Albert Einstein German Scientist, Philosopher and Nobel Laureate
“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. Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German born physicist, who is known for his phenomenal contribution to theoretical physics. His best works include ‘Theory of Relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence, ‘E = mc2’. He even received a Nobel Prize in Physics, in the year 1921. Einstein published over 300 scientific works and over 150 non-scientific works. The legendary scientist is highly revered by the physics community. In the year 1999, ‘Time magazine’ named him the ‘Person of the Century’. As for the rest of the world, the name "Einstein" is synonymous with genius.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Albert Einstein is that he failed in mathematics while inschool. This however is completely untrue; while the fact is Einstein was quite late in starting to talk but he never failed in the subject although he did realize quite early that he was never really gifted in Mathematics; a fact that brought him a lot of pain of mind which is why he always sought assistance from those who had a more thorough grasp of the subject to write out formal descriptions of his theories. Albert Einstein was born in March 1879 in West Germany but moved on to Munich and later to Milan when his father’s business in dealing with equipment failed. Strangely enough, Einstein showed no special aptitude towards any subject and according to school authorities he was a disruptive child who later dropped out from school because of his dislike of the manner in which the school provided education. He also had many criticisms against the Jewish community he was born into and thought them very narrow minded while he regarded the Germans as chauvinistic and therefore acquired Swiss citizenship hoping that a small nation like Switzerland would be the best country to live in.
He began to blossom only after he entered the Polytechnic Academy in Zurich and in 1905, he earned his doctorate in physics and published four research papers in the same year on the equivalence of mass and energy, the photon theory of light, the Brownian motion, and the special theory on Relativity he introduced in his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” that shook the world of physics and made scientists look at things in a completely different way. He was instrumental in proving that no material body could move faster than the speed of light. Then in 1915, Einstein went further and proved that the General Theory of Relativity which was an extension of his Special theory was in fact the basis for the identification of gravity with inertia. When his prediction of General Relativity was provide in 1919, it became the foundation for new cosmologies and thus Albert Einstein became the Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1921. His work and his findings however were denounced by Nazi Germany because of Einstein being a Jew and so he left his homeland to take up residency in New Jersey where he joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and carried on with his work with the aim of unifying the laws of physics.
He spent the rest of his life exploring this theory searching for a universal force that would be able to link electromagnetic and subatomic forces with gravitation; but was not successful until his dying day, and which no one else has had success either to date. In spite of, or because of his vast knowledge about physics and science, Albert Einstein had a great reverence for nature and this was evident when he noted “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible” He didn’t really consider himself a Scientist but more of a philosopher who like the philosophers of the early days such as Aristotle and Plato was always trying to understand the mystical nature of the world more through mental concepts rather than through experimentation.
Einstein received several honorary doctorate degrees not only for physics; but also for science, medicine and philosophy from American and European universities. He gained much recognition from scientific academies throughout the world and was even offered the Presidency of Israel which he declined, but went on to be the founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In spite of all the accolades he received, he preferred to spend his life in intellectual solitude and relaxed listening to music. Einstein was fond of saying “...I never think of the future, it comes soon enough...” and it did when he passed away on April 18, 1955 leaving behind an unparalleled legacy.
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