Einstein - a Biographical Sketch

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879. He read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason while still a youngster, and later earned a PhD in physics at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute. During his tenure at the Swiss Patent Office in 1905, he published four papers and a PhD thesis. The paper that earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize was about the Photoelectric Effect. Perhaps the most significant paper was on the Theory of Relativity.

That theory actually consists of the Theory of Special Relativity and the Theory of General Relativity. The latter was published in 1915, and it is essentially special relativity reconciled with gravity. Confirmed by Eddington in 1919, general relativity brought a number of dramatic changes to physics, including the disclosure that gravity bends the path of light and warps spacetime.

Time dilation, length contraction, and the Twin Paradox all flow from the Theory of Special Relativity. The Twin Paradox is fascinating: If two twins each have a clock and one takes a trip on a spaceship that travels near the speed of light, the clock taken on the spaceship runs slower than the clock on Earth, and when the traveling twin returns, she is younger than the twin who stayed home. The two principles of special relativity are (1) light travels at a constant c in a vacuum; and (2) the laws of physics operate uniformly to all observers.

The Theory of Relativity has been confirmed numerous times. Those seeking to refute it are on the road to futility. Exceptions to the Law of Relativity have been discussed in the literature, but it is still considered to be the foundation of physics along with electromagnetism, mechanics, and gravity.

Einstein recognized that his biggest mistake was the cosmological constant, a fudge factor he introduced to explain the expansion of the universe. When presented with the idea of quantum physics, he replied, "God doesn't play with dice."

After fleeing Nazi persecution in 1932, he became a professor at Princeton. The notorious "100 Scientists Against Einstein" advertisement in the New York Times during that period sought to disprove his ideas. Essentially, Einstein wryly responded, "Were I wrong one professor would have been enough."

Concerned that Hitler was attempting to build an atomic bomb, Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1937 and encouraged him to start a bomb design program. Such a bomb was implied by .

Einstein died a celebrity in 1955.