Albert Einstein Biography

Albert Einstein (Deceased)Named the Person of the Century by Time magazine, Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany. Little is known about Einstein's early childhood, except that his speaking skills were slow to progress, and by age nine, he still did not speak fluently. At various times his teachers suspected that he had mental disabilities, and one headmaster once told Einstein's father that he would never make a success at anything. Despite his inarticulate nature, Einstein excelled in the language of music, and played the violin from age six until the time of his death.At 15 years old, Einstein dropped out of the Luitpold Gymnasium school in Munich in an act of rebellion against authority figures. However, he continued to study physics and mathematics on his own time, as he was passionate about the subjects. Without his diploma, Einstein was unable to attend a German university, and instead enrolled at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, Switzerland. 16-year-old Einstein was so taken with Switzerland's democratic environment that he renounced his German citizenship, and applied for a Swiss citizenship.After graduating from the Polytechnic School, Einstein worked as teacher and a technical assistant at the Swiss Patent Office for six years. Einstein later reflected that the main advantage of this job was that it allowed him time to ponder physics.In his early 20s, Einstein began publishing physics papers. One essentially proved the existence of molecules, and another introduced his unique theory of relativity. Einstein maintained that the speed of light is constant, and nothing in the universe can travel faster. Therefore, if objects could approach the speed of light, then their age, mass, and size would be affected as a result.In 1905, Einstein published another paper which famously proposed that E = mc2: the energy in matter is equal to its mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. Einstein's groundbreaking equation explained how stars are able to emit large quantities of light while still retaining most of their mass.Also in 1905, Einstein earned his doctorate from the University of Zurich, where he taught for the next seven years until accepting a professorship in Berlin. While in Berlin, Einstein founded the Institute of Physics.In 1916, Einstein tackled the subject of gravity in his publication, The Foundations of the General Theory of Relativity. Challenging Sir Isaac Newton's theory of gravity as an omnipresent force, Einstein contended that gravity was characteristic of matter. In 1919, two English astronomical expeditions set out to test this theory by photographing an eclipse. After the results were proven positive, Einstein became an overnight sensation across the globe.In 1933, Einstein became alarmed by the anti-Semitism sweeping Germany, and left his home country for the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey; where he remained until his death in 1955 at the age of 76.In a 1994 movie entitled, 'War of the Worlds: Great Books', Einstien played himself and starred along side William Shatner, Orson Wells and Donald Sutherland who was the narrator in the movie.What happened to Einstein's brain after his death has been the subject of debate. It was revealed that Einstein's brain had been removed within seven hours of his death and preserved for scientific study. However it was only rediscovered in 1978 after spending over two decades stored in mason jars inside a cider box. In 1999, Einstein's brain was further studied at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; where it was determined that Einstein had actually been missing a part of his brain that is responsible for speech. The part of his brain responsible for mathematical cognition, however, was 15 percent larger than normal.When Einstein was named Time Magazine's 'Person of the Century' in 1999, the debate was attended by Dan Rather and Condoleeza Rice who was at that time a political science professor.