THE BIOGRAPHY OF ALBERT ENSTEIN

Einstein's Early Life (1879-1904)

Born on March 14, 1879, in the southern German city of Ulm, Albert Einstein grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Munich. As a child, Einstein became fascinated by music (he played the violin), mathematics and science. In 1896, he renounced his German citizenship, and remained officially stateless before becoming a Swiss citizen in 1901.

While at Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with his fellow student Mileva Maric, but his parents opposed the match and he lacked the money to marry. After finding a position as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein married Maric in 1903; they would have two more children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910).

Einstein's Miracle Year (1905)

While working at the patent office, Einstein did some of the most creative work of his life, producing no fewer than four groundbreaking articles in 1905 alone. In the first paper, he applied the quantum theory (developed by German physicist Max Planck) to light in order to explain the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect, by which a material will emit electrically charged particles when hit by light. The second article contained Einstein's experimental proof of the existence of atoms, which he got by analyzing the phenomenon of Brownian motion, in which tiny particles were suspended in water. 

In the third and most famous article, titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," Einstein confronted the apparent contradiction between two principal theories of physics: Isaac Newton's concepts of absolute space and time and James Clerk Maxwell's idea that the speed of light was a constant. To do this, Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity, which held that the laws of physics are the same even for objects moving in different inertial frames (i.e. at constant speeds relative to each other), and that the speed of light is a constant in all inertial frames. Einstein's famous equation E = mc2 (where "c" was the constant speed of light) expressed this relationship.

From Zurich to Berlin (1906-1932)

Einstein continued working at the patent office until 1909, when he finally found a full-time academic post at the University of Zurich. The move coincided with the beginning of Einstein's romantic relationship with a cousin of his, Elsa Lowenthal, whom he would eventually marry after divorcing Mileva. In 1915, Einstein published the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterwork. This theory found that gravity, as well as motion, can affect time and space. According to Einstein's equivalence principle--which held that gravity's pull in one direction is equivalent to an acceleration of speed in the opposite direction--if light is bent by acceleration, it must also be bent by gravity.

The general theory of relativity was the first major theory of gravity since Newton's, more than 250 years before, and the results made a tremendous splash worldwide, with the London Times proclaiming a "Revolution in Science" and a "New Theory of the Universe." Einstein began touring the world, speaking in front of crowds of thousands in the United States, Britain, France and Japan.

Einstein Moves to the United States (1933-39)

A longtime pacifist and a Jew, Einstein became the target of hostility in Weimar Germany, where many citizens were suffering plummeting economic fortunes in the aftermath of defeat in the Great War. In the process, Einstein became increasingly isolated from many of his colleagues, who were focused mainly on the quantum theory and its implications, rather than on relativity.

Einstein's Later Life (1939-1955)

In the late 1930s, Einstein's theories, including his equation E=mc2, helped form the basis of the development of the atomic bomb. In 1939, at the urging of the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to approve funding for the development of uranium before Germany could gain the upper hand. In 1952, Einstein declined an offer extended by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's premier, to become president of Israel.

Throughout the last years of his life, Einstein continued his quest for a unified field theory. In the decades following his death, Einstein's reputation and stature in the world of physics only grew, as physicists began to unravel the mystery of the so-called "strong force" (the missing piece of his unified field theory) and space satellites further verified the principles of his cosmology.

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