Albert Einstein Essay Research Paper The Life

Albert Einstein Essay, Research Paper

The Life of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Southern Germany. One year after his birth his fathers business failed, so the family moved to Munich, and began a new business manufacturing electrical parts. His parents Hermann and Pauline were of Jewish descent, but were very lax regarding religion. The Einstein’s sent Albert to a Catholic grade school.

Albert’s first scientific revelation came when he was five years of age, and his father showed him a pocket compass. This occurrence left a long lasting impression on Albert. Otherwise Albert was not an extraordinary learner. At the age of nine Albert was unable to speak fluently, and his grades were poor. His parents and teachers thought he might even be mildly retarded. When Albert was ten he began secondary school, at which he still failed to excel. He disliked the regiment of school, and the strictness of his teachers.

Einstein’s hunger for learning was aroused by science books and magazines. His mother passed her passion for music on to Albert. He began violin lessons at the age of six and although he was never a musical genius he carried a passion for music for the rest of his life.1

In 1894 Albert’s fathers business failed again so the family moved to Milan in order to get a fresh start. Albert’s father left him behind so that he would be able to finish school and receive a diploma. Less than a year later, Albert left school, without receiving his diploma, to be with his family in Milan. At the age of sixteen, Einstein took the entrance exam for a school that would give him a degree in electrical engineering, and failed.

Einstein attended a Swiss school to prepare to take the exam again, and found that he so much preferred the less regimented system of teaching and the Swiss democratic attitude that he relinquished his German citizenship. On his second attempt to enter the University, one year later, he passed and was admitted for a degree in science and mathematics education.2 He graduated at the age of twenty-one.

In 1893 he married a classmate from his school in Switzerland, Mileva Maric, who was Hungarian. They had two children. Upon Albert’s graduation in 1900, he found employment as a patent examiner in a patent office in Bern, and began tutoring part time. This was not a challenging job for Einstein, and allowed him plenty of time to pursue his personal pursuits. In 1905 Einstein published three papers that he submitted to the University of Bern. These papers concerned themselves with the properties of light, the theory of special relativity and Einstein famous equation E=mc2.

The first of these papers was on Brownian motion. He observed this concept by using a highly powered microscope, focused on pollen particles submerged in water. He found that the pollen particles moved in a random fashion, and the speed increased as the temperature of the water rose. He found that this happened because the pollen particles were being pushed around by the water particles. The random motion that this created would create different amounts of movement, which he statistically calculated.

His second paper explained the Photoelectric Effect. The Photoelectric Effect happens when light hits metal which makes the metal emit electrons, which in turn generate energy. This is how auto-matic opening doors are operated.

Paper number three dealt with molecules. He wrote about sugar dissolving in water. The paper explained the dilution and dissolving of sugar and also able to calculate the size of the sugar molecules. Although similar studies had been done before this was the first time that it was applied to liquid.3

Ironically on Einstein’s initial submission of this paper to the University of Bern it was rejected. Shortly thereafter, the University recanted their decision and appointed Einstein as a professor.2

He left his job at the patent office in 1909. Shortly thereafter left the University of Bern because the Emperor of Prussia, Franz Joseph, had selected Einstein to be a professor at Prague University. In Prague Einstein expanded upon his special theory of relativity in a paper called, The Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light. Einstein was forced to leave Prague due to anti-Semitism within the University. By 1909 Einstein was known throughout German-speaking Europe as a leader in the field of science.

The German Emperor sent Max Planck and Walter Nerst, to offer Einstein a Professorship at Berlin University, and to become a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Upon his acceptance of this offer, he and his wife Mileva parted ways. Einstein retained his Swiss citizenship while in his home country of Germany.4 He was Jewish, and a well-known pacifist, living in a country on the verge of war, therefore found himself an outcast in his own homeland. While in Berlin, Einstein lived with his Uncle and fell in love with his uncles widowed daughter, who had two children. He and Elsa married in 1919. His marriage to Elsa renewed his interest in his Jewish background.

As the end of the war neared, Einstein gained even more notoriety. The British eclipse expeditions of 1919 proved his predictions on the theory of relativity to be true. This conformation of his theory made him vastly popular.

Although he was a worldwide hero Ei