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Around 1886
Albert Einstein began his school career in Munich. As
well as his violin lessons, which he had from age six to age
thirteen, he also had religious education at home where he
was taught Judaism. Two years later he entered the Luitpold
Gymnasium and
after this his religious education was given at school. He
studied mathematics, in particular the calculus, beginning
around 1891.
In 1894
Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in
Munich. In 1895 Einstein failed an examination that would
have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrical
engineer at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in
Zurich. Einstein renounced German citizenship in 1896 and
was to be stateless for a number of years. He did not even
apply for Swiss citizenship until 1899, citizenship being
granted in 1901.
Following the
failing of the entrance exam to the ETH, Einstein attended
secondary school at Aarau planning to use this route to
enter the ETH in Zurich. While at Aarau he wrote an essay
(for which was only given a little above half marks!) in
which he wrote of his plans for the future, see [13]:-
If I
were to have the good fortune to pass my examinations, I
would go to Zurich. I would stay there for four years in
order to study mathematics and physics. I imagine myself
becoming a teacher in those branches of the natural
sciences, choosing the theoretical part of them. Here are
the reasons which lead me to this plan. Above all, it is
my disposition for abstract and mathematical thought, and
my lack of imagination and practical ability.
Indeed Einstein
succeeded with his plan graduating in 1900 as a teacher of
mathematics and physics. One of his friends at ETH was
Marcel Grossmann who was in the same class as Einstein.
Einstein tried to obtain a post, writing to Hurwitz who held out some hope of a position
but nothing came of it. Three of Einstein's fellow students,
including Grossmann, were appointed assistants at ETH in
Zurich but clearly Einstein had not impressed enough and
still in 1901 he was writing round universities in the hope
of obtaining a job, but without success.
He did manage to
avoid Swiss military service on the grounds that he had flat
feet and varicose veins. By mid 1901 he had a temporary job
as a teacher, teaching mathematics at the Technical High
School in Winterthur. Around this time he wrote:-
I have
given up the ambition to get to a university ...
Another temporary
position teaching in a private school in Schaffhausen
followed. Then Grossmann's father tried to help Einstein get a
job by recommending him to the director of the patent office
in Bern. Einstein was appointed as a technical expert third
class.
Einstein worked
in this patent office from 1902 to 1909, holding a temporary
post when he was first appointed, but by 1904 the position
was made permanent and in 1906 he was promoted to technical
expert second class. While in the Bern patent office he
completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics
publications, written in his spare time without the benefit
of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues.
Einstein earned a
doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 for a thesis
On a new determination of molecular dimensions. He
dedicated the thesis to Grossmann.
In the first of
three papers, all written in 1905, Einstein examined the
phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic
energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in
discrete quantities. The energy of these quanta was directly
proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This seemed
to contradict classical electromagnetic theory, based on
Maxwell's equations and the laws of
thermodynamics which assumed that electromagnetic energy
consisted of waves which could contain any small amount of
energy. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe the
electromagnetic radiation of light.
Einstein's second
1905 paper proposed what is today called the special theory
of relativity. He based his new theory on a reinterpretation
of the classical principle of relativity, namely that the
laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of
reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein
assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all
frames of reference, as required by Maxwell's theory.
Later in 1905
Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent.
Einstein was not the first to propose all the components of
special theory of relativity. His contribution is unifying
important parts of classical mechanics and Maxwell's electrodynamics.
The third of
Einstein's papers of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics, a field of that had been studied by Ludwig
Boltzmann and Josiah Gibbs.
After 1905
Einstein continued working in the areas described above. He
made important contributions to quantum theory,
but he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to
phenomena involving acceleration. The key appeared in 1907
with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational
acceleration was held to be indistinguishable from
acceleration caused by mechanical forces. Gravitational mass
was therefore identical with inertial mass.
In 1908 Einstein
became a lecturer at the University of Bern after submitting
his Habilitation
thesis Consequences for the constitution of radiation
following from the energy distribution law of black
bodies. The following year he become professor of
physics at the University of Zurich, having resigned his
lectureship at Bern and his job in the patent office in
Bern.
By 1909 Einstein
was recognised as a leading scientific thinker and in that
year he resigned from the patent office. He was appointed a
full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in
1911. In fact 1911 was a very significant year for Einstein
since he was able to make preliminary predictions about how
a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun,
would appear to be bent slightly, in the direction of the
Sun. This would be highly significant as it would lead to
the first experimental evidence in favour of Einstein's
theory.
About 1912,
Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research,
with the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossmann, by expressing his work in terms of the
tensor calculus
of Tullio Levi-Civita and
Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro.
Einstein called his new work the general theory of
relativity. He moved from Prague to Zurich in 1912 to take
up a chair at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in
Zurich.
Einstein returned
to Germany in 1914 but did not reapply for German
citizenship. What he accepted was an impressive offer. It
was a research position in the Prussian Academy of
Sciences together with
a chair (but no teaching duties) at the University of
Berlin. He was also offered the directorship of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin which was about to be
established.
After a number of
false starts Einstein published, late in 1915, the
definitive version of general theory. Just before publishing
this work he lectured on general relativity at Göttingen and
he wrote:-
To my great
joy, I completely succeeded in convincing Hilbert and
Klein.
In fact Hilbert submitted for publication, a week
before Einstein completed his work, a paper which contains
the correct field equations of general relativity.
When British
eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed his predictions,
Einstein was idolised by the popular press. The London
Times ran the headline on 7 November 1919:-
Revolution in science - New theory of the
Universe - Newtonian ideas overthrown.
In 1920
Einstein's lectures in Berlin were disrupted by
demonstrations which, although officially denied, were
almost certainly anti-Jewish. Certainly there were strong
feelings expressed against his works during this period
which Einstein replied to in the press quoting Lorentz, Planck and Eddington as supporting his theories and stating
that certain Germans would have attacked them if he had
been:-
... a
German national with or without swastika instead of a Jew
with liberal international convictions...
During 1921
Einstein made his first visit to the United States. His main
reason was to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. However he received the Barnard Medal during
his visit and lectured several times on relativity. He is
reported to have commented to the chairman at the lecture he
gave in a large hall at Princeton which was overflowing with
people:-
I
never realised that so many Americans were interested in
tensor analysis.
Einstein received
the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity rather for
his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. In fact he was
not present in December 1922 to receive the prize being on a
voyage to Japan. Around this time he made many international
visits. He had visited Paris earlier in 1922 and during 1923
he visited Palestine. After making his last major scientific
discovery on the association of waves with matter in 1924 he
made further visits in 1925, this time to South America.
Among further
honours which Einstein received were the Copley Medal of the
Royal
Society in 1925 and the
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical
Society in 1926.
Niels Bohr and Einstein were to carry on a debate
on quantum theory which began at the Solvay Conference in
1927. Planck, Niels Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and
Dirac were at this conference, in addition to
Einstein. Einstein had declined to give a paper at the
conference and:-
...
said hardly anything beyond presenting a very simple
objection to the probability interpretation ....
Then he fell back into silence ...
Indeed Einstein's
life had been hectic and he was to pay the price in 1928
with a physical collapse brought on through overwork.
However he made a full recovery despite having to take
things easy throughout 1928.
By 1930 he was
making international visits again, back to the United
States. A third visit to the United States in 1932 was
followed by the offer of a post at Princeton. The idea was
that Einstein would spend seven months a year in Berlin,
five months at Princeton. Einstein accepted and left Germany
in December 1932 for the United States. The following month
the Nazis came to power in Germany and Einstein was never to
return there.
During 1933
Einstein travelled in Europe visiting Oxford, Glasgow,
Brussels and Zurich. Offers of academic posts which he had
found it so hard to get in 1901, were plentiful. He received
offers from Jerusalem, Leiden, Oxford, Madrid and Paris.
What was intended
only as a visit became a permanent arrangement by 1935 when
he applied and was granted permanent residency in the United
States. At Princeton his work attempted to unify the laws of
physics. However he was attempting problems of great depth
and he wrote:-
I have
locked myself into quite hopeless scientific problems -
the more so since, as an elderly man, I have remained
estranged from the society here...
In 1940 Einstein
became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain
his Swiss citizenship. He made many contributions to peace
during his life. In 1944 he made a contribution to the war
effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity
and putting it up for auction. It raised six million
dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of
Congress.
By 1949 Einstein
was unwell. A spell in hospital helped him recover but he
began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950.
He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, a university which he had raised funds for on his
first visit to the USA, served as a governor of the
university from 1925 to 1928 but he had turned down the
offer of a post in 1933 as he was very critical of its
administration.
One more major
event was to take place in his life. After the death of the
first president of Israel in 1952, the Israeli government
decided to offer the post of second president to Einstein.
He refused but found the offer an embarrassment since it was
hard for him to refuse without causing offence.
One week before
his death Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter
to Bertrand
Russell in which he
agreed that his name should go on a manifesto urging all
nations to give up nuclear weapons. It is fitting that one
of his last acts was to argue, as he had done all his life,
for international peace.
Einstein was
cremated at Trenton, New Jersey at 4 pm on 18 April 1955
(the day of his death). His ashes were scattered at an
undisclosed place.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E
F Robertson
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