Albert Einstein was born in Germany
in 1879. He enjoyed classical music and played the violin. One story Einstein
liked to tell about his childhood was of a wonder he saw when he was four
or five years old: a magnetic compass. The needle's invariable northward
swing, guided by an invisible force, profoundly impressed the child. The
compass convinced him that there had to be "something behind things, something
deeply hidden."
Even as a small boy Albert Einstein
was self-sufficient and thoughtful. According to family legend he was a
slow talker, pausing to consider what he would say. His sister remembered
the concentration and perseverance with which he would build houses of
cards.
Albert Einstein's first job was that
of patent clerk.
In 1933, he joined the staff of the
newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He
accepted this position for life, living there until his death. Einstein
is probably familiar to most people for his mathematical equation about
the nature of energy, E = MC2.
Albert Einstein wrote a paper with
a new understanding of the structure of light. He argued that light can
act as though it consists of discrete, independent particles of energy,
in some ways like the particles of a gas. A few years before, Max Planck's
work had contained the first suggestion of a discreteness in energy, but
Einstein went far beyond this. His revolutionary proposal seemed to contradict
the universally accepted theory that light consists of smoothly oscillating
electromagnetic waves. But Einstein showed that light quanta, as he called
the particles of energy, could help to explain phenomena being studied
by experimental physicists. For example, he made clear how light ejects
electrons from metals.
There was a well-known kinetic energy
theory that explained heat as an effect of the ceaseless motion of atoms;
Einstein proposed a way to put the theory to a new and crucial experimental
test. If tiny but visible particles were suspended in a liquid, he said,
the irregular bombardment by the liquid's invisible atoms should cause
the suspended particles to carry out a random jittering dance. One should
be able to observe this through a microscope, and if the predicted motion
were not seen, the whole kinetic theory would be in grave danger. But just
such a random dance of microscopic particles had long since been observed.
Now the motion was explained in detail. Albert Einstein had reinforced
the kinetic theory, and he had created a powerful new tool for studying
the movement of atoms.
The
Atomic Bomb Please don't build one at home.
On
August 2nd 1939, just before the beginning of World War II, Einstein wrote
to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists
told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify U-235 with which might
in turn be used to build an atomic bomb. It was shortly thereafter that
the United States Government began the serious undertaking known only then
as the Manhattan Project. Simply put, the Manhattan Project was committed
to expedient research and production that would produce a viable atomic
bomb. [The Letter]
Biography Nova's multimedia presentation on
the life of Albert Einstein
The
Biography of Albert Einstein Learn about the life and times of
Albert Einstein. Chapters: Formative Years, The Great Works, E=mc²,
World Fame, Public Concerns, Quantum and Cosmos, The Nuclear Age, Science
and Philosophy, An Essay: Albert Einstein - The World As I See It.
Albert
Einstein in Princeton "Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) first
gained worldwide prominence in 1919, when British astronomers verified
predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity through measurements
taken during a total eclipse. Einstein's theories expanded upon, and in
some cases refuted, universal laws formulated by Newton in the late seventeenth
century."
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Quotes Albert
Einstein PORTRAIT
OF A GENIUS Albert Einstein was asked to pose
so many times that he said if he hadn't been a physicist, he could have
made a living as a model.
Related Information Nuclear
Innovations Inventor and innovations surrounding
nuclear physics.
E = MC2 Albert Einstein developed a theory
about the relationship of mass and energy. The formula, E=mc[2], is probably
the most famous outcome from Einstein's special theory of relativity. The
formula says energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared.
In essence, it means mass is just one form of energy. Since the speed of
light squared is an enormous number (186,000 miles per second)[2], a small
amount of mass can be converted to a phenomenal amount of energy. Or, if
there's a lot of energy available, some energy can be converted to mass
and a new particle can be created. Nuclear reactors, for instance, work
because nuclear reactions convert small amounts of mass into large amounts
of energy.