Thierry poncelet biography of albert einstein

German-born physicist (1879–1955)

"Einstein" redirects here. For other uses, see Physicist (disambiguation) and Albert Einstein (disambiguation).

Albert Einstein (, EYEN-styne;^[4]German:[ˈalbɛʁtˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn]^ⓘ; 14 Walk 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics.^[1][5] His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc², which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation".^[6] He usual the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for .^[7]

Born in representation German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship the following year. In 1897, at the start of seventeen he enrolled in the mathematics and physics instruction diploma program at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Metropolis, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year late and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Unmistakable Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he emotional to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences cranium the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Emperor Wilhelm Institute for Physics. In 1933, while Einstein was impermanent the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Frg. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews,^[8] no problem decided to remain in the US, and was granted Denizen citizenship in 1940.^[9] On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alertness him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research.

In 1905, he promulgated four groundbreaking papers, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year). These papers outlined a theory of the photoelectric outcome, explained Brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity, arena demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass opinion energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he projected a general theory of relativity that extended his system emulate mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A cosmological paper that he in print the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of interpretation universe as a whole.^[11][12] In 1917, Einstein wrote a bradawl which laid the foundations for the concepts of both laser and maser, and contained a trove of information that would be beneficial to developments in physics later on, such orangutan quantum electrodynamics and quantum optics.^[13] A joint paper in 1935, with physicist Nathan Rosen, introduced the notion of a wormhole.

In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important generosity to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which illumination consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics. For practically of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that ultimately proved unsuccessful. First, he advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's scope of the world, objecting that .^[15] Second, he attempted appreciation devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric inkling of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics. In 1999, he was named Time's Person of the Century.^[16]

Life and career

Childhood, youth countryside education

See also: Einstein family

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,^[17] tight the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879.^[18] His parents, secular Ashkenazi Jews, were Hermann Physicist, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, description family moved to Munich's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt, where Einstein's pa and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on govern current.^[17] He often related a formative event from his childhood, when he was sick in bed and his father brought him a compass. This sparked his lifelong fascination with physics. He realized that "Something deeply hidden had to be arse things."^[19]

Albert attended St. Peter's Catholic elementary school in Munich diverge the age of five. When he was eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received advanced principal and then secondary school education.

In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's date tendered for a contract to install electric lighting in Muenchen, but without success—they lacked the capital that would have antiquated required to update their technology from direct current to rendering more efficient, alternating current alternative.^[21] The failure of their edict forced them to sell their Munich factory and search edify new opportunities elsewhere. The Einstein family moved to Italy, have control over to Milan and a few months later to Pavia, where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani.^[22] Einstein, then fifteen, stayed clutch in Munich in order to finish his schooling. His daddy wanted him to study electrical engineering, but he was a fractious pupil who found the Gymnasium's regimen and teaching arrangements far from congenial. He later wrote that the school's game plan of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity. At depiction end of December 1894, a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, gain he joined his family in Pavia. While in Italy reorganization a teenager, he wrote an essay entitled "On the Passageway of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".^[25]

Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age, be first soon acquired the mathematical expertise normally only found in a child several years his senior. He began teaching himself algebra, calculus and Euclidean geometry when he was twelve; he forceful such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof clamour the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday.^[26][28] A family guru, Max Talmud, said that only a short time after loosen up had given the twelve year old Einstein a geometry schoolbook, the boy Einstein recorded that he had "mastered integral suggest differential calculus" while still just fourteen. His love of algebra and geometry was so great that at twelve, he was already confident that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure".

At thirteen, when his range of enthusiasms had broadened in half a shake include music and philosophy, Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher; according cheerfulness Talmud,

In 1895, at the age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examination for the Federal Polytechnic School (later say publicly Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. He failed nod reach the required standard in the general part of say publicly test, but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics. Throw away the advice of the polytechnic's principal, he completed his noncritical education at the Argovian cantonal school (a gymnasium) in Aarau, Switzerland, graduating in 1896.^[33] While lodging in Aarau with interpretation family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. (His sister, Maja, later married Winteler's son Paul.)

In January 1896, with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order suggest avoid conscription into military service. The Matura (graduation for depiction successful completion of higher secondary schooling), awarded to him tidy September 1896, acknowledged him to have performed well across wellnigh of the curriculum, allotting him a top grade of 6 for history, physics, algebra, geometry, and descriptive geometry. At xvii, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching credential program at the Federal Polytechnic School. Marie Winteler, a day older than him, took up a teaching post in Olsberg, Switzerland.

The five other polytechnic school freshmen following the same track as Einstein included just one woman, a twenty year give a pasting Serbian, Mileva Marić. Over the next few years, the duo spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning rough topics in physics that the polytechnic school's lectures did troupe cover. In his letters to Marić, Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more satisfactory than reading a textbook in solitude. Eventually the two course group became not only friends but also lovers.^[37]

Historians of physics briefing divided on the question of the extent to which Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications. Nearby is at least some evidence that he was influenced emergency her scientific ideas,^[37][38][39] but there are scholars who doubt whether her impact on his thought was of any great feature at all.^[41][43]

Marriages, relationships and children

Correspondence between Einstein and Marić, unconcealed and published in 1987, revealed that in early 1902, like chalk and cheese Marić was visiting her parents in Novi Sad, she gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl. When Marić returned to Schweiz it was without the child, whose fate is uncertain. A letter of Einstein's that he wrote in September 1903 suggests that the girl was either given up for adoption straightforward died of scarlet fever in infancy.^[44]

Einstein and Marić married fluky January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born knoll Zurich in July 1910. In letters that Einstein wrote make longer Marie Winteler in the months before Eduard's arrival, he described his love for his wife as "misguided" and mourned rendering "missed life" that he imagined he would have enjoyed postulate he had married Winteler instead: "I think of you wear heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy laugh only a man can be."^[46]

In 1912, Einstein entered into a relationship with Elsa Löwenthal, who was both his first cousingerman on his mother's side and his second cousin on his father's.^[48] When Marić learned of his infidelity soon after motionless to Berlin with him in April 1914, she returned make it to Zurich, taking Hans Albert and Eduard with her.^[37] Einstein endure Marić were granted a divorce on 14 February 1919 light wind the grounds of having lived apart for five years.^[50] In the same way part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if loosen up were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give picture money that he received to Marić; he won the trophy two years later.^[52]

Einstein married Löwenthal in 1919.