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Biography of Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Short biography:

Name: Albert Einstein

Education: ETH Zurich

Place of Birth: Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire

A place of death: Princeton, New Jersey, USA

Albert Einstein– theoretical physicist and founder of modern theoretical physics: biography with photo, special and general relativity, Manhattan project.

Albert Einstein is perhaps one of the most famous scientists in the field of physics of the twentieth century. During its short biography , he revolutionized scientific thinking and is recognized as the greatest theoretical physicist who ever lived. Einstein's biography began on March 14, 1879 in a middle-class Jewish family in the city of Ulm, Germany. He, like most children, did not like school, and preferred to study at home. He didn't finish high school. His family moved to Milan in 1894 and this time he decided to officially renounce his German citizenship and become a Swiss citizen. In 1985 he tried to join the Swiss federal institute Technologies (Zurich Polytechnic), but he failed entrance exams. This time he decided to complete his secondary education in the nearby city of Aarau. In 1896 he returned to the Zurich Polytechnic, from which he successfully graduated (1900), and became a teacher in the secondary school of mathematics and physics.

Later, Albert Einstein got a job at the patent office in Bern, where he worked from 1902 to 1909. During this time he wrote an astonishing number of publications in theoretical physics. He wrote it in his spare time just for himself, without the help of scientific literature or colleagues. In the first of three articles, Einstein examined the phenomenon whereby the electromagnetic energies emitted by objects in discrete quantities. Einstein used the quantum hypothesis, the bar to describe the electromagnetic radiation of light. Einstein in 1905 put down on paper what is today called the theory of relativity. This new theory stated that the laws of physics should have the same form in any frame of reference. The theory also said that the speed of light remains constant in any frame of reference. Later, in 1905, Einstein showed an experiment proving that mass and energy are equivalent. Einstein was not the first to introduce the theory of relativity. His goal was to combine important parts of classical mechanics and electrodynamics.

In 1905, Einstein submitted papers and received his doctorate from the University of Zurich. In 1908 he became a lecturer at the University of Bern. IN next year he received another appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich. By 1909 Einstein was recognized as one of the world's leading scientific thinkers. Later he held professorships at the German University in Prague and at the Zurich Polytechnic. By 1911, Einstein was able to make preliminary predictions about how a beam of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be slightly bent towards the Sun. Around 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with the help of his friend the mathematician Marcel Grossmann. Einstein named his new job the general theory of relativity. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, he finally published the final version of general relativity in 1915.

Einstein returned to Germany in 1914 but did not apply for German citizenship. In that year he was nominated for the most prestigious post of Professor Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin. From that time onward, he never held regular classes at the university. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his 1905 work on the "photoelectric effect". He remained in Berlin until 1933. Later that year, with the rise of fascism in Germany, Einstein moved to the United States. In 1939, he sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt urging the United States to start developing the atomic bomb before Germany did. This letter, and many subsequent letters, contributed to Roosevelt's decision to fund what became the Manhattan Project. Einstein spent the rest of his life holding a research position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Albert Einstein spent the last years of his brief biography in search of unified theory, according to which the phenomena of gravity and electromagnetism, which can be extracted from one equation. The search turned out to be in vain. He died in 1955 without finding the elusive theory. Although his last thoughts have been forgotten for decades, physicists continue to seek the same goal as the dreams of Einstein, the great pioneer in the field of physical theory.

Albert Einstein is a legendary scientist who made an unprecedented revolution in science with the creation of the famous theory of relativity, the author of many other discoveries in theoretical physics, a Nobel laureate and an unshakable pacifist with a mysterious biography.

He took the third position in the list of 100 great Jews of all time, second only to Moses and Jesus. Many consider him the idol of the era, the man of the century, put him on a par with such geniuses as Maxwell and Newton. But some accusers deprive him of a halo, call him a publicized scientific plagiarist and fraudster, arguing that a number of provisions of his aforementioned theory were previously expressed by other prominent representatives of the pantheon of science.

Childhood and youth

The future theoretical physicist was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm near Munich. His mother Paulina was a housewife, the daughter of a successful grain merchant. Father Herman, on the contrary, turned out to be not a very brilliant businessman. The family had to move more than once due to the ruin of his enterprises, in particular, in 1880 to Munich. In this city, the boy had a sister, Maya.


The firstborn was born with a large and deformed head. Parents feared for a long time that their son would fall behind in mental development. He grew up closed, did not speak until the age of seven, only repeating the same phrases after other people. Later, he spoke, but did not immediately say the phrases aloud, but first reproduced them with his lips alone. Moreover, if they refused to fulfill his demands, he became terribly angry, twisted his face in fury, and threw objects that came to hand. Once, at the moment of such an attack, he nearly maimed his sister. So the family considered the boy mentally retarded. Modern scientists suggest that Asperger's syndrome could manifest itself in this way.

At the age of 6, Albert began to study music and throughout his adult life he was in love with the violin, but in his childhood he studied under duress. To the piano accompaniment of a strict mother, he played Mozart and Beethoven. A number of biographers of the scientist believe that it was the tyrant Paulina who sowed a skeptical attitude towards the female sex in Einstein's soul.

At school, the future genius studied poorly. Having entered the gymnasium at the age of 10, he behaved irreverently and impudently, preferring to educate himself rather than attend boring lessons. He was especially depressed by the study of the ancient Greek language. Even in mathematics, he had a 2 for a long time, although his interest in which woke up already in those years and began with the fact that his father presented him with a compass. Albert was shocked that mysterious forces forced the arrow to keep the same direction.


Not the last role in the formation of Albert's personality was played by a friend of their family, student Max Talmud and his uncle Jacob. They brought interesting textbooks to the smart boy, offered to solve intriguing puzzles. In particular, the teenager read Euclid's treatise "Beginnings". In addition, acquaintance with Kant's philosophical work Critique of Pure Reason made him, who had been extremely religious since childhood, think about the question of the existence of God and the nature of wars.


After another collapse of his father's business in 1894, the family moved to Pavia, a suburb of Milan. A year later, Albert joined them without graduating from the Munich gymnasium. He hoped to enter the Zurich Polytechnic and become a teacher, but he failed the entrance examinations. As a result, he happened to spend a year at the Aarau school and only after receiving a certificate in 1896 became a student at a Zurich educational institution.

Path to Science

In 1900, an able but troubled student, who allowed himself to argue with professors, graduated with excellent results. He was not offered to continue his scientific activity at the alma mater because of his quarrelsome nature and endless absences from classes. Then for two years he could not find a job in his specialty, he was in a desperate financial situation. Due to stress and poverty, he developed an ulcer.


The situation was saved by his former classmate and future famous scientist Marcel Grossman, who in 1902 helped Albert get a job at the Patent Office in Bern. By occupation, a talented young specialist had the opportunity to get acquainted with many interesting patent applications, which, according to a number of critics, allowed him over time to develop his own theoretical positions based on other people's ideas. Soon he married a former classmate (for details, see the "Personal Life" section) Mileva Marich.

In 1905, Einstein published a series of papers that became the foundation for the theories of relativity, quantum and Brownian motion. They had a huge public outcry, changing people's ideas about the world around them. In particular, he substantiated the amazing fact of a slower flow of time in moving coordinates. This meant that an astronaut who went to a distant planet at a speed faster than the speed of light would return home younger than his peers on earth.


A year later, the scientist derived his famous formula E = mc2, received a doctorate from his native university, and from 1909 began teaching there. For this discovery in 1910, Einstein was first nominated for the Nobel Prize, but did not win. Over the next ten years, committee members remained adamant and continued to reject his candidacy for the prestigious award. The main argument for their decision was the lack of experimental confirmation of the validity of the formula.


In 1911, the author of the revolutionary work moved to Prague, where he worked for a year in the oldest educational institution in Central Europe, continuing his scientific research. Then he returned to Zurich, and in 1914 went to Berlin. In addition to science, he was engaged social activities, actively advocated civil rights and against wars.

During the solar eclipse of 1919, researchers found confirmation of a number of postulates of the controversial theory, and worldwide recognition came to its author. In 1922, he finally became the Nobel laureate, however, not for the theory that was the crown of his intellectual activity, but for another discovery - the photoelectric effect. He visited Japan, India, China, the USA, and a number of European countries, where he introduced the public to his beliefs and discoveries.

In the early 1930s, the pacifist professor began to be persecuted amid growing anti-Semitic sentiment. With the advent of Hitler, he emigrated overseas, getting a place at the Princeton Research Institute. In 1934, at the invitation of Franklin Roosevelt, he visited the White House, and in 1939 he signed an appeal by scientists addressed to the American president about the need to create nuclear weapons to counter Nazi Germany, which he later regretted.


In 1952, Israel (after the death of the head Chaim Weizmann) offered the brilliant physicist to take the post of president. He declined such a flattering offer, citing his lack of experience in government activities.

Personal life of Albert Einstein

The father of the theory of relativity was an eccentric - he never wore socks, did not like to brush his teeth, but he was successful with women, had about ten mistresses in his life, and was married twice.

His first love was Marie, the daughter of Professor Jost Winteler, in whose house he lived during his studies in Aarau. After Albert left for Zurich, their romance ended, but the girl experienced their break for a long time, which aggravated her mental state. She subsequently ended up in a mental hospital, where she died.


The second chosen one of the scientist was a classmate, a brilliant mathematician and physicist, Mileva Marich. They got married in 1903 in Bern. The girl was outwardly unsightly and limped. Albert's parents were perplexed why he had chosen an ugly woman as his wife, to which the physicist replied: “So what! You should have heard her vocals.

Documentary about Albert Einstein

True, the passionate love of a genius for her very soon cooled down. He presented her with a list of humiliating conditions of living together, in fact turning her beloved into a housekeeper and scientific secretary. Moreover, he convinced his wife to give away their one-year-old daughter Lieserl, born in 1902 and distracting the man from scientific activity, to another family, where the baby soon died of scarlet fever and inadequate care.

In 1904, the couple had a son, Hans Albert, in 1910, Eduard, who later fell ill with schizophrenia and was sent by his father forever to a psychiatric hospital. The eldest son grew up gloomy and unsociable, having matured, refused to study theoretical physics, disliking his father for his attitude towards his mother and brother. The family broke up due to Albert's betrayals in 1914, he left for Berlin. As compensation for divorce, Albert gave Marich 32 thousand dollars - a prize for discovering the photoelectric effect.


After the divorce, the physicist married his cousin Elsa, who raised two daughters from a previous marriage - the younger Margo and a marriageable girl named Ilse. At first, Einstein had tender feelings for the latter, but having been refused, he settled on her mother.

Unlike the first wife, the cousin was a narrow-minded woman and looked through her fingers at her husband's infidelities. Albert adored the fairer sex, and many beauties were in love with him, including Margot. Also, the scientist was passionately fond of sailing. He liked to sail alone on a yacht. In music and literature, he was a conservative - he loved the classics.

Death

The eccentric genius with a pipe and tousled hair was incredibly popular. Streets, towers, telescopes, a crater on the Moon, a quasar were named after him. In 1955, his health deteriorated greatly. He ended up in a clinic, in anticipation of his death, he was calm and peaceful.


On the eve of his death on April 18 from an aortic rupture, he destroyed the manuscript of his latest research. What made him do this remains a mystery to this day.

After the autopsy of the scientist's body, pathologist Thomas Harvey made an interesting observation. In the left hemisphere of Einstein's brain, an abnormal number of glial cells were observed, "feeding" the neurons. And, as you know, the left hemisphere is responsible for logic and "exact sciences". Also, despite the advanced age of the genius, there were practically no degenerative changes in his brain that are characteristic of older people.


Notable living descendants of Albert Einstein include his great-grandchildren Thomas, Paul, Eduard and Mira Einstein. Thomas is a doctor and runs a clinic in Los Angeles. Paul plays the violin. Edward (whom everyone just calls Ted) dropped out of high school and built a successful business - he owns a furniture store. Mira works in telemarketing and plays musical instruments in her spare time.

Scientist Albert Einstein gained fame thanks to his scientific work, which allowed him to become one of the founders of theoretical physics. One of his most famous works is the general and special theory of relativity. This scientist and thinker has more than 600 works on a variety of topics.

Nobel Prize

In 1921, Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He received an award for discovery of the photoelectric effect.

At the presentation, other works of the physicist were also discussed. In particular, the theory of relativity and gravity was supposed to be evaluated after their confirmation in the future.

Einstein's theory of relativity

It is curious that Einstein himself explained his theory of relativity with humor:

If you hold your hand over the fire for one minute, then it will seem like an hour, but an hour spent with your girlfriend will seem like one minute.

That is, time flows in different circumstances in different ways. About others scientific discoveries the physicist also spoke in a peculiar way. For example, everyone can be sure that it is impossible to do something definite until there is an "ignoramus" who will do it only because he does not know about the opinion of the majority.

Albert Einstein said that he discovered his theory of relativity quite by accident. One day he noticed that a car moving relative to another car at the same speed and in the same direction remains stationary.

These 2 cars, moving relative to the Earth and other objects on it, relative to each other are at rest.

The famous formula E=mc 2

Einstein argued that if a body generates energy in video radiation, then the decrease in its mass is proportional to the amount of energy released by it.

This is how the well-known formula was born: the amount of energy is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the square of the speed of light (E=mc 2). The speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second.

Even a negligibly small mass, accelerated to the speed of light, will radiate a huge amount of energy. The invention of the atomic bomb confirmed the correctness of this theory.

short biography

Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879 in the small German town of Ulm. He spent his childhood in Munich. Albert's father was an entrepreneur, his mother was a housewife.

The future scientist was born weak, with a big head. His parents were afraid that he would not survive. However, he survived and grew up with an increased curiosity about everything. However, he was very persistent.

Study period

Einstein was bored studying at the gymnasium. In his free time, he read non-fiction books. Most Interest at that time, astronomy evoked in him.

After graduating from high school, Einstein leaves for Zurich and goes to study at the Polytechnic School. Upon graduation, he receives a diploma physics and mathematics teachers. Alas, as many as 2 years of looking for a job did not give a result.

During this period, Albert had a hard time, besides, due to constant hunger, he developed a liver disease that tormented him until the end of his life. But even these difficulties did not discourage him from studying physics.

Career and first successes

IN 1902 In the same year, Albert takes a job at the Berne Patent Office as a technical examiner on a small salary.

By 1905, Einstein already had 5 scientific papers. In 1909 he became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich. In 1911 he became a professor at the German University in Prague, from 1914 to 1933 he was a professor at the University of Berlin and director of the Berlin Institute of Physics.

He worked on his theory of relativity for 10 years and completed it only in 1916. In 1919 there was a solar eclipse. It was observed by scientists of the Royal Society of London. They also confirmed the probable correctness of Einstein's theory of relativity.

Emigration to the USA

IN 1933 The Nazis came to power in Germany. All scientific papers and other works were burned. The Einstein family emigrated to the United States. Albert became professor of physics at the Institute for Basic Research at Princeton. IN 1940 year he renounces his German citizenship and becomes officially an American citizen.

In recent years, the scientist lived in Princeton, worked on a unified field theory, played the violin in moments of rest, and rode a boat on the lake.

Albert Einstein died April 18, 1955. After his death, his brain was studied for genius, but nothing exceptional was found.

Albert Einstein (German: Albert Einstein,; March 14, 1879, Ulm, Württemberg, Germany - April 18, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) - theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 , public figure-humanist. Lived in Germany (1879-1893, 1914-1933), Switzerland (1893-1914) and the USA (1933-1955). Honorary doctor of about 20 leading universities in the world, a member of many Academies of Sciences, including a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1926).
Albert Einstein 1920


Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the South German city of Ulm, into a poor Jewish family. His parents married three years before their son was born, on August 8, 1876. Her father, Hermann Einstein (1847-1902), was at that time a co-owner of a small enterprise for the production of feather stuffing for mattresses and featherbeds.
Hermann Einstein

Mother, Pauline Einstein (nee Koch, 1858-1920), came from the family of a wealthy corn merchant Julius Derzbacher (changed his surname to Koch in 1842) and Jetta Bernheimer.
Paulina Einstein

In the summer of 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein, together with his brother Jakob, founded a small company selling electrical equipment.
Albert Einstein at the age of three. 1882

Albert's younger sister Maria (Maya, 1881-1951) was born in Munich.
Albert Einstein with his sister

Albert Einstein received his primary education at a local Catholic school. For about 12 years he experienced a state of deep religiosity, but soon reading popular science books made him a freethinker and forever gave rise to a skeptical attitude towards authorities. Of childhood impressions, Einstein later recalled as the most powerful: the compass, Euclid's Elements, and (circa 1889) Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In addition, at the initiative of his mother, he began playing the violin at the age of six. Einstein's passion for music continued throughout his life. Already in the USA in Princeton, in 1934 Albert Einstein gave a charity concert, where he played the works of Mozart on the violin in favor of scientists and cultural figures who emigrated from Nazi Germany.
Albert Einstein is 14 years old.1893

In the gymnasium, he was not among the first students (the exception was mathematics and Latin). The ingrained system of rote learning by students (which, he believed, was harmful to the very spirit of learning and creative thinking), as well as the authoritarian attitude of teachers towards students, caused Albert Einstein's rejection, so he often entered into disputes with his teachers.
In 1894 the Einsteins moved from Munich to italian city Pavia, near Milan, where the brothers Herman and Jacob moved their firm. Albert himself stayed with relatives in Munich for some time to complete all six classes of the gymnasium. Never having received his Abitur, in 1895 he joined his family in Pavia.
In the autumn of 1895, Albert Einstein arrived in Switzerland to take the entrance exams to the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic) in Zurich and become a teacher of physics. Having brilliantly shown himself in the exam in mathematics, he at the same time failed the exams in botany and French, which prevented him from entering the Zurich Polytechnic. However, the director of the school advised the young man to enter the final class of the school in Aarau (Switzerland) in order to get a certificate and repeat the admission.
At the cantonal school of Aarau, Albert Einstein devoted his free time to studying Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. In September 1896, he successfully passed all the final exams at school, with the exception of the French language exam, and received a certificate
Abitur given to Albert Einstein in 1896, at the age of 17, after attending a cantonal high school in Aarau, Switzerland.

In October 1896 he was admitted to the Polytechnic Faculty of Education. Here he became friends with a classmate, mathematician Marcel Grossman (1878-1936), and also met a Serbian student of the Faculty of Medicine Mileva Marich (4 years older than him), who later became his wife. In the same year, Einstein renounced German citizenship. To obtain Swiss citizenship, it was required to pay 1,000 Swiss francs, but the family's poor financial situation allowed him to do this only after 5 years. The father's enterprise completely went bankrupt this year, Einstein's parents moved to Milan, where Hermann Einstein, already without a brother, opened an electrical equipment trading company.
The style and methodology of teaching at the Polytechnic differed significantly from the ossified and authoritarian Prussian school, so further education was easier for the young man. He had first-class teachers, including the remarkable geometer Hermann Minkowski (Einstein often missed his lectures, which he later sincerely regretted) and the analyst Adolf Hurwitz.
Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic in 1900 with a degree in mathematics and physics. He passed the exams successfully, but not brilliantly. Many professors highly appreciated the abilities of the student Einstein, but no one wanted to help him continue his scientific career. Einstein himself later recalled: I was bullied by my professors, who did not like me because of my independence and closed my path to science.
Although the following year, 1901, Einstein received Swiss citizenship, but until the spring of 1902 he could not find a permanent job - even as a school teacher. Due to the lack of earnings, he literally starved, not taking food for several days in a row. This caused liver disease, from which the scientist suffered until the end of his life. Despite the hardships that haunted him in 1900-1902, Einstein found time to further study physics.
Albert Einstein with friends. 1903

In 1901, the Berlin Annals of Physics published his first article, "Consequences of the Theory of Capillarity" (Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen), devoted to the analysis of the forces of attraction between the atoms of liquids based on the theory of capillarity. A former classmate Marcel Grossman helped to overcome difficulties, recommending Einstein for the position of an expert of the III class in the Federal Office for Patenting Inventions (Bern) with a salary of 3,500 francs a year (during his student years he lived on 100 francs a month).
Einstein worked at the Patent Office from July 1902 to October 1909, working primarily on expert assessment applications for inventions. In 1903 he became a permanent employee of the Bureau. The nature of the work allowed Einstein to devote his free time to research in the field of theoretical physics.
Albert Einstein is 25 years old. 1904

In October 1902, Einstein received news from Italy that his father was ill; Hermann Einstein died a few days after his son's arrival.
On January 6, 1903, Einstein married twenty-seven-year-old Mileva Marich. They had three children.
Mileva Marić

The year 1905 entered the history of physics as the "Year of Miracles" (lat. Annus Mirabilis). This year, the Annals of Physics, Germany's leading physics journal, published three of Einstein's seminal papers that ushered in a new scientific revolution.
Many prominent physicists remained true to classical mechanics and the concept of aether, among them Lorentz, J. J. Thomson, Lenard, Lodge, Nernst, Win. At the same time, some of them (for example, Lorentz himself) did not reject the results of the special theory of relativity, but interpreted them in the spirit of Lorentz's theory, preferring to look at the space-time concept of Einstein-Minkowski as a purely mathematical technique.
In 1907, Einstein published the quantum theory of heat capacity (the old theory at low temperatures strongly diverged from the experiment. At the same time, Smoluchovsky came to similar conclusions, whose article was published a few months later than Einstein's. Einstein presented his work on statistical mechanics, entitled "A New Definition of the Sizes of Molecules", to the Polytechnic as a dissertation and in the same 1905 received the title of Doctor of Philosophy (equivalent to a candidate of natural sciences) in physics. The following year, Einstein developed his theory in a new paper, "On the Theory of Brownian Motion." Soon (1908), Perrin's measurements fully confirmed the adequacy of Einstein's model, which became the first experimental proof of the molecular-kinetic theory, which was under active attack from the positivists in those years.
The work of 1905 brought Einstein, although not immediately, worldwide fame. On April 30, 1905, he sent the text of his doctoral dissertation on the topic "A new definition of the size of molecules." On January 15, 1906, he received his Ph.D. in physics. He writes and meets with the world's most famous physicists, while Planck in Berlin incorporates the theory of relativity into his training course. In the letters he is called "Mr. Professor", but for another four years (until October 1909), Einstein continues to serve in the Patent Office; in 1906 he was promoted (he became an expert of the II class) and his salary was increased. In October 1908, Einstein was invited to read an elective course at the University of Bern, however, without any payment. In 1909 he attended a congress of naturalists in Salzburg, where the elite of German physics gathered, and met Planck for the first time; over 3 years of correspondence, they quickly became close friends and maintained this friendship until the end of their lives. After the congress, Einstein finally received a paid position as an extraordinary professor at the University of Zurich (December 1909), where his old friend Marcel Grossmann taught geometry. The pay was small, especially for a family with two children, and in 1911 Einstein accepted without hesitation an invitation to head the department of physics at the German University in Prague. During this period, Einstein continued to publish a series of papers on thermodynamics, relativity and quantum theory. In Prague, he activates research on the theory of gravitation, aiming to create a relativistic theory of gravity and to fulfill the old dream of physicists - to exclude Newtonian long-range action from this area.
In 1911, Einstein participated in the First Solvay Congress (Brussels), dedicated to quantum physics. There he had his only meeting with Poincaré, who continued to reject the theory of relativity, although he personally treated Einstein with great respect.
Photos of the participants of the first Solvay Congress in 1911 Brussels, Belgium.
The Solvay Congresses, a series of congresses that began at the visionary initiative of Ernest Solvay and continued under the leadership of the International Institute of Physics he founded, provided a unique opportunity for physicists to discuss the fundamental problems that were at the center of their attention at various periods.
Seated (left to right): Walter Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay, Hendrik Lorenz, Emil Warburg, Wilhelm Wien, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Marie Curie, Henri Poincaré.
Standing (left to right): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindmann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenorl, Georg Hostlet, Eduard Herzen, James Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike Kamerling-Onnes, Albert Einstein , Paul Langevin.

A year later, Einstein returned to Zurich, where he became a professor at his native Polytechnic and lectured there on physics. In 1913 he attended the Congress of Naturalists in Vienna, where he visited the 75-year-old Ernst Mach; Once Mach's criticism of Newtonian mechanics made a great impression on Einstein and ideologically prepared him for the innovations of the theory of relativity.
Second Solvay Congress (1913)
Seated (left to right): Walter Nernst, Ernest Rutherford, Wilhelm Wien, Joseph John Thomson, Emil Warburg, Hendrik Lorenz, Marcel Brillouin, William Barlow, Heike Kamerling-Onnes, Robert Williams Wood, Louis Georg Gouy, Pierre Weiss.
Standing (left to right): Friedrich Hasenorl, Jules Emile Verschafelt, James Hopwood Jeans, William Henry Bragg, Max von Laue, Heinrich Rubens, Marie Curie, Robert Goldschmidt, Arnold Sommerfeld, Eduard Herzen, Albert Einstein, Frederick Lindmann, Maurice de Broglie, William Pope, Edward Gruneisen, Martin Knudsen, Georg Hostlet, Paul Langevin.

At the end of 1913, on the recommendation of Planck and Nernst, Einstein received an invitation to head the physical research institute being created in Berlin; he is also enrolled as a professor at the University of Berlin. In addition to being close to a friend Planck, this position had the advantage of not obliging him to be distracted by teaching. He accepted the invitation, and in the pre-war year of 1914, a staunch pacifist Einstein arrived in Berlin. Mileva stayed with her children in Zurich, their family broke up. In February 1919 they officially divorced.
Albert Einstein with Fritz Haber, 1914

In 1915, in a conversation with the Dutch physicist Wander de Haas, Einstein proposed a scheme and calculation of the experiment, which, after successful implementation, was called the "Einstein-de Haas effect". The result of the experiment inspired Niels Bohr, who created the planetary model of the atom two years earlier, because he confirmed that circular electron currents exist inside atoms, and electrons do not radiate in their orbits. It is these assumptions that Bohr made the basis of his model. In addition, it was found that the total magnetic moment is twice as large as expected; the reason for this was clarified when the spin was discovered - the intrinsic angular momentum of the electron.
In June 1919, Einstein married his maternal cousin Else Löwenthal (née Einstein, 1876-1936) and adopted her two children. At the end of the year, his seriously ill mother Paulina moved in with them; she died in February 1920. Judging by the letters, Einstein was very upset by her death.

Albert and Elsa Einstein meet reporters

After the end of the war, Einstein continued to work in the old areas of physics, and also engaged in new areas - relativistic cosmology and the "Unified Field Theory", which, according to his plan, was to combine gravity, electromagnetism and (preferably) the theory of the microcosm. The first paper on cosmology, "Cosmological Considerations to the General Theory of Relativity", appeared in 1917. After that, Einstein experienced a mysterious "invasion of diseases" - in addition to serious problems with the liver, a stomach ulcer was discovered, then jaundice and general weakness. For several months he did not get out of bed, but continued to work actively. Only in 1920, the disease receded.
Photograph of Albert Einstein in his office at the University of Berlin in 1920.

Einstein in the home of Leiden University physics professor Paul Ehrenfest in 1920.

Einstein visiting Amsterdam with experimental physicist Peter Zeman (left) and with his friend Paul Ehrenfest. (circa 1920)

In May 1920, Einstein, along with other members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, was sworn in as a civil servant and was legally considered a German citizen. However, he retained Swiss citizenship until the end of his life. In the 1920s, receiving invitations from everywhere, he traveled extensively in Europe (on a Swiss passport),
Albert Einstein in Barcelona, ​​1923

lectured for scientists, students and for the inquisitive public.
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921

Einstein speaking in Gothenburg, Sweden.1923

He also visited the United States, where a special welcoming resolution of the Congress (1921) was adopted in honor of the eminent guest.
Albert Einstein and observatory staff near the 40-inch refractor of the Yerkes Observatory. 1921

Tour of Marconi Station in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Famous scientists are present in the photo, including Tesla, 1921

At the end of 1922 he visited India, where he had a long association with Tagore, and China. Einstein met winter in Japan.
Visit of Albert Einstein to Tohoku University. From left to right: Kotaro Honda, Albert Einstein, Keichi Aichi, Shirouta Kusakabe. 1922

In 1923 he spoke in Jerusalem, where it was planned soon (1925) to open the Hebrew University.
Einstein was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics, but the members of the Nobel Committee for a long time did not dare to award the prize to the author of such revolutionary theories. In the end, a diplomatic solution was found: the prize for 1921 was awarded to Einstein (at the very end of 1922) for the theory of the photoelectric effect, that is, for the most indisputable and well-tested work in the experiment; however, the text of the decision contained a neutral addition: "... and for other work in the field of theoretical physics."
On November 10, 1922, Christopher Aurvillius, secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, wrote to Einstein:
Albert Einstein in Berlin. 1922

As I already informed you by telegram, the Royal Academy of Sciences at its yesterday's meeting decided to award you the prize in physics for the past (1921) year, thus acknowledging your work in theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, without taking into account your work on the theory of relativity and the theory of gravity, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future.
Naturally, Einstein devoted the traditional Nobel speech (1923) to the theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein. Official photograph of the 1921 Nobel Prize winner in physics.

In 1924, the young Indian physicist Shatyendranath Bose, in a short letter, asked Einstein to help him publish an article in which he put forward the assumption that formed the basis of modern quantum statistics. Bose proposed to consider light as a gas of photons. Einstein concluded that the same statistics could be used for atoms and molecules in general. In 1925, Einstein published an article by Bose in German translation, and then his own article, in which he outlined a generalized Bose model applicable to systems of identical particles with integer spin, called bosons. Based on this quantum statistics, now known as Bose-Einstein statistics, both physicists back in the mid-1920s theoretically substantiated the existence of the fifth state of aggregation of matter - the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Portrait of Albert Einstein. 1925

In 1927, at the Fifth Solvay Congress, Einstein strongly opposed the "Copenhagen interpretation" of Max Born and Niels Bohr, which treats the mathematical model of quantum mechanics as essentially probabilistic. Einstein stated that the supporters of this interpretation “make virtue out of need”, and the probabilistic nature only indicates that our knowledge of the physical essence of microprocesses is incomplete. He sarcastically remarked: "God does not play dice" (German: Der Herrgott würfelt nicht), to which Niels Bohr objected: "Einstein, don't tell God what to do." Einstein accepted the "Copenhagen interpretation" only as a temporary, incomplete version, which, as physics progresses, should be replaced by a complete theory of the microworld. He himself made attempts to create a deterministic non-linear theory, the approximate consequence of which would be quantum mechanics.
Solvay Congress of 1927 on quantum mechanics.
1st row (left to right): Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Henrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles Guy, Charles Wilson, Owen Richardson.
2nd row (left to right): Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Bragg, Hendrik Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr.
Standing (from left to right): Auguste Picard, Emile Hanrio, Paul Ehrenfest, Eduard Herzen, Theophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules Emile Verschafelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Fowler, Leon Brillouin.

In 1928, Einstein saw off Lorentz on his last journey, with whom he became very friendly in his last years. It was Lorentz who nominated Einstein for the Nobel Prize in 1920 and endorsed it the following year.
Albert Einstein and Hendrik Anton Lorenz in Leiden in 1921.

In 1929, the world celebrated Einstein's 50th birthday with a bang. The hero of the day did not take part in the celebrations and hid in his villa near Potsdam, where he grew roses with enthusiasm. Here he received friends - scientists, Tagore, Emmanuel Lasker, Charlie Chaplin and others.
Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore

Albert Einstein received an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne University in Paris in November 1929.

Albert Einstein plays the violin during a charity concert at the New Synagogue in Berlin, January 29, 1930.

Portrait of Albert Einstein taken by the clairvoyant Madame Sylvia in Berlin in 1930. Long time it hung in the visitors' room in her office

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein at the 1930 Solvay Congress in Brussels

Einstein opens the radio show. Berlin, August 1930

Einstein on a radio show Berlin, August 1930

In 1931, Einstein again visited the United States.
Einstein's departure to America. December 1930

Albert Einstein in 1931 was struck by the enthusiasm of journalists in the United States who wanted him to explain his theory of relativity to them. Einstein said it would take at least three days

In Pasadena, he was very warmly received by Michelson, who had four months to live.
Albert Einstein, Albert Abraham Michelson, Robert Andrews Milliken.1931

Returning to Berlin in the summer, Einstein, in a speech before the Physical Society, paid tribute to the memory of the remarkable experimenter who laid the foundation stone of the theory of relativity.
Until about 1926, Einstein worked in very many areas of physics, from cosmological models to the study of the causes of meanders in rivers. Further, with rare exceptions, he focuses his efforts on quantum problems and the Unified Field Theory.
Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. December 1925

As the economic crisis grew in Weimar Germany, political instability intensified, contributing to the strengthening of radical nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Insults and threats against Einstein became more frequent, one of the leaflets even offered a large reward (50,000 marks) on his head. After the Nazis came to power, all the works of Einstein were either attributed to "Aryan" physicists, or declared a distortion of true science. Lenard, who headed the German Physics group, proclaimed: “The most important example of the dangerous influence of Jewish circles on the study of nature is Einstein with his theories and mathematical chatter, made up of old information and arbitrary additions ... We must understand that it is unworthy of a German to be a spiritual follower of a Jew ". An uncompromising racial purge unfolded in all scientific circles in Germany.
In 1933, Einstein had to leave Germany, to which he was very attached, forever.
Albert Einstein and his wife after their exile in Belgium, where they lived in the Villa Savoyarde in Haan. 1933

Villa Savoyarde in Haan (Belgium), where Einstein briefly lived after being expelled from Germany. 1933

Einstein gives an interview to journalists at Villa Savoyarde in Belgium. 1933

Albert Einstein with his wife in 1933 at a villa in Savoyarde.

Together with his family, he left for the United States of America with visitor visas.
Albert Einstein in Santa Barbara, 1933

Soon, in protest against the crimes of Nazism, he renounced German citizenship and membership in the Prussian and Bavarian academies of sciences.
After moving to the US, Albert Einstein was appointed professor of physics at the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The eldest son, Hans-Albert (1904-1973), soon followed him (1938); he subsequently became a recognized specialist in hydraulics and a professor at the University of California (1947). Einstein's youngest son, Eduard (1910-1965), fell ill with a severe form of schizophrenia around 1930 and ended up in a Zurich psychiatric hospital. Einstein's cousin, Lina, died in Auschwitz, another sister, Bertha Dreyfus, died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp
Albert Einstein with his daughter and son. November 1930

In the United States, Einstein instantly became one of the most famous and respected people in the country, gaining a reputation as the most brilliant scientist in history, as well as the personification of the image of the “absent-minded professor” and the intellectual capabilities of man in general. In January of the following year, 1934, he was invited to the White House to see President Franklin Roosevelt, had a cordial conversation with him, and even spent the night there. Every day, Einstein received hundreds of letters of various content, to which (even children's ones) he tried to answer. Being a naturalist with a worldwide reputation, he remained an accessible, modest, undemanding and affable person.
Portrait of Albert Einstein. 1934

In December 1936, Elsa died of heart disease; Marcel Grossmann had died three months earlier in Zurich. Einstein's loneliness was brightened up by sister Maya,
Sister Maya

Margo's stepdaughter (Elsa's daughter from her first marriage), Ellen Dukas's secretary, and Tiger the cat. To the surprise of the Americans, Einstein never got a car and a TV. Maya was partially paralyzed after a stroke in 1946, and every evening Einstein read books to his beloved sister.
In August 1939, Einstein signed a letter written at the initiative of Leo Szilard, an immigrant physicist from Hungary, addressed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The letter drew the President's attention to the possibility that Nazi Germany would acquire an atomic bomb.
Albert Einstein receives a certificate of American citizenship from Judge Philip Foreman. October 1, 1940

After several months of deliberation, Roosevelt decided to take this threat seriously and opened his own project to create an atomic weapon. Einstein himself did not take part in these works. Later, he regretted the letter he signed, realizing that for the new US leader Harry Truman, nuclear energy serves as a tool of intimidation. In the future, he criticized the development of nuclear weapons, their use in Japan and testing at Bikini Atoll (1954), and considered his involvement in accelerating work on the American nuclear program the greatest tragedy of his life. Widely known were his aphorisms: "We won the war, but not the peace"; "If the third World War will be fought with atomic bombs, then the fourth - with stones and sticks.
70th anniversary celebration. 1949

IN post-war years Einstein became one of the founders of the Pugwash Peace Movement. Although his first conference was held after the death of Einstein (1957), the initiative to create such a movement was expressed in the widely known Russell-Einstein Manifesto (written jointly with Bertrand Russell), which also warned of the danger of creating and using a hydrogen bomb. As part of this movement, Einstein, who was its chairman, together with Albert Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell, Frederic Joliot-Curie and other world-famous scientists, fought against the arms race, the creation of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Einstein also called, in the name of preventing new war, to the creation of a world government, for which he received sharp criticism in the Soviet press (1947)
Niels Bohr, James Frank, Albert Einstein, October 3, 1954

Until the end of his life, Einstein continued to work on the study of the problems of cosmology, but he directed his main efforts to the creation of a unified field theory.
In 1955, Einstein's health deteriorated rapidly. He wrote a will and told his friends: "I have fulfilled my task on earth." His last work was an unfinished appeal calling for the prevention of nuclear war.
His stepdaughter Margo recalled her last meeting with Einstein in the hospital: He spoke with deep calm, about doctors even with a touch of humor, and waited for his death as a forthcoming "phenomenon of nature." How fearless he was in life, so quiet and peaceful he met death. Without any sentimentality and without regrets, he left this world.
Albert Einstein in the last years of his life (probably 1950)

The scientist who turned mankind's ideas about the Universe upside down, Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955 at 1:25 a.m., at the age of 77 in Princeton, from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Before his death, he spoke a few words in German, but the American nurse was unable to reproduce them later.
On April 19, 1955, the funeral of the great scientist took place without wide publicity, at which only 12 of his closest friends were present. His body was burned in the Ewing Cemetery crematorium and the ashes scattered to the wind.
Newspaper headlines with obituaries. 1955

Einstein had a passion for music, especially 18th-century compositions. IN different years among his preferred composers were Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Haydn and Schubert, and in recent years, Brahms. He played the violin well, with which he never parted.
Albert Einstein plays the violin. 1921

Violin Concerto by Albert Einstein. 1941

He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York with Julian Huxley, Thomas Mann, and John Dewey.
Thomas Mann with Albert Einstein at Princeton, 1938

He strongly condemned the "Oppenheimer case", who in 1953 was accused of "communist sympathies" and removed from secret work.
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein talk at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. 1940s

uptight rapid growth anti-Semitism in Germany, Einstein supported the call of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine and spoke on this subject with a number of articles and speeches. The idea of ​​opening the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1925) received especially active assistance from him.
The leaders of the World Zionist Organization, upon their arrival in New York, met with Albert Einstein. In the photo Mossinson, Einstein, Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Ussyshkin. 1921

He explained his position:
Until recently, I lived in Switzerland, and while I was there, I did not realize my Jewishness ...
When I arrived in Germany, I first learned that I was a Jew, and it was more non-Jews than Jews who helped me make this discovery ... Then I realized that only a common cause, which would be dear to all Jews in the world, could lead to the revival of the people ... If If we did not have to live among intolerant, soulless and cruel people, I would be the first to reject nationalism in favor of universal humanity.
Dr. Albert Einstein and Meyer Weisgal arrived at the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine. 1946

Albert Einstein testifies on behalf of the UN about the illegal restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine.

In 1947, Einstein welcomed the establishment of the State of Israel, hoping for a binational Arab-Jewish solution to the Palestine problem. He wrote to Paul Ehrenfest in 1921: "Zionism is truly a new Jewish ideal and can restore the joy of existence to the Jewish people." Already after the Holocaust, he remarked: “Zionism did not protect German Jewry from destruction. But for those who survived, Zionism gave inner strength to endure the disaster with dignity, without losing healthy self-respect.” In 1952, Einstein even received an offer to become the second president of Israel, which the scientist politely refused, citing a lack of experience in such work. Einstein bequeathed all his letters and manuscripts (and even the copyright for the commercial use of his image and name) to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Albert Einstein with Ben Gurion, 1951

In addition
Albert Einstein on the steamship Portland, December 1931

Albert Einstein arriving at Newark Airport in April 1939.

Albert Einstein lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.1940s

Albert Einstein 1947

Einstein Albert (1879-1955), an outstanding theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern physics, developed the special and general theories of relativity.

Born in the German city of Ulm, in a poor Jewish family of Herman and Paulina Einstein. attended the Catholic primary school in Munich (subsequently, believing in the existence of God, he did not distinguish between Christian and Jewish doctrine). The boy grew up withdrawn and uncommunicative, did not show any significant success in school. From the age of six, at the insistence of his mother, he began to play the violin. Einstein's passion for music continued throughout his life.

After the final ruin of the father of the family in 1894, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia near Milan (Italy). In the autumn of 1895, Albert Einstein arrived in Switzerland to take the entrance exams to the Higher Technical School (the so-called Polytechnic) in Zurich. Brilliantly showing himself in the exam in mathematics, he failed the exams in botany and French at the same time. In October 1896, on the second attempt, he was admitted to the Faculty of Education. Here he met a Hungarian-born Serbian student, Mileva Marić, who later became his wife.

In 1900, Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic with a diploma in mathematics and physics. In 1901 he received Swiss citizenship, but until the spring of 1902 he could not find a permanent job. Despite the hardships that haunted him in 1900-1902, Einstein found time to further study physics. In 1901, the Berlin "Annals of Physics" published his first article "Consequences of the theory of capillarity", devoted to the analysis of the forces of attraction between atoms of liquids based on the theory of capillarity. July 1902 to October 1909 the great physicist worked in the patent office, mainly patenting inventions related to electromagnetism. The nature of the work allowed Einstein to devote his free time to research in the field of theoretical physics.

On January 6, 1903, Einstein married 27-year-old Mileva Marich. The influence of Mileva Maric, a trained mathematician, on the work of her husband remains an unresolved issue to this day. However, their marriage was more of an intellectual union, and Albert Einstein himself called his wife "a creature equal to me, as strong and independent as I am." As early as 1904, the Annals of Physics received from Albert Einstein a number of articles devoted to the study of questions of static mechanics and molecular physics. They were published in 1905, inaugurating the so-called "Year of Miracles" when Einstein's four papers revolutionized theoretical physics, giving rise to the theory of relativity. In 1909-1913. he is a professor at the Zurich Polytechnic, in 1914-1933. Professor at the University of Berlin and director of the Institute of Physics.

In 1915 he completed the creation of the general theory of relativity or the modern relativistic theory of gravitation, and established a connection between space, time and matter. Derived an equation describing the gravitational field. In 1921, Einstein became a Nobel Prize winner, as well as a member of many academies of sciences, in particular, a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the physicist was persecuted and left Germany forever, leaving for the United States.

After moving, he was appointed professor of physics at the newly established Institute for Basic Research in Princeton, New Jersey. At Princeton, he continued to work on the study of cosmology and the creation of a unified field theory, designed to combine the theory of gravity and electromagnetism. In the United States, Einstein instantly became one of the most famous and respected people in the country, gained a reputation as the most brilliant scientist in the history of mankind, as well as the personification of the image of an "absent-minded professor" and the intellectual capabilities of a person in general.

Albert Einstein died April 18, 1955 in Princeton from an aortic aneurysm. His ashes were burned at the Ewing Simteri crematorium and the ashes scattered to the wind.

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