have changed our entire perception of the universe and helped shape the world we live in today.

Here's a look at some of the world-changing concepts we owe to Einstein

Related: Why some physicists really think there's a 'mirror universe' hiding in space-time  

One of Einstein's earliest achievements, at the age of 26, was his theory of special relativity — so-called because it deals with relative motion in the special case where gravitational forces are neglected. This may sound innocuous, but it was one of the greatest scientific revolutions in history, completely changing the way physicists think about space and time. In effect, Einstein merged these into a single space-time continuum. One reason we think of space and time as being completely separate is because we measure them in different units, such as miles and seconds, respectively. But Einstein showed how they are actually interchangeable, linked to each other through the speed of light — approximately 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second).

Perhaps the most famous consequence of special relativity is that nothing can travel faster than light. But it also means that things start to behave very oddly as the speed of light is approached. If you could see a spaceship that was traveling at 80% the speed of light, it would look 40% shorter than when it appeared at rest. And if you could see inside, everything would appear to move in slow motion, with a clock taking 100 seconds to tick through a minute, according to Georgia State University's HyperPhysics website. This means the spaceship's crew would actually age more slowly the faster they are traveling.

An unexpected offshoot of special relativity was Einstein's celebrated equation E = mc^2 , which is likely the only mathematical formula to have reached the status of a cultural icon. The equation expresses the equivalence of mass (m) and energy (E), two physical parameters previously believed to be completely separate. In traditional physics, mass measures the amount of matter contained in an object, whereas energy is a property the object has by virtue of its motion and the forces acting on it. Additionally, energy can exist in the complete absence of matter, for example in light or radio waves . However, Einstein's equation says that mass and energy are essentially the same thing, as long as you multiply the mass by c^2 — the square of the speed of light, which is a very big number — to ensure it ends up in the same units as energy.

This means that an object gains mass as it moves faster, simply because it's gaining energy. It also means that even an inert, stationary object has a huge amount of energy locked up inside it. Besides being a mind-blowing idea, the concept has practical applications in the world of high-energy particle physics. According to the European Council for Nuclear Research ( CERN ), if sufficiently energetic particles are smashed together, the energy of the collision can create new matter in the form of additional particles.

Lasers are an essential component of modern technology and are used in everything from barcode readers and laser pointers to holograms and fiber-optic communication. Although lasers are not commonly associated with Einstein, it was ultimately his work that made them possible. The word laser, coined in 1959, stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" — and stimulated emission is a concept Einstein developed more than 40 years earlier, according to the American Physical Society . In 1917, Einstein wrote a paper on the quantum theory of radiation that described, among other things, how a photon of light passing through a substance could stimulate the emission of further photons.

Einstein realized that the new photons travel in the same direction, and with the same frequency and phase, as the original photon. This results in a cascade effect as more and more virtually identical photons are produced. As a theoretician, Einstein didn't take the idea any further, while other scientists were slow to recognize the enormous practical potential of stimulated emission. But the world got there in the end, and people are still finding new applications for lasers today, from anti-drone weapons to super-fast computers .

Related: The world's biggest laser: Function, fusion power and solving a supernova

Einstein's theory of special relativity showed that space-time can do some pretty weird things even in the absence of gravitational fields. But that's only the tip of the iceberg, as Einstein discovered when he finally succeeded in adding gravity into the mix, in his theory of general relativity . He found that massive objects like planets and stars actually distort the fabric of space-time, and it's this distortion that produces the effects we perceive as gravity .

Einstein explained general relativity through a complex set of equations, which have an enormous range of applications. Perhaps the most famous solution to Einstein's equations came from Karl Schwarzschild's solution in 1916 — a black hole . Even weirder is a solution that Einstein himself developed in 1935 in collaboration with Nathan Rosen, describing the possibility of shortcuts from one point in space-time to another. Originally dubbed Einstein-Rosen bridges, these are now known to all fans of science fiction by the more familiar name of wormholes. 

One of the first things Einstein did with his equations of general relativity, back in 1915, was to apply them to the universe as a whole. But the answer that came out looked wrong to him. It implied that the fabric of space itself was in a state of continuous expansion, pulling galaxies along with it so the distances between them were constantly growing. Common sense told Einstein that this couldn't be true, so he added something called the cosmological constant to his equations to produce a well-behaved, static universe.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble's observations of other galaxies showed that the universe really is expanding, apparently in just the way that Einstein's original equations predicted. It looked like the end of the line for the cosmological constant, which Einstein later described as his biggest blunder . That wasn't the end of the story, however. Based on more refined measurements of the expansion of the universe, we now know that it's speeding up, rather than slowing down as it ought to in the absence of a cosmological constant. So it looks as though Einstein's "blunder" wasn't such an error after all. 

Einstein is occasionally credited with the "invention" of nuclear weapons through his equation E = mc^2, but according to the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics's Einstein Online website, the link between the two is tenuous at best. The key ingredient is the physics of nuclear fission , which Einstein had no direct involvement with. Even so, he played a crucial role in the practical development of the first atomic bombs . In 1939, a number of colleagues alerted him to the possibilities of nuclear fission and the horrors that would ensue if Nazi Germany acquired such weapons. Eventually, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation , he was persuaded to pass on these concerns in a letter to the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The ultimate outcome of Einstein's letter was the establishment of the Manhattan Project , which created the atomic bombs used against Japan at the end of World War II.

Although many famous physicists worked on the Manhattan Project, Einstein wasn't among them. He was denied the necessary security clearance because of his left-leaning political views, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). To Einstein, this was no great loss — his only concern had been to deny a monopoly on the technology to the Nazis. In 1947 Einstein told Newsweek magazine, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have never have lifted a finger," according to Time magazine . 

Einstein died in 1955, but his huge scientific legacy continues to make headlines even in the 21st century. This happened in a spectacular way in February 2016, with the announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves — yet another consequence of general relativity. Gravitational waves are tiny ripples that propagate through the fabric of space-time, and it's often bluntly stated that Einstein "predicted" their existence. But the reality is less clear-cut than that. 

Einstein never quite made up his mind whether gravitational waves were predicted or ruled out by his theory. And it took astronomers decades of searching to decide the matter one way or the other.

Eventually they succeeded, using giant facilities such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories (LIGO) in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. As well as being another triumph for Einstein's theory of general relativity (albeit one he wasn't too sure about himself), the discovery of gravitational waves has given astronomers a new tool for observing the universe — including rare events like merging black holes .

• Discover 3 everyday inventions Einstein made possible , with aerospace company Thales.  
• Read the collected works of Albert Einstein (The complete works PergamonMedia). 
• Explore 5 fun facts about Albert Einstein with the American Nuclear Society . 

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Andrew May holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Manchester University, U.K. For 30 years, he worked in the academic, government and private sectors, before becoming a science writer where he has written for Fortean Times, How It Works, All About Space, BBC Science Focus, among others. He has also written a selection of books including Cosmic Impact and Astrobiology: The Search for Life Elsewhere in the Universe, published by Icon Books.

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Albert Einstein: facts about his life, death, education and work

In 1919, theoretical physicist Albert Einstein published his pioneering theory of general relativity. His work established new ideas about the formation of the universe and black holes, revolutionising our knowledge of gravity, time and space. When and where was he born? When and how did he die? Read more about his life, plus 5 little-known facts from author Andrew Robinson…

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Born in Germany on 14 March 1879, Albert Einstein became well established in the scientific community for his general theories of relativity, which redefined understandings of space, time, matter, energy, and gravity. In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect – and he is today considered one of the most respected figures in the history of science. Read on for the story of his life or jump to 5 little-known facts …

Albert Einstein's early life

Albert Einstein was the eldest child of Hermann Einstein, an electrical engineer and salesman, and Pauline Koch. He had one sister, named Maja. Just six weeks after Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, his family moved to Munich. From a young age Einstein showed a keen interest in music, and he learned how to play the piano and violin. In 1887 Einstein began his education at the Luitpold Gymnasium (a secondary school) in Munich.

In 1896, aged 17, Einstein enrolled at Zürich Polytechnic, where he studied for a mathematics and physics teaching diploma. Four years later he completed his diploma but was unable to find a teaching job, so he began work at the Swiss Patent Office as a technical assistant in 1901.

Einstein met Mileva Marić while they both were studying at Zürich Polytechnic. The couple married in 1903 and together they had two sons. It has been suggested the couple may have had a daughter before they married, but the child may have died or been adopted. The couple ultimately separated in 1914 before divorcing in 1919. Einstein married his second wife, Elsa Löwenthal, in 1919.

Albert Einstein's research

In 1900, after completing his diploma at Zürich Polytechnic, Einstein began researching for a doctorial thesis. In 1905 he completed a doctorate degree from the University of Zurich. In the same year, four of his research papers were published, including one on the special theory of relativity, which revealed new findings on the relationship between time and space.

More like this

After demonstrating his impressive work in theoretical physics, Einstein was made a privatdozent [an academic title conferred by some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries] in Bern, Switzerland in 1908.

Einstein became professor extraordinary [a lower-ranking professorship] at University of Zurich in 1909, before being made professor of theoretical physics at Charles University in Prague in 1911. Einstein’s academic career developed further in 1914 when he became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics and a professor at the University of Berlin.

In 1915 Einstein published his work on the general theory of relativity, which suggests that “space and time are woven together, and become distorted by objects with mass”. This theory is considered by many to be the most significant scientific concept developed in modern-day physics. As a result of his outstanding work, in 1921 Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for services to theoretical physics.

What was Einstein's Theory of Relativity?

Einstein during the second world war.

With the rise of Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s, the Nazi party began to restrict the number of Jews who could hold academic positions in universities across Germany. Einstein, who was from a Jewish family, feared facing persecution. In 1933 he renounced his German citizenship and emigrated to the US, where he became a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D Roosevelt to express his fears that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons. He warned the president that the US needed to begin its own research into atomic bombs in order to protect the country from the Nazi threat. This letter influenced the establishment of the Manhattan Project , led by physicist J Robert Oppenheimer – the research scheme that initiated the development of the first nuclear weapons. However, Einstein himself refused involvement in the Manhattan Project, as he was a pacifist.

After the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Einstein became active in the political movement to prevent the use of atomic bombs in the future.

In the 1940s Einstein also became involved in campaigns advocating civil rights in the US, and he joined National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1946 he made an impassioned speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in which he stated that racism is "a disease of white people".

In the later years of his life, Einstein continued to work as a theoretical physicist, and he further developed his theory of general relativity.

When did Albert Einstein die?

On 17 April 1955, Einstein experienced an abdominal aortic aneurysm and internal bleeding, but refused to undergo surgery [it has been suggested he may have wished to decide when he could die]. He died the next day at Princeton Hospital in New Jersey, aged 76.

Just hours after his death, Einstein’s brain was removed without the permission of his family, and it was taken to the University of Pennsylvania. It was dissected, cut into 240 pieces, and samples were put onto slides, ready to be examined under a microscope. Einstein’s son Hans Albert eventually agreed for his father’s brain to be used for scientific investigation.

• Read more | What happened to Albert Einstein's brain?

Over the past six decades, numerous studies have been published on Einstein’s brain, and some scientists have even suggested that the unusual features of his brain [such as having an extra ridge on his mid-frontal lobe ] may be linked to his high level of intelligence.

In 1999, TIME Magazine named Einstein as the ‘Person of the Century’.

5 little-known facts about Albert Einstein

Andrew Robinson reveals five surprising facts about the famous physicist, from his theory of relativity to his views on pacifism and nuclear weapons…

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was rejected in Britain until 1919

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity made him instantly famous when it was confirmed by British astronomers, led by scientist Arthur Eddington, during a solar eclipse in 1919. But when the unknown Einstein first published it in 1905, the theory convinced hardly a single British thinker – either in the sciences or the humanities. University of Cambridge scientists either ignored, reinterpreted or rejected relativity, for lack of experimental evidence, until it was accepted and taught to undergraduates by Eddington in 1920. University of Oxford philosophers were even more scathing, ridiculing the theory as late as 1919 because it appeared to contradict their training in the Greek classics such as Euclid.

Albert Einstein abandoned pacifism as soon as the Nazis came to power

Einstein’s militant pacifism in response to the First World War is well known. Less known is his change of mind in 1933, a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, in favour of European military rearmament against the Nazi threat—long before most European and American politicians. In 1939, he even recommended to US President Franklin Roosevelt the building of an atomic bomb, thereby helping to launch the Manhattan Project in 1941–2. But after the Second World War, Einstein changed his mind yet again and fought very publicly against nuclear weapons. His last public act, days before his death in 1955, was to sign the anti-nuclear Russell-Einstein Manifesto, initiated by British philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Albert Einstein turned down the presidency of Israel

In 1952, Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel, following the death of his long-time sparring partner, Chaim Weizmann. He turned it down, while simultaneously observing that his relationship with the Jewish people had become his “strongest human bond”. This decision was the culmination of three decades of ambivalence towards Zionism. Jewish by birth, and also by sympathy, Einstein always suspected that Zionism would encourage the use of violence. Although he raised money for the Zionist cause in the 1920s, and supported the foundation of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—to which he willed all of his papers after his death—Einstein remained too much of an individualist to commit himself to any nation.

Albert Einstein never returned to Europe after 1933

From the 1920s, Einstein was celebrated as a citizen of the world, partly as a result of his global lectures in Europe, Japan, Palestine, South America and the United States. But after he left Europe in 1933, and settled in Princeton, New Jersey, he never returned to his homeland. Indeed, he never left America before his death in 1955 – despite countless invitations to travel. Part of this reluctance was his undying distrust of his native Germany following the horrors of the Nazi period. In addition, Einstein had no wish to entangle himself in the politics of Palestine. But most of all, he loved solitude in Princeton for the sake of his all-important physics.

• Read more about Einstein's visits to Britain

Albert Einstein is probably the most quoted figure of our time

Einstein is one of the most widely quoted people of all time, and probably the most quoted figure from the 20th century. The website Wikiquote has many more entries for Einstein than for Aristotle, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton , Charles Darwin or Stephen Hawking, and even than Einstein’s opinionated contemporaries Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw – including an ever-expanding section of misquotations and invented ‘quotations’. Beyond science, Einstein was an avid commentator on education, marriage, money, the nature of genius, music-making, politics and more. As he seriously joked to a friend in 1930: “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”

Andrew Robinson is the author of 25 books in the arts and sciences, including Einstein on the Run: How Britain Saved the World's Greatest Scientist ( Yale University Press, 2019)

This HistoryExtra article was updated in July 2023

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Physicists Finally Confirm Einstein's Stunning Prediction About Black Holes

The detailed mechanics of how matter falls down onto a black hole from outside the event horizon have been revealed in a new paper.

As predicted by Einstein's theory of gravity , there's a point at which material stops circling the black hole and falls straight down, plunging precipitously beyond the point of no return.

Now, in X-ray data of an active black hole, we've finally seen proof that this 'plunging region' exists.

"Einstein's theory predicted that this final plunge would exist, but this is the first time we have been able to demonstrate it happening," says theoretical physicist Andrew Mummery of Oxford University in the UK.

"Think of it like a river turning into a waterfall – hitherto, we have been looking at the river. This is our first sight of the waterfall."

Matter making its way towards a black hole doesn't follow a straight line. It circles around, like water swirling, spiraling, inexorably towards a drain. This is no idle simile: so apt is the comparison that scientists use swirling water vortices to study the environments around black holes .

Studying the black holes themselves is a little tricky, because the warped space-time around them is so extreme.

But, decades ago, Albert Einstein's theoretical work predicted that, at a certain proximity to the black hole, matter would no longer be able to follow a stable circular orbit, and would fall straight down – like water over the lip of that analogous drain.

There's no reason to believe that this isn't the case – matter has to cross the event horizon somehow, and Einstein's theory of gravity has held up to scrutiny across the board – but what astrophysicists have been unsure about is whether or not we would be able to detect it.

The work of Mummery and his colleagues had multiple parts. One of those was the development of numerical simulations and models that depict the plunging region to reveal the sort of light it emits. After that, they needed observational evidence that contained the same plunging region emission.

The black hole in question is found in a system about 10,000 light-years away called MAXI J1820+070 . This system contains a black hole about 8.5 times the mass of the Sun – and a binary companion star, from which the black hole strips material as the pair of objects orbit, feeding in bursts that manifest as X-ray flickering .

Astronomers have been watching this black hole to better understand its behavior, so the researchers were able to access very high-quality data obtained using the X-ray NuSTAR and NICER instruments in low-Earth orbit. In particular, they focused on an outburst that took place in 2018.

Previous studies had noted that there was an extra glow detected in observations of this outburst that could not quite be accounted for.

A 2020 study speculated that this glow may emerge from within the innermost stable circular orbit region – that is, the plunging zone. Mummery and his colleagues studied this glow with particular care, and found that it matched up with the emission they derived from their simulations.

This, the researchers say, finally establishes the existence of the plunging region, without question, giving us a new probe for the extreme gravitational regime in the region immediately outside a black hole's event horizon.

"What is really exciting is that there are many black holes in the galaxy, and we now have a powerful new technique for using them to study the strongest known gravitational fields," Mummery says .

"We believe this represents an exciting new development in the study of black holes, allowing us to investigate this final area around them.

Only then can we fully understand the gravitational force. This final plunge of plasma happens at the very edge of a black hole and shows matter responding to gravity in its strongest possible form."

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .

Albert Einstein

Affiliation.

Physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was one of the Institute’s first Faculty members, serving from 1933 until his death in 1955, and he played a significant part in its early development.

Einstein came to the United States to take up his appointment at the Institute at the invitation of Abraham Flexner, the Institute’s founding Director. During his time as an Institute Faculty member, Einstein pursued the goal of a unified field theory, and did so at a time when the goal of unifying the four fundamental forces of nature—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—had been set aside by the majority of working physicists. In recent years, this has again become a central goal of physicists and string theory has become the favored candidate to provide a framework for a unified understanding of the basic laws of the physical universe.

Nobel Laureate , Physics Prize, 1921

For additional information on Einstein’s life and his great works of 1905, please visit two special sections of the Institute’s website, In Brief and The Great Works . You may also explore source documents at http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu.

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Annus Mirabilis of Albert Einstein

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The following resources provide information on Albert Einstein's life and seminal works. These books are meant to not only give more information on the papers but also information on the world in which Einstein lived and how that shaped his theories. Each title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . While these titles are held by the Library, many of them will also be available through your local public or academic library.

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• Albert Einstein - Questions and answers

Albert Einstein

Questions and answers.

Question: When was Albert Einstein born?

Answer: Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879.

Question: Where was he born?

Answer: He was born in Ulm, Germany.

Question: When did he die?

Answer: He died 18 April 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Question: Who were his parents?

Answer: His father was Hermann Einstein and his mother was Pauline Einstein (born Koch).

Question: Did he have any sisters and brothers?

Answer: He had one sister named Maja.

Question: Did he marry and have children?

Answer: He was married to Mileva Marić between 1903 and 1919. They had three children, Lieserl (born 1902), Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910). He married Elsa Löwenthal in 1919 and they lived together until her death in 1936.

Question: Where did he receive his education?

Answer: He received his main education at the following schools: Catholic elementary school in Munich, Germany (1885-1888) Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, Germany (1888-1894) Cantonal school in Aarau, Switzerland (1895-1896) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland (1896-1900) Ph.D. from Zurich University, Switzerland (1905)

Question: When was Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics?

Answer: The Nobel Prize Awarding Institution, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, decided to reserve the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and therefore no Physics Prize was awarded that year. According to the statutes, a reserved prize can be awarded the year after, and Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

Question: Did Albert Einstein attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony?

Answer: The Nobel Prize was announced on 9 November 1922. Being too remote from Sweden, Albert Einstein could not attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December the same year.

Question: For what did he receive the Nobel Prize?

Answer: Einstein was rewarded for his many contributions to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Question: What is the photoelectric effect?

Answer: The photoelectric effect is a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from the surface of matter (usually metals) when light shines upon it. Einstein explained the effect by proposing that light consists of small particles, or quanta, called photons, which carry energy that is proportional to the frequency of light. The electrons in the matter that absorb the energy of the photon get ejected. These findings were published in 1905 in the paper “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light”. Einstein’s observations that the photoelectric effect could only be explained if light behaves like a particle, not a wave, was instrumental in establishing the hypothesis that light can behave both like a wave and a particle.

Question: What are the practical applications of the photoelectric effect?

Answer: The photoelectric effect is very important for our daily life. It is the basis for photosynthesis, which is like a very effective solar cell where sunlight is absorbed by plants to make them grow. The effect also forms the basis for a variety of devices such as photodiodes, which are used in light detection within fibre optics, telecommunications networks, solar cells, imaging and many other applications.

Question: When did he deliver his Nobel Lecture?

Answer: He gave his Nobel Lecture on 11 July 1923 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Question: What other scientific accomplishments is Albert Einstein known for?

Answer: Albert Einstein is one of the most influential physicists in the 20 th century. In 1905 Einstein published four landmark papers in physics – on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity and equivalence of matter and energy (E=mc 2 ). The year 2005 was named the “World Year of Physics” in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s publications. Einstein is also well known for his general relativity theory published 1915 that complements his special relativity theory of 1905.

First published 25 January 2008

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Department of Developmental & Molecular Biology

The passing of dr. jeffrey pollard.

We mourn the premature death of our valued and distinguished colleague, Professor Jeffrey Pollard, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of DMB, who passed away on May 1, 2023, after a lengthy illness. Jeff received a first class B.Sc.Hons degree from Sheffield University in 1970, and a Ph.D. from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London in 1974.

After a post-doctoral period at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, he joined the faculty of King’s College, University of London, in 1980. In 1988, he moved to Einstein as Associate Professor of DMB and was cross-appointed to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1991. He rose through the ranks, becoming Director of the Center for the Study of Reproductive Biology and Women’s Health in 2000, Deputy Director of The Albert Einstein Cancer Center in 2002 and the Louis Goldstein Swann Chair in Women’s Health in 2008.

In 2013, he moved to Edinburgh to assume Directorship of the Medical Research Council Centre for Reproductive Health. Among many honors, Jeff was awarded the Medal of Honor for Basic Science Research of the American Cancer Society in 2010 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Jeff’s work focused on women’s reproductive health and was seminal in two important areas: The first, on the mechanism of progesterone in negatively regulating estrogen-induced uterine epithelial cell proliferation and preparing the uterus for blastocyst implantation and the second, on tumor-enhancing roles of macrophages in promoting metastatic disease. While at Einstein, Jeff was an outstanding mentor, who for many years organized our international training course in mouse genetic engineering.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Dr. Ooi-Thye Chong and his family. To commemorate his legacy at Einstein and his valuable contributions to science, a memorial fund has been established in his name. The Jeffrey W. Pollard Memorial Fund will be used to support basic scientific and medical research and training within the Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology, as well as to support an annual Jeffrey Pollard Memorial Lecture, presented by an outstanding scientist. To make contributions to this fund, please visit the following link.

Welcome to the Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology (DMB) website.

Departmental history.

The Department was established in 1965 as the Department of Developmental Biology and Cancer (DBC), under the chairmanship of Dr. Jerard Hurwitz. During his direction from 1965 –1984, the department’s first-rate research program was focused on nucleic acid biochemistry, protein synthesis, and protein sorting. When Dr. Hurwitz left Einstein for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute in 1984, the department consisted of 5 faculty. Dr. E. Richard Stanley succeeded Dr. Hurwitz as DBC Chair in 1987, retaining 3 distinguished remaining faculty, with programs in protein synthesis and protein sorting. DBC was subsequently renamed Developmental and Molecular Biology (DMB) and in conjunction with the Department of Molecular Genetics, recruited new faculty working in development – recruitments that contributed to the establishment of strong research programs in Drosophila, Xenopus, zebrafish, and mice. Additional appointments were in the area of Cell Biology. Further recruiting was carried out in conjunction with the Cancer Center, the Liver Center, the Diabetes Center and the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics. Over the 23 years of Dr. Stanley’s tenure, DMB expanded and diversified considerably to include 12 primary and 10 secondary appointees, with all faculty members actively contributing to departmental life. Stanley stepped down as Chair in 2010 and DMB was for 8 years ably led by Interim Chair Dr. Liang Zhu, prior to his premature retirement due to ill-health in 2018. Stanley became Interim Chair in November 2018 and with the generous support of Dean Tomaselli, the department has been bolstered by the recruitment of new faculty and an influx of faculty from the former Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology.

Current Research and Activities of the Department

The scientific vision for the Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology (DMB) is to investigate the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms in development, aging, regeneration, and disease. DMB currently boasts 22 research groups using diverse model systems of hematologic, neurologic, cardiovascular, renal, virologic, metabolic, oncologic, and age-related diseases. These scientific areas and interactions are the foundation on which DMB stands and diversity is one of our major strengths. Stimulated by this diverse set of interests, the department has a rich history of long-lasting collaborations among the groups, which greatly enriches the academic microenvironment. In addition, through cross appointments in basic and clinical departments and memberships in centers and institutes, our faculty members participate in significant College-wide collaborations. Currently, there are 10 primary and 14 secondary tenure-track professors, 7 research professors, 2 Instructors, 5 Associates and 5 emeritus professors. The departmental activities include DMB weekly journal clubs, weekly work-in-progress seminars in which all graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty participate, and regular faculty “chalk talks”, where ongoing research programs and grant proposals are discussed. The department also hosts a vibrant bi-monthly external faculty seminar series to enhance scientific exposure and networking for our faculty and trainees. In addition, the whole department participates in a retreat held every 1.5 years at which on-going programs are presented in talks and posters.

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Four Einstein graduate students were honored for their contributions to scientific research March 18 during the 28th annual Julius Marmur Award symposium.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

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Graphic novel 'Einstein in Kafkaland' ponders how two great minds met in Prague

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Kelsey Beeghly, Library’s Albert Einstein Fellow

August 30, 2024

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

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Kelsey Beeghly, a science curriculum and assessment coordinator from Orlando, Florida, was the Library’s 2023–24 Albert Einstein distinguished educator fellow .

Tell us about your background.

I grew up in central Florida and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Central Florida.

While at UCF, I taught physics to my fellow undergraduate students. Through this part-time job, I discovered how much I love teaching science and decided to become a science teacher.

After graduation, I moved to Brooklyn, New York, where I taught advanced placement environmental science, biology and chemistry for two years while earning my master’s degree in teaching with a dual certification in secondary science and special education.

My journey brought me back home to central Florida, where I transitioned to teaching life and physical science at the middle school level.

Then, I went back to UCF to earn my Ph.D. in science education. For three years, I taught science methods and content courses to undergraduates in UCF’s teacher education school while completing coursework and serving as a research assistant on a grant to support English learner education. Simultaneously, I worked as a high school administrator, leading curriculum and assessment practices.

What inspired you to come to the Library as an Einstein fellow?

When I discovered the Department of Energy’s Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship opportunity, which places STEM educators in federal agencies and congressional offices, I was fascinated.

My teaching experiences, as well as my Ph.D. program, alerted me to many of the systemic issues facing teachers and students in this country. Where better to learn more than the nation’s capital?

Immediately after meeting with the Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives office last year, I knew the Library was the right fit for my fellowship placement. The team’s passion for use of primary sources to promote deeper understanding of the nature of science — what science is, how it works and how scientists operate within society — strongly resonated with me.

What resources at the Library have captivated you?

First, Chronicling America — I loved exploring its historical newspapers using every search term that popped into my head. I also loved reading “ The Tradition of Science, ” a compilation of landmark items that the Library holds from the history of Western science.

I really enjoyed searching through photographs in the digital collections, especially for curating a “ Scientists and Inventors ” free to use and reuse set. The Library has so many interesting pictures that represent the diversity of science but also shed light on societal norms that impacted who could participate in science for much of our nation’s history — the effects of which can be observed in STEM engagement today.

How will your experience this year affect your approach to education?

I have learned about so many federal resources freely available to educators, including the Library’s resources, and now see the Library itself as a huge fountain of knowledge.

I also have an appreciation for and awareness of all the possibilities for conducting research using the Library’s digitized collections from anywhere in the world. Any time I am seeking a historical perspective on an issue from now on, I will consult the Library’s website and its experts and encourage others to do the same.

What would you like STEM educators to know about the Library?

STEM educators need to know about all of the amazing things the Library has to offer. My own past teaching in grades 6–12 and of preservice teachers would have greatly benefited from incorporating the Library’s primary sources.

I’m very confident that every topic taught in a science classroom can be made more engaging by including a piece of history related to it, the people involved with it and its impact on society.

STEM educators could start with the Teaching with the Library blog , where I have shared some of my discoveries. Next, they might consult primary source sets available a the teacher’s page , then use the Library’s Ask a Librarian service and research guides to support themselves and their students in exploring topics.

I also want STEM educators to know about the science that takes place within the Library‘s Preservation Research and Testing Division . I’ve met the division’s scientists and learned about some incredible projects I plan to feature in my upcoming “Doing Science” series on the blog.

Teachers can bring these ideas into their classrooms and encourage students to investigate careers that combine a love of science with a passion for art or history.

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Using a gamma ray burst to search for violations of Einstein's relativity postulates

by David Appell , Phys.org

Einstein's theory of relativity is based on two assumptions, or postulates. The first is that the laws of physics look the same to everyone traveling in a straight line with no acceleration.

Einstein took this idea from the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, who, in the late 1800s, presented a theory of electrodynamics with this property, giving rise to the notion of an "inertial frame of reference"—the coordinates used by a butcher, baker or candlestick maker when they move in a straight line in a vacuum, relative to one another, possibly with different velocities. This assumed equivalency is called "Lorentz invariance."

The second assumption is that the speed of light will be measured as the same by anyone in an inertial reference frame. No matter how fast one is moving or in what direction (in a vacuum), light will be seen approaching at a speed of "c," just under 300,000 kilometers per second, with the same speed seen if it passes by. Even if the baker is moving at 0.99999 percent of the speed of light relative to the butcher, both measure light to have a speed of "c." (Yes, that's not at all intuitive.)

Physicists have been keen to test Lorentz invariance ever since. It strictly holds in all experiments done to date. Now, a group from China has looked at the most powerful gamma ray burst ever seen and found that the photons it emitted at the same time arrived at their telescope at the same time, even if they had different frequencies.

From this result, the lower energy limit where quantum gravity appears has been raised five-fold. Their work has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters .

Interest in Lorentz invariance has picked up in recent years as some theories of quantum gravity predict that for high-energy photons, the vacuum does not appear empty but as a nonempty medium. This prediction, when it occurs in a quantum gravity theory, occurs near the Planck scale of about 10 19 billion electron-volts, where it is expected that spacetime itself might need to be treated according to the rules of quantum mechanics.

Does Lorentz invariance hold even at such enormous energies, or do the laws of physics start to look different there for different inertial reference frames?

To test this, a research group from the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) in China looked at the afterglow of the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed , 221009A. This GRB, discovered in 2022 and lasting just over 10 seconds, but observable for 10 hours after detection, was in a distant galaxy 2.4 billion light-years away, meaning its highly energetic gamma rays had taken 2.4 billion years to arrive at Earth.

A violation of Lorentz invariance would appear if the light of different frequencies arrived at Earth at different times, meaning they had different speeds when traveling through the long vacuum from there to here. This phenomenon is called " photon dispersion," and it's seen when light travels through materials like water or glass, but so far, it has never been detected in a vacuum.

The research team used data collected from the October 9, 2022 gamma-ray burst recorded at the Observatory in Sichuan, China, 4,410 meters above sea level. Gamma-ray observatories in orbit were first triggered by the initial lower energy photons, and LHAASO happened to be pointed in the right direction to measure the burst's "afterglow" of high-energy photons.

Within 100 minutes after the 221009A trigger, their Water Cherenkov Detector Array measured more than 64,000 photons with energies up to 7 trillion electron-volts. Over its short lifetime, the GRB was estimated to release as much energy as the entire Milky Way galaxy does in 500 million years.

The peak intensity from the GRB occurred about four minutes after its trigger. To examine any signs of a violation of Lorentz invariance, the group used two methods: measuring the time delays between 10 gamma-ray energy bands, with each band containing TeV-scale photons, and extracting energy-dependent arrival-time delays from the data.

Their analysis found no statistically significant violations of Lorentz invariance—no significant time delays of the GRB photons with different frequencies. (By the Planck relation, frequency is proportional to energy.)

From this lack of photon dispersion, they obtained two lower limits on the energy where quantum gravity effects might appear, one the same as seen in previous GRB observations, and the second raising the previous lower limit by a factor of five for inertial reference frames traveling below the speed of light.

They conclude, "Future observations of very high energy prompt [quick] emission instead of afterglow from GRBs would further enhance sensitivity to Lorentz invariance using time-of-flight tests." These limits could be raised even higher if the initial stage of a future GRB is similarly examined.

Journal information: Physical Review Letters , arXiv

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