Scientist born in March

When someone utters the word scientist, every person in the world invariably thinks of one person.

A man with intelligence beyond comprehension and considered to be a pioneer in physics, especially in the field of relativity and more.

Albert Einstein was born on 14th March 1879, and this is his story.

Childhood

a. Einstein was born in a secular, middle-class Jew family.

b. His father was originally a salesperson who eventually started an electrochemical factory and his mother was a housewife.

c. He had a singer named Maria who was two years younger to him.

d. According to Einstein, two “wonders” deeply affected his early years.

e. First was an encounter at the mere age of five with a compass. He was captivated by the invisible forces that could deflect the needle. The second wonder was the geometry book that he found at the age of 12.

f. Einstein was deeply influenced by a young medical student called Max Talmud.

g. He eventually became an informal tutor to Einstein, introducing him to higher mathematics and philosophy.

Education

Einstein’s education was a bumpy road.

After his father’s company failed, Einstein had to move away to Munich. During this time Einstein moved to Milan to work with a relative. He was then left at a boarding house in Munich where he was expected to complete his education.

As he turned 16, he was mortified by the idea of serving in the military. He ran away and six months later turned up at the doorsteps of his parents.

Fortunately, Einstein could apply directly to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in 1911, following expansion in 1909 to full university status.

His marks showed that he excelled in mathematics and physics, but he failed at French, chemistry, and biology.

As he always scored exceptional in math, he was allowed into the polytechnic on the condition that he first finish his formal schooling.

In 1896 he graduated from a high school run by Jost Winteler in Aarau, Switzerland. He also renounced his German citizenship at that time.

This led to him becoming lifelong friends with the Winteler family, with whom he had been boarding.

Einstein looks back at his years in Zürich as some of the happiest years of his life.

This was the place where he made many friends along with meeting his future wife, Mileva Maric, a fellow physics student from Serbia.

Graduation & Work

Following his graduation in 1900, Einstein went through a very hard phase.

He studied advanced subjects on his own, he would often cut classes and this caused him problems with the professors. Due to this, Einstein was subsequently turned down for every academic position that he applied to.

He reached his lowest point in 1902.

Unfortunately, he could not marry Maric. He also faced difficulty in supporting his family as his father's business went bankrupt.

Einstein was desperate and unemployed. Hence, he took lowly jobs tutoring children, but he was fired from even these jobs.

All of this changed a year later when the father of his lifelong friend Marcel Grossmann was able to recommend him for a position as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern.

Einstein lost his father around this time.

Growth & Progress

For the first time, he had a small but steady income. At this point, he felt confident enough to marry Maric, which he did on January 6, 1903.

They gave birth to Hans Albert and Eduard, in 1904 and 1910, respectively.

This job was a blessing for him as he quickly finished his patent applications.

The rest of the time he would daydream about the vision that had obsessed him since he was 16.

It was a question that irked him since his youth: What would happen if you raced alongside a light beam?

At the polytechnic school, he discovered that the speed of light remains the same no matter how fast one moves.

Einstein realized that this violates Newton’s laws of motion.

However, this is only possible as there is no absolute velocity in Isaac Newton’s theory.

This insight led Einstein to formulate the principle of relativity: “the speed of light is a constant in any inertial frame (constantly moving frame).”

Einstein Significance

Another significant event was the submission of his paper in 1905. He did this for his doctorate.

In the 19th century, there were two pillars of physics: Newton’s laws of motion and Maxwell’s theory of light.

It struck Einstein that both the theories were in contradiction hence one had to fail.

Einstein's papers were ignored by the physics community in 1905 at first.

However, this changed after he received recognition from the founder of quantum physics, named Max Plank.

With Planck's baking of Einstein's theories, soon he started getting invited to lectures, international meetings which made him rapidly in the academic world.

Eventually, Einstein became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1913 to 1933.

Theory & Relativity

The revolution that Einstein brought was the introduction of the theory of relativity in November 1915.

He considered it a masterpiece and he gave six 2 hour lectures at the University of Göttingen that thoroughly explained an incomplete version of general relativity that lacked a few necessary mathematical details.

The man who had organized the lectures, David Hilbert, completed the details and submitted a paper in November on general relativity just five days before

Einstein as if the theory were his own.

The theory of relativity was considered a mathematical beauty by Einstein.

A few things that the theory corrected predicted were the precession of the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun and a measurable deflection of light around the Sun.

1921 was a significant year for Einstein. He began multiple world tours visiting the United States, England, Japan, and France. He even received the Nobel

Prize for Physics, but for the photoelectric effect rather than for his relativity theories.

In his speech, however, he spoke to the audience about the theories of relativity rather than the photoelectric effect.

He even corresponded with Sigmund Freud and discussed with the Indian mystic Rabindranath Tagore the question of whether consciousness can affect existence.

Einstein worked on multiple concepts like wormholes, higher dimensions, the possibility of time travel, the existence of black holes, and the creation of the universe.

Yet he was increasingly isolated from the rest of the physics community. Most physicists focused on quantum theory, not relativity.

Legacy

He died five years later of an aortic aneurysm after living a life that left a mark on all of us.

His work continues to win Nobel Prizes for succeeding physicists.

In 1993 a Nobel Prize was awarded to the discoverers of gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein.

In 1995 a Nobel Prize was awarded to the discoverers of Bose-Einstein condensates Many leading physicists are trying to finish Einstein’s ultimate dream of a “theory of everything.”