Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (3/14/1879-4/18/1955) was a Nobel Laureate in physics. Many people don't realize that as a young man, Einstein was an indifferent student. At the age of 12, he decided to solve the riddle of the world, but he dropped out of school at age 15. He resumed school later in life, finishing four years at the Polytecnic Academy in Zurich studying physics. After graduation, he taught math and worked as a patent examiner in Switzerland. In 1905, he published his doctoral thesis and was awarded his doctorate by the Polytecnic Academy. In that same year he published four other research papers that outlined his theories on relativity, equivalence of mass and energy (e=mc²), Brownian motion, and the photon theory of light. The theory of relativity was very controversial, and although it was proven in 1919, the Nobel committee did not mention it when bestowing the prize.

Einstein had two children by his first wife. His son, Albert Hans Einstein, studied river hydraulics, including the movement of sediment and tidal flows. He was estranged from his other son. Einstein was living in Germany when WWI broke out. His wife and children were vacationing out of the country. The separation ended in divorce. Einstein was remarried in 1919. He was a critic of German militarism, but stayed in Germany after the war, believing that it had been quashed. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Einstein moved to the United States and settled in Princeton, NJ, where he eventually died. Thoughout his life, he championed the cause of peace. Although his critics often accused him of political naiveté, Einstein knew the devastation of war firsthand.

Ironically, it was a letter from Einstein to then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that led to the establishment of the Manhatten Project and the development of the atom bomb. He wrote the letter upon hearing that the Germans were making progress toward splitting the atom. He wrote to FDR urging watchfulness and preparation for swift action if the Germans were successful. He did not even know that the US had begun the research until the bomb was detonated at Hiroshima. Einsteinium, an element found only in material that has undergone massive neutron irradiation, was named after Einstein after being found in wastes at the site of the first detonation of a thermonuclear device. After the war, Einstein joined with other scientists in a call for world harmony to avoid the future use of nuclear weapons.

Einstein was an active correspondent. He exchanged letters with Sigmund Freud on violence, and with Rabindranath Tagore on the essence of Truth. He traveled extensively on lecture tours, and often complained that it kept him from continuing his work. In his later years, Einstein worked on the unified field theory, which most physicists felt was flawed in light of discoveries in quantum mechanics.