Albert Einstein
05/13/2008
German-born American physicist, writer and thinker
Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on Mar. 14, 1879. Einstein's parents, who were non observant Jews, moved from Ulm to Munich when Einstein was an infant. The family business was the manufacture of electrical parts. When the business failed, in 1894, the family moved to Milan, Italy. At this time Einstein decided officially to relinquish his German citizenship. Within a year, still without having completed secondary school, Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to pursue a course of study leading to a diploma as an electrical engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He spent the next year in nearby Aarau at the cantonal secondary school, where he enjoyed excellent teachers and first-rate facilities in physics. Einstein returned in 1896 to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he graduated, in 1900 as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics.
After two years he obtained a post at the Swiss patent office in Bern. The patent-office work required Einstein's careful attention, but while employed (1902-09) there, he completed an astonishing range of publications in theoretical physics. For the most part these texts were written in his spare time and without the benefit of close contact with either the scientific literature or theoretician colleagues. Einstein submitted one of his scientific papers to the University of Zurich to obtain a Ph.D. degree in 1905. In 1908 he sent a second paper to the University of Bern and became a lecturer there. The next year Einstein received a regular appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich.
By 1909, Einstein was recognized throughout German-speaking Europe as a leading scientific thinker. In quick succession he held professorships at the German University of Prague and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In 1914 he advanced to the most prestigious and best-paying post that a theoretical physicist could hold in central Europe, professor at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin.
Scientific Works
In the first of three seminal papers that were published in 1905, Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in quantities that were ultimately discrete. The energy of these emitted quantities, the so-called light-quanta, was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This circumstance was perplexing because classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics, had assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves propagating in a hypothetical, all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether, and that the waves could contain any amount of energy no matter how small. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe visible electromagnetic radiation, or light. According to Einstein's heuristic viewpoint, light could be imagined to consist of discrete bundles of radiation. Einstein used this interpretation to explain the photoelectric effect, by which certain metals emit electrons when illuminated by light with a given frequency. Einstein's theory, and his subsequent elaboration of it, formed the basis for much of quantum mechanics.
The second of Einstein's 1905 papers proposed what is today called the special theory of relativity. At the time Einstein knew that, according to Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's theory of electrons, the mass of an electron increased as the velocity of the electron approached the velocity of light. Einstein also knew that the electron theory, based on Maxwell's equations, carried along with it the assumption of a luminiferous ether, but that attempts to detect the physical properties of the ether had not succeeded. Einstein realized that the equations describing the motion of an electron in fact could describe the nonaccelerated motion of any particle or any suitably defined rigid body. He based his new kinematics on a reinterpretation of the classical principle of relativity, 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 classical Maxwellian theory. Einstein abandoned the hypothesis of the ether, for it played no role in his kinematics or in his reinterpretation of Lorentz's theory of electrons. As a consequence of his theory Einstein recovered the phenomenon of time dilatation, wherein time, analogous to length and mass, is a function of the velocity of a frame of reference. Later in 1905, Einstein elaborated how, in a certain manner of speaking, mass and energy were equivalent. Einstein was not the first to propose all the elements that went into the special theory of relativity; his contribution lies in having unified important parts of classical mechanics and Maxwellian electrodynamics.
The third of Einstein's seminal papers of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics, a field of study that had been elaborated by, among others, Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Unaware of Gibbs' contributions, Einstein extended Boltzmann's work and calculated the average trajectory of a microscopic particle buffeted by random collisions with molecules in a fluid or in a gas. Einstein observed that his calculations could account for brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of pollen in fluids, which had been noted by the British botanist Robert Brown. Einstein's paper provided convincing evidence for the physical existence of atom-sized molecules, which had already received much theoretical discussion. His results were independently discovered by the Polish physicist Marian von Smoluchowski and later elaborated by the French physicist Jean Perrin.
After 1905, Einstein continued working in all three of his works in the 1905 papers. He made important contributions to the quantum theory, but increasingly he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The key to an elaboration emerged in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held a priori indistinguishable from acceleration caused by mechanical forces; gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass. Einstein elevated this identity, which is implicit in the work of Isaac Newton, to a guiding principle in his attempts to explain both electromagnetic and gravitational acceleration according to one set of physical laws. In 1907 he proposed that if mass were equivalent to energy, then the principle of equivalence required that gravitational mass would interact with the apparent mass of electromagnetic radiation, which includes light. By 1911, Einstein was able to make preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be attracted, or bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun's mass. At the same time, light radiated from the Sun would interact with the Sun's mass, resulting in a slight change toward the infrared end of the Sun's optical spectrum. At this juncture Einstein also knew that any new theory of gravitation would have to account for a small but persistent anomaly in the perihelion motion of the planet Mercury.
About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossmann, by phrasing his work in terms of the tensor calculus of Tullio Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro. The tensor calculus greatly facilitated calculations in four-dimensional space-time, a notion that Einstein had obtained from Hermann Minkowski's 1907 mathematical elaboration of Einstein's own special theory of relativity. Einstein called his new work the general theory of relativity. After a number of false starts, he published the definitive form of the general theory in late 1915. In it the gravitational field equations were covariant; that is, similar to Maxwell's equations, the field equations took the same form in all equivalent frames of reference. To their advantage from the beginning, the covariant field equations gave the observed perihelion motion of the planet Mercury. In its original form, Einstein's general relativity has been verified numerous times in the past 60 years, especially during solar-eclipse expeditions when Einstein's light-deflection prediction could be tested.
Later Life
When British eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed his predictions about the general theory of relativity, Einstein was bombarded by the popular press. Einstein's personal ethics also fired public imagination. Einstein, who after returning to Germany in 1914 did not reapply for German citizenship, was one of only a handful of German professors who remained a pacifist and did not support Germany's war aims. After the war, when the victorious allies sought to exclude German scientists from international meetings, Einstein--a Jew traveling with a Swiss passport--remained an acceptable German envoy. Einstein's political views as a pacifist and a Zionist pitted him against conservatives in Germany, who branded him a traitor and a defeatist. The public success accorded his theories of relativity evoked savage attacks in the 1920s by the anti-Semitic physicists Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard, men who after 1932 tried to create a so-called Aryan physics in Germany. Just how controversial the theories of relativity remained for less flexibly minded physicists is revealed in the circumstances surrounding Einstein's reception of a Nobel Prize in 1921--awarded not for relativity but for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect.
With the rise of fascism in Germany, Einstein moved, in 1933 to the United States and abandoned his pacifism. He reluctantly agreed that the new menace had to be put down through force of arms. In this context Einstein sent a letter, in 1939, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that urged that the United States proceed to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did. The letter, composed by Einstein's friend Leo Szilard, was one of many exchanged between the White House and Einstein, and it contributed to Roosevelt's decision to fund what became the Manhattan Project.
As much he appeared to the public as a champion of unpopular causes, Einstein's central concerns always revolved around physics. At the age of 59, when other theoretical physicists would long since have abandoned original scientific research, Einstein and his co-workers Leopold Infeld and Banesh Hoffmann achieved a major new result in the general theory of relativity.
Until the end of his life Einstein sought a unified field theory, whereby the phenomena of gravitation and electromagnetism could be derived from one set of equations. After 1920, however, while retaining relativity as a fundamental concept, theoretical physicists focused more attention on the theory of quantum mechanics, as elaborated by Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others, and Einstein's later thoughts went somewhat neglected for decades. This picture has changed in more recent years. Physicists are now striving to combine Einstein's relativity theory with quantum theory in a "theory of everything," by means of such highly advanced mathematical models as superstring theories.
Einstein's Qoutes
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, scince for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
If A equals success, then the formula is _ A = _ X + _ Y + _ Z. _ X is work. _ Y is play. _ Z is keep your mouth shut.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
"If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants."
The World As I See
Albert Einstein
"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. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
"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. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or 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..."
"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 cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
"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. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
Einstein: political activist and peace advocate
The outbreak of the First World War brought Einstein's pacifist sympathies into public view. Ninety-three leading German intellectuals, including physicists such as Planck, signed a manifesto defending Germany's war conduct. Einstein and three others signed an antiwar counter-manifesto. He helped to form a nonpartisan coalition that fought for a just peace and for a supranational organization to prevent future wars. As a Swiss citizen Einstein could feel free to spend his time on theoretical physics, but he kept looking for ways to reconcile the opposing sides. "My pacifism is an instinctive feeling," he said, "a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred."
Along with Germany's military collapse in November 1918, chaotic workers' and soldiers' councils proliferated. One of Einstein's lectures at the University of Berlin was "canceled due to revolution." On November 16 Einstein was one of the original signers of a manifesto announcing the creation of a progressive middle-class party, the German Democratic Party. After a democratically elected assembly met in Weimar, Einstein formally accepted German citizenship as a gesture of support for the infant republic
With his scientific fame Einstein could act as unofficial spokesman for the Weimar Republic, and he protested the continued hostility of Germany's former enemies. In 1921 he refused to attend the third Solvay Congress in Belgium, since all other German scientists were excluded from it. In 1922 he joined a newly created Committee on Intellectual Cooperation set up under the League of Nations. The next year he resigned, distressed by the League's impotence when confronted with France's occupation of the German Ruhr. But he soon returned to the committee. As a leading member of the German League for Human Rights, he worked hard for better relations with France. He also made numerous gestures against militarism.
Einstein attracted attention to a number of causes, such as the release of political prisoners and the defense of democracy against the spread of fascism. He spoke in public, made statements to the press, signed petitions. In 1924 he defended the radical Bauhaus School of Architecture; in 1927 he signed a protest against Italian fascism; in 1929 he appealed for the commutation of death sentences given to Arab rioters in British Palestine.
Einstein traveled widely in the 1920s, both as a spokesman for liberal causes and as an esteemed member of the physics community. He visited England, France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and South America and traveled east as far as Japan, returning by way of Palestine and Spain. In 1922 he went to Sweden to accept a Nobel Prize in physics. Between 1930 and 1933 he spent each winter in Pasadena at the California Institute of Technology, each spring in Berlin, and each summer near Berlin in a home at Caputh.
Anti-Semitism was openly pursued by the powerful political right and the emerging Nazi party since 1919. Nazi physicists and their followers violently denounced Einstein's theory of relativity as "Jewish-Communist physics." At times his friends feared for his safety. Such anti-Semitism was one reason why Einstein, although he believed in world government rather than nationalism, gave public support to Zionism. "In so far as a particular community is attacked as such," he said, "it is bound to defend itself as such, so that its individual members may be able to maintain their material and spiritual interests... In present circumstances the rebuilding of Palestine is the only object that has a sufficiently strong appeal to stimulate the Jews to effective corporate action." But he objected to a law that required him to join the official Jewish religious community in Berlin. He said, "Much as I feel myself a Jew, I feel far removed from traditional religious forms."
As the Nazi movement grew stronger, Einstein helped to organize a non-partisan group, within the Jewish community, that advocated a united stand against fascism. Hitler's climb to power, bringing official support of vicious anti-Semitism, was making the position of Jews and other opponents of Nazism impossible. After Einstein left Germany in 1932 he never returned. In March 1933 he once again renounced German citizenship. His remaining property in Germany was confiscated, and his name appeared on the first Nazi list of people stripped of their citizenship.
Many universities abroad were eager to invite the renowned scientist, but he had already accepted an offer to join the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He arrived in the United States in October 1933, and in 1940 became an American citizen. In 1936 his wife Elsa died. One of her daughters and Einstein's long-time secretary lived on with Einstein in Princeton and helped with housekeeping.
During a stay in England in September 1933, Einstein met with Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, and prominent British scientists and intellectuals. He tried to warn them of the Nazi danger. Many noted academics were fleeing Germany, few of them received abroad as warmly as Einstein. He worked on behalf of the Emergency Committee to Aid Displaced German Scholars and other organizations that tried to find homes for both Jewish and political refugees.
