Albert Einstein was Born on March 14, 1879, in Germany, Albert Einstein came across a life of fame and controversy a lot of which he contributed to himself. He is well-known for being a physicist who developed the theory of relativity (E=mc2) and who, in 1921, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work related to the photoelectric effect.
His contributions also include his discovery that light can be considered as part of an electromagnetic spectrum.
He was born into a Jewish family and showed remarkable intelligence from an early age. He was enrolled at the Munich School for Boys where he completed only five years before dropping out and not completing his secondary education.
The teachers felt that he had trouble keeping up with the other students and so they thought it best that he pursue his education at home. His father and uncle were both successful businessmen, but also avid scholars.
Albert was introduced to the sciences by these men as well as his mother, who had a great interest in physics herself.
In 1895, Einstein graduated with honors from Swiss Federal Polytechnic School located in Zurich, Switzerland. After completing two years of required military service in 1902, he became a Swiss citizen (he would eventually regain German citizenship in 1925 before renouncing it once again).
This is an important piece of information due to the fact that many people said when he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 that an ethnic German shouldn't be winning this prestigious award while Germany was still struggling to find its way in the global community.
While he did receive a diploma from Zurich Polytechnic and passed the Swiss Federal Polytechnic's teaching qualification exam, Einstein never received a university degree (around this time Einstein began referring to himself as a scientist rather than a mathematician).
He was chosen by the department of physics at University of Bern after publishing four articles on theoretical physics and being recognized for his work on statistical mechanics.
In 1905, Albert published 5 papers which all focused on basically one thing: the research he had been conducting since completing five years of school eight years earlier.
The papers dealt with Brownian motion, specific heat capacity, photoelectric effect, special theory of relativity and equivalence of matter and energy. The papers were revolutionary in that they completely changed the way mankind looked at the world around them.
Brownian motion deals with the irregular movement of tiny particles suspended in a liquid or gas which later led to some of Einstein's more famous theories regarding atomic structure. Most importantly, this paper is what led him to his "miracle year".
The photoelectric effect dealt with light and its electric properties such as how it can be deflected by magnets or how it will pass through a thin metal foil but not through glass due to being electrons. His research on specific heat capacity was used to compare temperature with electromagnetic radiation from metals which once again proved that light has properties associated with both waves and particles.
His research on special relativity came from the fact that he tried to equate how far an observer would see a light being sent based on whether or not that observer was moving with or against the light's movement.
This is known as the "twin paradox" which basically states that if one twin traveled faster than another, then time for the traveling twin would slow down while time for the non-traveling twin would speed up.
The fifth paper dealt with his theory of equivalence which basically said that all forms of matter have equivalent energy both rest and in motion have energy associated with them.
In 1915, Einstein became professor at Charles University in Prague where he focused on statistical mechanics and quantum physics. He continued to do theoretical work on a wide range of physical fields.
In 1918 the end of his marriage to Mileva Maric, he accepted a position in Berlin as chair of theoretical physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. He would eventually leave in 1932 due to an intense dislike for German policies and politics during the time but was also leaving because most people saw him as being more Jewish than Aryan.
Albert and his first wife had three children together: Lieserl (born 1902 - died soon after birth), Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910).
In 1919, Einstein married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal who already had a son named Ilse from her previous marriage. By this time in Einstein's life, he was becoming somewhat of a celebrity due to being awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 as well as achieving super stardom through his scientific discoveries.
After marrying Elsa, Albert never really spent any real amount of time with Hans Albert and Eduard, nor did he take much of an interest in his step-son. Einstein and Elsa had one child together named a second "Hans Albert" (born in 1922).
After several years of marriage, the two started to drift apart due to superficial reasons such as Elsa being more interested in spending money on clothes than worrying about why they never had it or how Einstein treated her son Ilse differently from the way he treated Hans Albert and Eduard.
By this point in his life, Einstein's fame was reaching its peak. He was widely known throughout the world for his scientific achievements which led him to receive a great deal of media attention along with numerous awards including honorary degrees from Oxford and Yale and a number of different prizes.
In 1921, he was given the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum theory.
Einstein, however, did not celebrate his new found fame because later that same year he was very saddened by the death of his good friend Marcel Grossman. The two had been extremely close for quite some time and Einstein always referred to him as being "the finest mind he ever knew".
Because of this period of intense personal growth around this time in his life, Einstein started to lose interest in physics which was the field he had pioneered during most of his career.
He published a number of fairly boring papers on topics mostly dealing with statistical mechanics which were so boring and tedious that even today, no one knows what they are saying.
In conclusion Einstein continued to work on the field of physics until his death in 1955 at which point he would finally realize that quantum theory wasn't right and that it didn't make any sense.
His last published paper then focused on this new concept he came up with that proposed the idea of non-linear time which basically states that time flows like a river; when you go against it, it moves slower, if you go with it, it moves faster.
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Refernces :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_publications_by_Albert_Einstein
https://www.biography.com/news/einstein-love-life-wives-affairs-letters
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