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ALBERT EINSTEIN’S BIOGRAPHY
By general consent Albert Einstein is acknowledged as the greatest scientist who ever lived. Through his theories he revolutionised and reshaped scientific thinking in the modern world, although the early stages of his flirtation with science were not promising at all. Born on 14 March 1879 to Jewish parents in Ulm, Germany, in childhood he disliked school because of the mindless drilling that prevailed there. Instead he preferred studying at home, especially mathematics and books on popular science. He also got a lot of pleasure. He also got a pleasure out of violin lessons. In 1895, the teenaged Einstein failed an entrance examination to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, that would have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrical engineer. He decided to continue his secondary education at the cantonal school in Aarau, from which he could automatically transfer to the Institute in Zurich after some time. He graduated from the Institute in 1900 and tried to obtain an assistantship, applying to the renowned professor Adolph Hurwitz, who held out some hope of the post, but nothing came of it. Einstein then wrote to various universities for a position but without success. Following a temporary job as a maths teacher, he was eventually appointed as a technical expert, third class, at the patent office in Bern. The work was undemanding and left him a lot of time to develop the momentous ideas with which his mind was teeming. This resulted in an astonishing range of high-class publications on theoretical physics, even though he lacked the benefit of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues. The year 1905 brought a magnificent flowering of Einstein’s creativity. Not only did he earn a doctorate from the University of Zurich, but he also published three papers which became milestones in the history of physics. In the first of them Einstein discussed the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted in discrete quantities. He used Planck’s quantum hypothesis to explain the photoelectric effect. The second one was devoted to what is today called the special theory of relativity. In this theory Einstein refuted the central principle of physics, namely that its laws had to have the same form in any frame of reference, by demonstrating that two observers moving with respect to each other at a speed approaching the speed of light will disagree about the measurements of length and time intervals made in each other’s system. In the last of the three papers he proved that mass is a form of energy, formulating the famous equation E = mc2. These revolutionary theories were were slow to be accepted by the scientific community. It wasn’t until 1909 that Einstein was recognised as a leading scientific thinker and offered an associate professorship at the University of Zurich. From there he moved to the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague, later to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, before settling in Berlin as a professor of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect. Offers of academic post, which he had found so hard to get in 1901, were now plentiful; however he remained in Germany until 1933, when the Nazi government confiscated his property and professorship while he was visiting in the United States. He was granted a permanent residency in the US and accepted a position at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, which he held until his death. There he began to work on his unified field theory, which would attempt to explain gravitation and electromagnetism in one set of laws. He wished the theory to be a simple and beautiful interpretation of the universe. He spent the last twenty five years of his life working on it, but was unsuccessful in establishing it. He also engaged in the movement for world peace and disarmament before dying peacefully on 18 April 1955.


1. What was Albert Einstein’s attitude towards the school education?
2. Where did he continue his secondary education?
3. What was his first job position?
4. What were his achievements in year 1905?
5. For what was he awarded with the Nobel Prize?
6. What was he trying to achieve after the relativity theory?