Albert Einstein is one of the most famous scientists of the twentieth century. It laid the foundation for a new branch of physics, and E=mc 2 Einstein's mass-energy equivalence is one of the most famous formulas in the world. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to theoretical physics and the evolution of quantum theory.

Einstein is also well known as an original free thinker, speaking on a range of humanitarian and global issues. He contributed to the theoretical development of nuclear physics and supported F. D. Roosevelt in launching the Manhattan Project, but later Einstein opposed the use of nuclear weapons.

Einstein, born to a Jewish family in Germany, moved to Switzerland as a young man and then moved to the United States after Hitler came to power. Einstein was a truly global man and one of the undisputed geniuses of the twentieth century. And now let's talk about everything in order.

Einstein's father, Hermann, was born in 1847 in the Swabian village of Buchau. Hermann, a Jew by nationality, had a penchant for mathematics, studied at a school near Stuttgart. He could not enter the university due to the fact that most of the universities were closed to Jews and later began to engage in trade. Later, Herman and his parents moved to the more prosperous city of Ulm, which prophetically had the motto “Ulmenses sunt mathematici”, which means “the people of Ulm are mathematicians”. At the age of 29, Hermann married Pauline Koch, who was eleven years his junior.

Polina's father, Julius Kokh, built a large fortune selling grain. Polina inherited practicality, wit, a good sense of humor and could infect anyone with laughter (she will successfully pass these traits on to her son).

German and Polina were a happy couple. Their first child was born at 11:30 am on Friday, March 14, 1879, in Ulm, a city which at that time had joined, along with the rest of Swabia, the German Reich. Initially, Polina and Hermann planned to name the boy Abraham, after his paternal grandfather. But then they came to the conclusion that this name would sound too Hebrew and they decided to keep the initial letter A and named the boy Albert Einstein.

It is worth paying attention to an interesting fact that will forever be imprinted in the memory of Einstein and significantly influenced him in the future. When little Albert was 4 or 5 years old he fell ill and
father, so that the boy would not be bored, brought him a compass. As Einstein would later say, he was so excited about those mysterious forces that made the magnetic needle behave as if it was influenced by hidden unknown fields. This sense of wonder and inquisitiveness of mind remained in him and motivated him throughout his life. As he said: “I still remember, or at least I believe I can remember, that that moment made a deep and lasting impression on me!”

Around the same age, his mother instilled in Einstein a love of the violin. At first he did not like rigid discipline, but after he became more familiar with the works of Mozart, the music began to seem both magical and emotional for the boy: “I believe that love is a better teacher than a sense of duty,” he said, “at least at least for me." Since then, according to the statements of close friends, when the scientist was faced with difficult tasks, Einstein was distracted by music and it helped him concentrate and overcome difficulties. During the game, improvising, he thought about the problems, and suddenly “he suddenly broke off in the middle of the game and excitedly went to work, as if inspiration had come to him,” as relatives said.

When Albert was 6 years old and had to choose a school, his parents didn't worry that there was no Jewish school nearby. And he went to a large Catholic school next door, in Petershul. As the only Jew among seventy students in his class, Einstein did well in school, taking a standard course in the Catholic religion.

When Albert was 9 years old, he transferred to a secondary school near the center of Munich, the Leopold Gymnasium, which was known as an enlightened institute that intensively studied mathematics and science, as well as Latin and Greek.

In order to be admitted to the Federal Institute of Technology (later renamed ETH) in Zurich, Einstein passed the entrance exams in October 1895. However, some of his results were insufficient and, on the advice of the rector, he went to the "Kantonsschule" in the city of Aarau to improve his knowledge.

In early October 1896, Einstein received his school leaving certificate and shortly thereafter entered the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich as a teacher of mathematics and physics. Einstein, was good-natured and graduated in July 1900. He then worked as an assistant at the Polytechnic Institute in Shula and other universities.

Between May 1901 and January 1902 he studied at Winterthur and Schaffhausen. He soon moved to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. In order to earn a living, he gave private lessons in mathematics and physics.

Albert Einstein personal life

Einstein was married twice, first to his former student Mileva Marich and then to his cousin Elsa. His marriages were not very successful. In the letters, Einstein expressed the oppression he experienced in his first marriage, describing Mileva as a domineering and jealous woman. In one of the letters, he even admitted that he wanted his youngest son, Edward, who had schizophrenia, to never be born. As for his second wife Elsa, he called their relationship a union of convenience.

Biographers, studying such letters, considered Einstein a cold and cruel husband and father, but in 2006 about 1,400 previously unknown letters of the scientist were published and biographers changed their view of his relationship with his wives and family in a positive direction.

In more recent letters, we can find that Einstein had compassion and sympathy for his first wife and children, he even gave them part of his money from winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921.

As for the second marriage, Einstein apparently openly discussed his affairs with Elsa and also kept her informed of his travels and thoughts.
According to Elsa, she stayed with Einstein despite his shortcomings, explaining her views in a letter: “Such a genius must be impeccable in every respect. But nature does not behave like that, if it gives extravagance, then it manifests itself in everything.”

But this does not mean that Einstein considered himself an exemplary family man, in one of his letters the scientist admitted that: “I admire my father for the fact that he stayed with one woman throughout his life. In this case, I failed twice.”

In general, for all his immortal genius, Einstein was an ordinary person in his personal life.

Einstein interesting facts from life:

• From an early age, Albert Einstein hated nationalism of any kind and preferred to be a "citizen of the world." When he was 16 he renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen in 1901;
• Mileva Marić was the only female student in the Einstein section at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. She was passionate about mathematics and science and was a good physicist, but she abandoned her ambitions by marrying Einstein and becoming a mother.
• In 1933, the FBI began to maintain a dossier on Albert Einstein. The case grew to 1427 pages of various documents devoted to Einstein's collaboration with pacifist and socialist organizations. J. Edgar Hoover even recommended that Einstein be expelled from America using the Alien Exclusion Act, but the decision was overturned by the US State Department.
• Einstein had a daughter whom, in all likelihood, he never saw in person. The existence of Lieserly (that was the name of Einstein's daughter) was not widely known until 1987, when a collection of Einstein's letters was published.
• Albert's second son, Edward, whom they affectionately called "Tet", was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Albert never saw his son after he immigrated to the US in 1933. Edward died at the age of 55 in a psychiatric clinic.
• Fritz Haber was a German chemist who helped Einstein move to Berlin and became one of his close friends. During World War I, Haber developed the deadly chlorine gas, which was heavier than air and could run down trenches and burn the throats and lungs of soldiers. Haber is sometimes called the "father of chemical warfare".
• Einstein, studying the electromagnetic theories of James Maxwell, discovered that the speed of light was constant, a fact not known to Maxwell. Einstein's discovery was in direct violation of Newton's laws of motion and led Einstein to develop the principle of relativity.
• 1905 is known as Einstein's Miracle Year. This year he presented his doctoral dissertation and 4 of his papers were published in one of the most famous scientific journals. The titles of the published papers were: Equivalence of matter and energy, special relativity, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect. These papers ultimately changed the very essence of modern physics.

Albert Einstein. Born March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany - died April 18, 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics, Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1921, humanist public figure. Lived in Germany (1879-1893, 1914-1933), Switzerland (1893-1914) and the USA (1933-1955). Honorary doctor of about 20 leading universities in the world, a member of many Academies of Sciences, including a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1926).

Special Relativity (1905). Within its framework - the law of the relationship of mass and energy: E = mc ^ 2
General relativity (1907-1916)
Quantum theory of the photoelectric effect
Quantum theory of heat capacity
Bose-Einstein quantum statistics
Statistical theory of Brownian motion, which laid the foundations for the theory of fluctuations
Theory of stimulated emission
Theory of light scattering on thermodynamic fluctuations in a medium.

He also predicted "quantum teleportation" and predicted and measured the Einstein-de Haas gyromagnetic effect.

Since 1933 he worked on problems of cosmology and unified field theory. Actively opposed the war, against the use of nuclear weapons, for humanism, respect for human rights, mutual understanding between peoples.

Einstein played a decisive role in the popularization and introduction of new physical concepts and theories into scientific circulation. First of all, this refers to the revision of the understanding of the physical essence of space and time and to the construction of a new theory of gravity to replace the Newtonian one. Einstein also, along with Planck, laid the foundations of quantum theory. These concepts, repeatedly confirmed by experiments, form the foundation of modern physics.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the South German city of Ulm, into a poor Jewish family.

Her father, Hermann Einstein (1847-1902), was at that time co-owner of a small enterprise for the production of feather stuffing for mattresses and featherbeds. Mother, Paulina Einstein (née Koch, 1858-1920), came from the family of a wealthy corn merchant Julius Derzbacher (he changed his surname to Koch in 1842) and Jetta Bernheimer.

In the summer of 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein, together with his brother Jakob, founded a small company selling electrical equipment. Albert's younger sister Maria (Maya, 1881-1951) was born in Munich.

Albert Einstein received his primary education at a local Catholic school. According to his own recollections, in his childhood he experienced a state of deep religiosity, which ended at the age of 12. Through reading popular science books, he came to the conclusion that much of what is stated in the Bible cannot be true, and that the state is deliberately deceiving the younger generation. All this made him a freethinker and forever gave rise to a skeptical attitude towards authorities.

Of childhood impressions, Einstein later recalled as the most powerful: the compass, the Principia, and (circa 1889) The Critique of Pure Reason. In addition, at the initiative of his mother, he began playing the violin at the age of six. Einstein's passion for music continued throughout his life. Already in the United States in Princeton, in 1934, Albert Einstein gave a charity concert, where he performed works on the violin in favor of scientists and cultural figures who emigrated from Nazi Germany.

In the gymnasium (now the Albert Einstein Gymnasium in Munich), he was not among the first students (with the exception of mathematics and Latin). The ingrained system of rote learning by students (which, as he later said, damages the very spirit of learning and creative thinking), as well as the authoritarian attitude of teachers towards students, caused Albert Einstein's rejection, so he often entered into disputes with his teachers.

In 1894, the Einsteins moved from Munich to the Italian city of Pavia, near Milan, where the brothers Hermann and Jacob moved their firm. Albert himself stayed with relatives in Munich for some time to complete all six classes of the gymnasium. Never having received his Abitur, in 1895 he joined his family in Pavia.

In the autumn of 1895, Albert Einstein arrived in Switzerland to take the entrance exams to the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic) in Zurich and, upon graduation, become a teacher of physics. Having brilliantly proved himself in the mathematics exam, he at the same time failed the exams in botany and French, which did not allow him to enter the Zurich Polytechnic. However, the director of the school advised the young man to enter the final class of the school in Aarau (Switzerland) in order to receive a certificate and repeat the admission.

At the cantonal school of Aarau, Albert Einstein devoted his free time to studying Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. In September 1896, he successfully passed all final exams at school, with the exception of the French language exam, and received a certificate, and in October 1896 he was admitted to the Polytechnic at the Faculty of Education. Here he became friends with a classmate, mathematician Marcel Grossman (1878-1936), and also met a Serbian student of the Faculty of Medicine Mileva Marich (4 years older than him), who later became his wife.

This year Einstein renounced German citizenship. To get Swiss citizenship, it was required to pay 1000 Swiss francs, however, the poor financial situation of the family allowed him to do this only after 5 years. The father's enterprise completely went bankrupt this year, Einstein's parents moved to Milan, where Hermann Einstein, already without a brother, opened an electrical equipment trading company.

The style and methods of teaching at the Polytechnic differed significantly from the ossified and authoritarian German school, so further education was easier for the young man. He had first-class teachers, including the remarkable geometer Hermann Minkowski (Einstein often missed his lectures, which he later sincerely regretted) and the analyst Adolf Hurwitz.

Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic in 1900 with a degree in mathematics and physics. He passed the exams successfully, but not brilliantly. Many professors highly appreciated the abilities of the student Einstein, but no one wanted to help him continue his scientific career.

Although the following year, 1901, Einstein received Swiss citizenship, but until the spring of 1902 he could not find a permanent job - even as a school teacher. Due to the lack of earnings, he literally starved, not taking food for several days in a row. This caused liver disease, from which the scientist suffered until the end of his life.

Despite the hardships that haunted him in 1900-1902, Einstein found time to further study physics.

In 1901, the Berlin Annals of Physics published his first paper. "Consequences of the theory of capillarity" (Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen) devoted to the analysis of the forces of attraction between the atoms of liquids based on the theory of capillarity.

A former classmate Marcel Grossman helped to overcome difficulties, recommending Einstein for the position of an expert of III class at the Federal Office for Patenting Inventions (Bern) with a salary of 3,500 francs per year (during his student years he lived on 100 francs per month).

Einstein worked at the Patent Office from July 1902 to October 1909, primarily as a peer reviewer of invention applications. In 1903 he became a permanent employee of the Bureau. The nature of the work allowed Einstein to devote his free time to research in the field of theoretical physics.

In October 1902, Einstein received news from Italy that his father was ill. Hermann Einstein died a few days after his son's arrival. On January 6, 1903, Einstein married twenty-seven-year-old Mileva Marich. They had three children.

From 1904, Einstein collaborated with the leading German physics journal, the Annals of Physics, providing abstracts of new papers on thermodynamics for its abstract application. It is likely that the prestige he acquired in the editorial board contributed to his own publications in 1905.

The year 1905 entered the history of physics as "Year of Miracles" (Annus Mirabilis). This year, the Annals of Physics published three of Einstein's seminal papers that launched a new scientific revolution:

1. "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies"(German Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper). The theory of relativity begins with this article.

2. "About one heuristic point of view concerning the origin and transformation of light"(German: Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichts betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt). One of the works that laid the foundation of quantum theory.

3. "On the motion of particles suspended in a fluid at rest, required by the molecular-kinetic theory of heat"(German: Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen) is a work devoted to Brownian motion and significantly advanced statistical physics.

Einstein was often asked the question: How was it possible to create the theory of relativity? Half jokingly, half seriously, he replied: "Why exactly did I create the theory of relativity? When I ask myself this question, it seems to me that the reason is as follows. A normal adult does not think about the problem of space and time at all. In his opinion, he already thought about this problem in childhood. I developed intellectually so slowly that space and time occupied my thoughts when I was already an adult. Naturally, I could penetrate deeper into the problem than a child with normal inclinations ".

In 1907, Einstein published the quantum theory of heat capacity (the old theory at low temperatures was at odds with experiment). Later (1912) Debye, Born and Karman refined Einstein's heat capacity theory and excellent agreement with experiment was achieved.

In 1827, Robert Brown observed under a microscope and subsequently described the chaotic movement of pollen floating in water. Einstein, on the basis of molecular theory, developed a statistical and mathematical model of such a movement. Based on his model of diffusion, it was possible, among other things, to estimate the size of molecules and their number per unit volume with good accuracy. At the same time, Smoluchowski came to similar conclusions, whose paper was published a few months later than Einstein's.

His work on statistical mechanics, called "A new definition of the size of molecules", Einstein submitted to the Polytechnic as a dissertation and in the same 1905 he received the title of Doctor of Philosophy (equivalent to a candidate of natural sciences) in physics. The following year, Einstein developed his theory in a new paper, "On the Theory of Brownian Motion," and returned to the topic more than once.

Soon (1908), Perrin's measurements fully confirmed the adequacy of Einstein's model, which became the first experimental proof of the molecular-kinetic theory, which was under active attack from the positivists in those years.

Max Born wrote (1949): "I think that these studies of Einstein, more than all other works, convince physicists of the reality of atoms and molecules, of the validity of the theory of heat and the fundamental role of probability in the laws of nature". Einstein's work on statistical physics is even more frequently cited than his work on relativity. The formula he derived for the diffusion coefficient and its connection with the dispersion of coordinates turned out to be applicable in the most general class of problems: Markov processes of diffusion, electrodynamics, etc.

Later, in an article "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation"(1917) Einstein, based on statistical considerations, first suggested the existence of a new type of radiation occurring under the influence of an external electromagnetic field ("induced radiation"). In the early 1950s, a method was proposed for amplifying light and radio waves based on the use of induced radiation, and in subsequent years it formed the basis of the theory of lasers.

The work of 1905 brought Einstein, although not immediately, worldwide fame. On April 30, 1905, he sent to the University of Zurich the text of his doctoral dissertation on the topic "A new determination of the size of molecules." The reviewers were Professors Kleiner and Burkhard.

In 1909 he attended a congress of naturalists in Salzburg, where the elite of German physics gathered, and met Planck for the first time. For 3 years of correspondence, they quickly became close friends and maintained this friendship until the end of their lives.

After the convention, Einstein finally received a paid position as an extraordinary professor at the University of Zurich (December 1909), where his old friend Marcel Grossmann taught geometry. The pay was small, especially for a family with two children, and in 1911 Einstein accepted without hesitation an invitation to head the department of physics at the German University in Prague.

During this period, Einstein continued to publish a series of papers on thermodynamics, relativity and quantum theory. In Prague, he activates research on the theory of gravitation, aiming to create a relativistic theory of gravity and to fulfill the old dream of physicists - to exclude Newtonian long-range action from this area.

In 1911, Einstein participated in the First Solvay Congress (Brussels), dedicated to quantum physics. There he had his only meeting with Poincare, who continued to reject the theory of relativity, although he personally treated Einstein with great respect.

At the end of 1913, on the recommendation of Planck and Nernst, Einstein received an invitation to head the physical research institute being created in Berlin; he is also enrolled as a professor at the University of Berlin. In addition to being close to a friend Planck, this position had the advantage of not obliging him to be distracted by teaching. He accepted the invitation, and in the prewar year of 1914, the staunch pacifist Einstein arrived in Berlin.

Mileva stayed with her children in Zurich, their family broke up. In February 1919, they officially divorced.

Citizenship of Switzerland, a neutral country, helped Einstein withstand militaristic pressure after the start of the war. He did not sign any "patriotic" appeals, on the contrary, in collaboration with the physiologist Georg Friedrich Nicolai, he compiled an anti-war "Appeal to the Europeans" in opposition to the chauvinist manifesto of the 1993s, and wrote in a letter: "Will future generations thank our Europe, in which three centuries of the most intense cultural work have only led to the fact that religious madness has been replaced by nationalistic madness? Even scientists from different countries behave as if their brains were amputated".

In 1915, in a conversation with the Dutch physicist Wander de Haas, Einstein proposed a scheme and calculation of the experiment, which, after successful implementation, was called "Einstein-de Haas effect". The result of the experiment inspired Niels Bohr, who created the planetary model of the atom two years earlier, because he confirmed that circular electron currents exist inside atoms, and electrons do not radiate in their orbits. It is these assumptions that Bohr made the basis of his model.

In addition, it was found that the total magnetic moment is twice as large as expected; the reason for this was clarified when the spin was discovered - the intrinsic angular momentum of the electron.

After the end of the war, Einstein continued to work in the old areas of physics, and also engaged in new areas - relativistic cosmology and the "Unified Field Theory", which, according to his plan, was to combine gravity, electromagnetism and (preferably) the theory of the microcosm. The first paper on cosmology, "Cosmological Considerations to the General Theory of Relativity", appeared in 1917.

After that, Einstein experienced a mysterious "invasion of diseases" - in addition to serious problems with the liver, a stomach ulcer was discovered, then jaundice and general weakness. For several months he did not get out of bed, but continued to work actively. Only in 1920, the disease receded.

In June 1919, Einstein married his maternal cousin Else Löwenthal (née Einstein) and adopted her two children. At the end of the year, his seriously ill mother Paulina moved in with them. She died in February 1920. Judging by the letters, Einstein was very upset by her death.

Elsa Einstein

In the autumn of 1919, the British expedition of Arthur Eddington at the time of the eclipse recorded the deflection of light predicted by Einstein in the gravitational field of the Sun. In this case, the measured value corresponded not to Newton's, but to Einstein's law of gravity. The sensational news was reprinted in newspapers throughout Europe, although the essence of the new theory was most often presented in a shamelessly distorted form. Einstein's fame reached unprecedented heights.

In May 1920, Einstein, along with other members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, was sworn in as a civil servant and was legally considered a German citizen. However, he retained Swiss citizenship until the end of his life.

Einstein was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. The first such nomination (for the theory of relativity) took place, at the initiative of Wilhelm Ostwald, already in 1910, but the Nobel Committee considered the experimental evidence for the theory of relativity insufficient. Further, the nomination of Einstein was repeated annually, except for 1911 and 1915. Among the recommenders in different years were such prominent physicists as Lorentz, Planck, Bohr, Wien, Chwolson, de Haas, Laue, Szeemann, Kamerling-Onnes, Hadamard, Eddington, Sommerfeld and Arrhenius.

However, the members of the Nobel Committee for a long time did not dare to award the prize to the author of such revolutionary theories. In the end, a diplomatic solution was found: the prize for 1921 was awarded to Einstein (in November 1922) for the theory of the photoelectric effect, that is, for the most indisputable and well-tested work in the experiment; however, the text of the decision contained a neutral addition: "... and for other work in the field of theoretical physics."

On November 10, 1922, the Secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Christopher Aurivillius, wrote to Einstein: "As I informed you by telegram, the Royal Academy of Sciences at its yesterday's meeting decided to award you the Physics Prize for the past year, thus acknowledging your work in theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, without taking into account your work in theory relativity and the theory of gravity, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future".

Since Einstein was away, on December 10, 1922, Rudolf Nadolny, the German ambassador to Sweden, accepted the prize on his behalf. Previously, he asked for confirmation whether Einstein was a citizen of Germany or Switzerland. The Prussian Academy of Sciences has officially certified that Einstein is a German subject, although his Swiss citizenship is also recognized as valid. On his return to Berlin, Einstein received the insignia accompanying the award personally from the Swedish ambassador.

Naturally, Einstein devoted the traditional Nobel speech (in July 1923) to the theory of relativity.

In 1929, the world celebrated Einstein's 50th birthday with a bang. The hero of the day did not take part in the celebrations and hid in his villa near Potsdam, where he grew roses with enthusiasm. Here he received friends - scientists, Emmanuel Lasker, Charlie Chaplin and others.

In addition to theoretical research, Einstein also owns several inventions, including:

very low voltage meter (together with Konrad Habicht)
a device that automatically determines the exposure time when taking photographs
original hearing aid
silent refrigerator (shared with Szilard)
gyro-compass.

Until about 1926, Einstein worked in very many areas of physics, from cosmological models to the study of the causes of meanders in rivers. Further, with rare exceptions, he focuses his efforts on quantum problems and the Unified Field Theory.

As the economic crisis grew in Weimar Germany, political instability intensified, contributing to the strengthening of radical nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Insults and threats against Einstein became more frequent, one of the leaflets even offered a large reward (50,000 marks) on his head. After the Nazis came to power, all the works of Einstein were either attributed to "Aryan" physicists, or declared a distortion of true science.

In 1933, Einstein had to leave Germany, to which he was very attached, forever. Together with his family, he left for the United States of America with visitor visas. Soon, in protest against the crimes of Nazism, he renounced German citizenship and membership in the Prussian and Bavarian academies of sciences.

After moving to the US, Albert Einstein was appointed professor of physics at the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

The eldest son, Hans-Albert (1904-1973), soon followed him (1938) - he later became a recognized specialist in hydraulics and a professor at the University of California (1947). Einstein's youngest son, Eduard (1910-1965), fell ill with a severe form of schizophrenia around 1930 and ended his days in a Zurich psychiatric hospital. Einstein's cousin, Lina, died in Auschwitz, another sister, Bertha Dreyfus, died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

In the United States, Einstein instantly became one of the most famous and respected people in the country, gaining a reputation as the most brilliant scientist in history, as well as the personification of the image of an “absent-minded professor” and the intellectual capabilities of a person in general. In January of the following year, 1934, he was invited to the White House to President Franklin Roosevelt, had a cordial conversation with him, and even spent the night there. Every day, Einstein received hundreds of letters of various content, to which (even children's ones) he tried to answer. Being a naturalist with a worldwide reputation, he remained an accessible, modest, undemanding and affable person.

In December 1936, Elsa died of heart disease; Marcel Grossmann had died three months earlier in Zurich. Einstein's loneliness was brightened up by his sister Maya, stepdaughter Margot (Elsa's daughter from her first marriage), secretary Ellen Dukas, cat Tiger and white terrier Chico.

To the surprise of the Americans, Einstein never got a car and a TV. Maya was partially paralyzed after a stroke in 1946, and every evening Einstein read books to his beloved sister.

In August 1939, Einstein signed a letter written at the initiative of Leo Szilard, an immigrant physicist from Hungary, addressed to the President of the United States. The letter drew the President's attention to the possibility that Nazi Germany was capable of building an atomic bomb.

After several months of deliberation, Roosevelt decided to take this threat seriously and opened his own project to create an atomic weapon. Einstein himself did not take part in these works. Later, he regretted the letter he signed, realizing that for the new US leader Harry Truman, nuclear energy serves as a tool of intimidation. In the future, he criticized the development of nuclear weapons, their use in Japan and testing at Bikini Atoll (1954), and considered his involvement in accelerating work on the American nuclear program the greatest tragedy of his life. Widely known were his aphorisms: "We won the war, but not the peace"; "If the third world war will be fought with atomic bombs, then the fourth - with stones and sticks."

During the war, Einstein advised the US Navy and contributed to the solution of various technical problems.

In the postwar years Einstein co-founded the Pugwash Peace Movement. Although his first conference was held after the death of Einstein (1957), the initiative to create such a movement was expressed in the widely known Russell-Einstein Manifesto (written jointly with Bertrand Russell), which also warned of the danger of creating and using a hydrogen bomb.

As part of this movement, Einstein, who was its chairman, together with Frederic Joliot-Curie and other world-famous scientists, fought against the arms race, the creation of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

In September 1947, in an open letter to the delegations of UN member states, he proposed to reorganize the UN General Assembly, turning it into a continuously working world parliament with broader powers than the Security Council, which (according to Einstein) was paralyzed in its actions due to veto rights. To which, in November 1947, prominent Soviet scientists (S. I. Vavilov, A. F. Ioffe, N. N. Semenov, A. A. Frumkin) in an open letter expressed disagreement with the position of A. Einstein.

Until the end of his life, Einstein continued to work on the study of the problems of cosmology, but he directed his main efforts to the creation of a unified field theory.

In 1955, Einstein's health deteriorated rapidly. He wrote a will and told his friends: "I have fulfilled my task on Earth." His last work was an unfinished appeal calling for the prevention of nuclear war.

Stepdaughter Margo recalled her last meeting with Einstein in the hospital: "He spoke with deep calmness, about doctors even with a touch of humor, and waited for his death as an upcoming "phenomenon of nature." How fearless he was during his lifetime, so quiet and peaceful he met death. Without any sentimentality and without regrets, he left this world".

Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955 at 1:25 a.m., at the age of 77 at Princeton, from an aortic aneurysm.

Before his death, he spoke a few words in German, but the American nurse was unable to reproduce them later. Not perceiving any form of personality cult, he forbade a magnificent burial with loud ceremonies, for which he wished that the place and time of the burial were not disclosed. On April 19, 1955, the funeral of the great scientist took place without wide publicity, at which only 12 of his closest friends were present.

His body was burned in the Ewing Cemetery crematorium and the ashes scattered to the wind.

Hello dear guys! Have you ever come across a photo of a weirdo with his tongue out and his hair tousled? I think I had to.

Do you know who this cheerful person is? This is none other than the great scientist Albert Einstein! The one that discovered the world-famous theory of relativity and laid the foundation for all modern physics. I propose today to get acquainted with his biography closer.

Lesson plan:

Where are geniuses born?

The future legendary physicist was born into a Jewish family in 1879 in the south of Germany in the city of Ulm. And he appeared with an irregularly shaped head, which for doctors and his parents became a subject for reflection: does baby Einstein have mental retardation, especially since the child did not speak until he was three years old.

Even before entering school, his father once gave little Albert a compass. The device so blew up the children's mind that observations of the needle, which in any position of the compass turns without fail to the north, became one of the reasons for future research.

The school years of life were not the best time for young Einstein. He remembered them with bitterness, because he did not like simple cramming. So the student was not known as a favorite among teachers, he always argued with teachers, asked objectionable questions to which the teachers had no answers.

Apparently, the myth appeared from there that Einstein was a loser at school. "Nothing good will ever come of you!" - that was the verdict of the teachers. Although if you look at his certificate, then everything is quite good there, especially in mathematics, physics and philosophy.

At the insistence of his mother, he began to play the violin at the age of six and did it initially only because his parents demanded it. Only the music of the great Mozart made a revolution in his soul, and the violin forever became a companion in the life of a physicist.

At the age of 12, he got acquainted with the textbook of Euclidean geometry. This mathematical work shocked young Albert, like his father's compass had been picked up seven years ago. The “sacred book on geometry”, which he lovingly called, became a desktop manual, where every day a student named Einstein looked with irrepressible curiosity, absorbing knowledge on his own.

In general, “self-study” was a special hobby for a young genius who did not like learning under duress. Deciding that he himself would be able to get an education, in 1895 he left school and appeared without a matriculation certificate to his parents, while forced to live without him in Italy. The assurances of the disobedient offspring that he would be able to enter the technical school himself were not crowned with success.

Self-confident Einstein fails at the first entrance exams to the Zurich College. He devotes a year to completing his secondary education, and only in 1896 he is admitted to the Higher Educational Institution.

When did the great Einstein "take up his mind"?

Even when he entered the institute, the student Einstein did not become an example to follow. As in the gymnasium, he did not differ in discipline, he skipped lectures or attended them “for show”, without interest. More attracted to his independent research: he experimented, conducted experiments, read the works of great scientists. Instead of studying, he sat in a cafe and studied scientific journals.

In 1900, he nevertheless received a diploma as a teacher of physics, but he was not hired anywhere. Only after two years had he been given a trainee position at the Patent Office. It was then that Albert Einstein was able to devote more time to his favorite studies, getting closer and closer to his discoveries in the field of physics.

As a result, three papers by Einstein were born that turned the scientific world upside down. Published in a well-known scientific journal, they brought world fame to physics. So, what is special discovered by the scientist?

What is interesting about the personality of a scientist?

Besides the fact that Albert Einstein was a great physicist, he was also an extraordinary person. Here are some interesting facts from his life.

The scientist died in 1955. Albert Einstein spent the last years of his life in the small American town of Priston, where he is buried. The inhabitants of the town loved their neighbor, and the students of the university where he taught called the physicist "old dock" and sang this song:

Who is strong in mathematics

And who is in love with integrals,

Who drinks water, not rhine wine,

For those, an example is our Al Einstein.

Here is such a brief story about the great scientist Albert Einstein we got today. I hope this material will be enough for you to prepare an interesting report on celebrities.

And on this I say goodbye to you with the wishes of new discoveries.

Success in your studies!

Evgenia Klimkovich

Albert Einstein (German Albert Einstein,; March 14, 1879, Ulm, Württemberg, Germany - April 18, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) - theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 , public figure-humanist. He lived in Germany (1879-1893, 1914-1933), Switzerland (1893-1914) and the USA (1933-1955). Honorary doctor of about 20 leading universities in the world, a member of many Academies of Sciences, including a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1926).
Albert Einstein 1920


Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the South German city of Ulm, into a poor Jewish family. His parents married three years before their son was born, on August 8, 1876. Her father, Hermann Einstein (1847-1902), was at that time co-owner of a small enterprise for the production of feather stuffing for mattresses and featherbeds.
Hermann Einstein

Mother, Paulina Einstein (nee Koch, 1858-1920), came from the family of a wealthy corn merchant Julius Derzbacher (changed his surname to Koch in 1842) and Jetta Bernheimer.
Paulina Einstein

In the summer of 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Hermann Einstein, together with his brother Jakob, founded a small company selling electrical equipment.
Albert Einstein at the age of three. 1882

Albert's younger sister Maria (Maya, 1881-1951) was born in Munich.
Albert Einstein with his sister

Albert Einstein received his primary education at a local Catholic school. For about 12 years he experienced a state of deep religiosity, but soon reading popular science books made him a freethinker and forever gave rise to a skeptical attitude towards authorities. Of childhood impressions, Einstein later recalled as the most powerful: the compass, Euclid's Elements, and (circa 1889) Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In addition, at the initiative of his mother, he began playing the violin at the age of six. Einstein's passion for music continued throughout his life. Already in the United States in Princeton, in 1934, Albert Einstein gave a charity concert, where he played the works of Mozart on the violin in favor of scientists and cultural figures who emigrated from Nazi Germany.
Albert Einstein is 14 years old.1893

In the gymnasium, he was not among the first students (the exception was mathematics and Latin). Albert Einstein's entrenched system of rote learning (which he believed to be harmful to the very spirit of learning and creative thinking), as well as the authoritarian attitude of teachers towards students, caused Albert Einstein's rejection, so he often entered into disputes with his teachers.
In 1894, the Einsteins moved from Munich to the Italian city of Pavia, near Milan, where the brothers Hermann and Jacob moved their firm. Albert himself stayed with relatives in Munich for some time to complete all six classes of the gymnasium. Never having received his Abitur, in 1895 he joined his family in Pavia.
In the autumn of 1895, Albert Einstein arrived in Switzerland to take the entrance exams to the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic) in Zurich and become a teacher of physics. Having brilliantly proved himself in the mathematics exam, he at the same time failed the exams in botany and French, which did not allow him to enter the Zurich Polytechnic. However, the director of the school advised the young man to enter the final class of the school in Aarau (Switzerland) in order to get a certificate and repeat the admission.
At the cantonal school of Aarau, Albert Einstein devoted his free time to studying Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. In September 1896, he successfully passed all the final exams at school, with the exception of the French language exam, and received a certificate
Abitur given to Albert Einstein in 1896, at the age of 17, after attending a cantonal high school in Aarau, Switzerland.

In October 1896 he was admitted to the Polytechnical Faculty of Education. Here he became friends with a classmate, mathematician Marcel Grossman (1878-1936), and also met a Serbian student of the Faculty of Medicine Mileva Marich (4 years older than him), who later became his wife. In the same year, Einstein renounced German citizenship. To obtain Swiss citizenship, it was required to pay 1,000 Swiss francs, but the family's poor financial situation allowed him to do this only after 5 years. The father's enterprise completely went bankrupt this year, Einstein's parents moved to Milan, where Hermann Einstein, already without a brother, opened an electrical equipment trading company.
The style and methodology of teaching at the Polytechnic differed significantly from the ossified and authoritarian Prussian school, so further education was easier for the young man. He had first-class teachers, including the remarkable geometer Hermann Minkowski (Einstein often missed his lectures, which he later sincerely regretted) and the analyst Adolf Hurwitz.
Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic in 1900 with a degree in mathematics and physics. He passed the exams successfully, but not brilliantly. Many professors highly appreciated the abilities of the student Einstein, but no one wanted to help him continue his scientific career. Einstein himself later recalled: I was bullied by my professors, who did not like me because of my independence and closed my path to science.
Although the following year, 1901, Einstein received Swiss citizenship, but until the spring of 1902 he could not find a permanent job - even as a school teacher. Due to the lack of earnings, he literally starved, not taking food for several days in a row. This caused liver disease, from which the scientist suffered until the end of his life. Despite the hardships that plagued him in 1900-1902, Einstein found time to further study physics.
Albert Einstein with friends. 1903


In 1901, the Berlin Annals of Physics published his first article, "Consequences of the Theory of Capillarity" (Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen), devoted to the analysis of the forces of attraction between the atoms of liquids based on the theory of capillarity. A former classmate Marcel Grossman helped to overcome difficulties, recommending Einstein for the position of an expert of the III class in the Federal Office for Patenting Inventions (Bern) with a salary of 3,500 francs a year (during his student years he lived on 100 francs a month).
Einstein worked at the Patent Office from July 1902 to October 1909, mainly doing peer review of invention applications. In 1903 he became a permanent employee of the Bureau. The nature of the work allowed Einstein to devote his free time to research in the field of theoretical physics.
Albert Einstein is 25 years old. 1904


In October 1902, Einstein received news from Italy that his father was ill; Hermann Einstein died a few days after his son's arrival.
On January 6, 1903, Einstein married twenty-seven-year-old Mileva Marich. They had three children.
Mileva Marić


The year 1905 entered the history of physics as the "Year of Miracles" (lat. Annus Mirabilis). This year, the Annals of Physics, Germany's leading physics journal, published three of Einstein's seminal papers that ushered in a new scientific revolution.
Many prominent physicists remained true to classical mechanics and the concept of aether, among them Lorentz, J. J. Thomson, Lenard, Lodge, Nernst, Win. At the same time, some of them (for example, Lorentz himself) did not reject the results of the special theory of relativity, but interpreted them in the spirit of Lorentz's theory, preferring to look at the space-time concept of Einstein-Minkowski as a purely mathematical device.
In 1907, Einstein published the quantum theory of heat capacity (the old theory at low temperatures diverged greatly from experiment. At the same time, Smoluchowski came to similar conclusions, whose article was published a few months later than Einstein. His work on statistical mechanics, entitled "A new definition of dimensions molecules", Einstein submitted to the Polytechnic as a dissertation and in the same 1905 received the title of Doctor of Philosophy (the equivalent of a candidate of natural sciences) in physics. The following year, Einstein developed his theory in a new article "On the theory of Brownian motion". Soon (1908) Perrin's measurements fully confirmed the adequacy of Einstein's model, which was the first experimental proof of the molecular-kinetic theory, which was under active attack from the positivists in those years.
The work of 1905 brought Einstein, although not immediately, worldwide fame. On April 30, 1905, he sent to the University of Zurich the text of his doctoral dissertation on the topic "A new determination of the size of molecules." On January 15, 1906, he received his Ph.D. in physics. He writes and meets with the world's most famous physicists, while Planck in Berlin incorporates the theory of relativity into his curriculum. In the letters he is called "Mr. Professor", but for another four years (until October 1909), Einstein continues to serve in the Patent Office; in 1906 he was promoted (he became an expert of the II class) and his salary was increased. In October 1908, Einstein was invited to read an elective course at the University of Bern, however, without any payment. In 1909 he attended a congress of naturalists in Salzburg, where the elite of German physics gathered, and met Planck for the first time; over 3 years of correspondence, they quickly became close friends and maintained this friendship until the end of their lives. After the congress, Einstein finally received a paid position as an extraordinary professor at the University of Zurich (December 1909), where his old friend Marcel Grossmann taught geometry. The pay was small, especially for a family with two children, and in 1911 Einstein accepted without hesitation an invitation to head the department of physics at the German University in Prague. During this period, Einstein continued to publish a series of papers on thermodynamics, relativity and quantum theory. In Prague, he activates research on the theory of gravitation, aiming to create a relativistic theory of gravity and to fulfill the old dream of physicists - to exclude Newtonian long-range action from this area.
In 1911, Einstein participated in the First Solvay Congress (Brussels), dedicated to quantum physics. There he had his only meeting with Poincaré, who continued to reject the theory of relativity, although he personally treated Einstein with great respect.
Photos of the participants of the first Solvay Congress in 1911 Brussels, Belgium.
The Solvay Congresses, a series of congresses that began at the visionary initiative of Ernest Solvay and continued under the direction of the International Institute of Physics he founded, provided a unique opportunity for physicists to discuss the fundamental problems that had been at the center of their attention at various times.
Seated (left to right): Walter Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay, Hendrik Lorenz, Emil Warburg, Wilhelm Wien, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Marie Curie, Henri Poincaré.
Standing (left to right): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindmann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenorl, Georg Hostlet, Eduard Herzen, James Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike Kamerling-Onnes, Albert Einstein , Paul Langevin.


A year later, Einstein returned to Zurich, where he became a professor at his native Polytechnic and lectured there on physics. In 1913 he attended the Congress of Naturalists in Vienna, where he visited the 75-year-old Ernst Mach; Once Mach's criticism of Newtonian mechanics made a great impression on Einstein and ideologically prepared him for the innovations of the theory of relativity.
Second Solvay Congress (1913)
Seated (left to right): Walter Nernst, Ernest Rutherford, Wilhelm Wien, Joseph John Thomson, Emil Warburg, Hendrik Lorenz, Marcel Brillouin, William Barlow, Heike Kamerling-Onnes, Robert Williams Wood, Louis Georg Gouy, Pierre Weiss.
Standing (left to right): Friedrich Hasenorl, Jules Emile Verschafelt, James Hopwood Jeans, William Henry Bragg, Max von Laue, Heinrich Rubens, Marie Curie, Robert Goldschmidt, Arnold Sommerfeld, Eduard Herzen, Albert Einstein, Frederick Lindmann, Maurice de Broglie, William Pope, Edward Gruneisen, Martin Knudsen, Georg Hostlet, Paul Langevin.


At the end of 1913, on the recommendation of Planck and Nernst, Einstein received an invitation to head the physical research institute being created in Berlin; he is also enrolled as a professor at the University of Berlin. In addition to being close to a friend Planck, this position had the advantage of not obliging him to be distracted by teaching. He accepted the invitation, and in the pre-war year of 1914, a staunch pacifist Einstein arrived in Berlin. Mileva stayed with her children in Zurich, their family broke up. In February 1919 they officially divorced.
Albert Einstein with Fritz Haber, 1914

In 1915, in a conversation with the Dutch physicist Wander de Haas, Einstein proposed a scheme and calculation of the experiment, which, after successful implementation, was called the "Einstein-de Haas effect". The result of the experiment inspired Niels Bohr, who created the planetary model of the atom two years earlier, because he confirmed that circular electron currents exist inside atoms, and electrons do not radiate in their orbits. It is these assumptions that Bohr made the basis of his model. In addition, it was found that the total magnetic moment is twice as large as expected; the reason for this was clarified when the spin was discovered - the intrinsic angular momentum of the electron.
In June 1919, Einstein married his maternal cousin Else Löwenthal (née Einstein, 1876–1936) and adopted her two children. At the end of the year, his seriously ill mother Paulina moved in with them; she died in February 1920. Judging by the letters, Einstein was very upset by her death.


Albert and Elsa Einstein meet reporters


After the end of the war, Einstein continued to work in the old areas of physics, and also engaged in new areas - relativistic cosmology and the "Unified Field Theory", which, according to his plan, was supposed to combine gravity, electromagnetism and (preferably) the theory of the microcosm. The first paper on cosmology, "Cosmological Considerations to the General Theory of Relativity", appeared in 1917. After that, Einstein experienced a mysterious "invasion of diseases" - in addition to serious problems with the liver, a stomach ulcer was discovered, then jaundice and general weakness. For several months he did not get out of bed, but continued to work actively. Only in 1920, the disease receded.
Photograph of Albert Einstein in his office at the University of Berlin in 1920.

Einstein in the home of Leiden University physics professor Paul Ehrenfest in 1920.


Einstein visiting Amsterdam with experimental physicist Peter Zeman (left) and with his friend Paul Ehrenfest. (circa 1920)


In May 1920, Einstein, along with other members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, was sworn in as a civil servant and was legally considered a German citizen. However, he retained Swiss citizenship until the end of his life. In the 1920s, receiving invitations from everywhere, he traveled extensively in Europe (on a Swiss passport),
Albert Einstein in Barcelona, ​​1923

lectured for scientists, students and for the inquisitive public.
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921


Einstein speaking in Gothenburg, Sweden.1923


He also visited the United States, where a special welcoming resolution of the Congress (1921) was adopted in honor of the eminent guest.
Albert Einstein and observatory staff near the 40-inch refractor of the Yerkes Observatory. 1921


Tour of Marconi Station in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Famous scientists are present in the photo, including Tesla, 1921


At the end of 1922 he visited India, where he had a long association with Tagore, and China. Einstein met winter in Japan.
Visit of Albert Einstein to Tohoku University. From left to right: Kotaro Honda, Albert Einstein, Keichi Aichi, Shirouta Kusakabe. 1922


In 1923 he spoke in Jerusalem, where it was planned soon (1925) to open the Hebrew University.
Einstein was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics, but the members of the Nobel Committee for a long time did not dare to award the prize to the author of such revolutionary theories. In the end, a diplomatic solution was found: the prize for 1921 was awarded to Einstein (at the very end of 1922) for the theory of the photoelectric effect, that is, for the most indisputable and well-tested work in the experiment; however, the text of the decision contained a neutral addition: "... and for other work in the field of theoretical physics."
On November 10, 1922, Christopher Aurvillius, secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, wrote to Einstein:
Albert Einstein in Berlin. 1922

As I already informed you by telegram, the Royal Academy of Sciences at its yesterday's meeting decided to award you the prize in physics for the past (1921) year, thereby acknowledging your work in theoretical physics, in particular the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, without taking into account your work on the theory of relativity and the theory of gravity, which will be evaluated after their confirmation in the future.
Naturally, Einstein devoted the traditional Nobel speech (1923) to the theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein. Official photograph of the 1921 Nobel Prize winner in physics.


In 1924, the young Indian physicist Shatyendranath Bose, in a short letter, asked Einstein to help him publish an article in which he put forward the assumption that formed the basis of modern quantum statistics. Bose proposed to consider light as a gas of photons. Einstein concluded that the same statistics could be used for atoms and molecules in general. In 1925, Einstein published a German translation of Bose's paper, and then his own paper, in which he laid out a generalized Bose model applicable to systems of identical particles with integer spin, called bosons. Based on this quantum statistics, now known as the Bose-Einstein statistics, both physicists back in the mid-1920s theoretically substantiated the existence of the fifth state of aggregation of matter - the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Portrait of Albert Einstein. 1925


In 1927, at the Fifth Solvay Congress, Einstein strongly opposed the "Copenhagen interpretation" of Max Born and Niels Bohr, which treats the mathematical model of quantum mechanics as essentially probabilistic. Einstein stated that the supporters of this interpretation “make virtue out of need”, and the probabilistic nature only indicates that our knowledge of the physical essence of microprocesses is incomplete. He sarcastically remarked: "God does not play dice" (German: Der Herrgott würfelt nicht), to which Niels Bohr objected: "Einstein, don't tell God what to do." Einstein accepted the "Copenhagen interpretation" only as a temporary, incomplete version, which, as physics progresses, should be replaced by a complete theory of the microworld. He himself made attempts to create a deterministic non-linear theory, the approximate consequence of which would be quantum mechanics.
Solvay Congress of 1927 on quantum mechanics.
1st row (left to right): Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Henrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles Guy, Charles Wilson, Owen Richardson.
2nd row (left to right): Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Bragg, Hendrik Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr.
Standing (left to right): Auguste Picard, Emile Hanrio, Paul Ehrenfest, Eduard Herzen, Theophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules Emile Verschafelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Fowler, Leon Brillouin.

In 1928, Einstein saw off Lorentz on his last journey, with whom he became very friendly in his last years. It was Lorentz who nominated Einstein for the Nobel Prize in 1920 and endorsed it the following year.
Albert Einstein and Hendrik Anton Lorenz in Leiden in 1921.


In 1929, the world celebrated Einstein's 50th birthday with a bang. The hero of the day did not take part in the celebrations and hid in his villa near Potsdam, where he grew roses with enthusiasm. Here he received friends - scientists, Tagore, Emmanuel Lasker, Charlie Chaplin and others.
Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore


Albert Einstein received an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne University in Paris in November 1929.

Albert Einstein plays the violin during a charity concert at the New Synagogue in Berlin, January 29, 1930.

Portrait of Albert Einstein taken by the clairvoyant Madame Sylvia in Berlin in 1930. For a long time it hung in the visitors' room in her office.


Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein at the 1930 Solvay Congress in Brussels


Einstein opens the radio show. Berlin, August 1930


Einstein on a radio show Berlin, August 1930


In 1931, Einstein again visited the United States.
Einstein's departure to America. December 1930


Albert Einstein in 1931 was struck by the enthusiasm of journalists in the United States who wanted him to explain his theory of relativity to them. Einstein said it would take at least three days


In Pasadena, he was very warmly received by Michelson, who had four months to live.
Albert Einstein, Albert Abraham Michelson, Robert Andrews Milliken.1931


Returning to Berlin in the summer, Einstein, in a speech before the Physical Society, paid tribute to the memory of the remarkable experimenter who laid the foundation stone of the theory of relativity.
Until about 1926, Einstein worked in very many areas of physics, from cosmological models to the study of the causes of meanders in rivers. Further, with rare exceptions, he focuses his efforts on quantum problems and the Unified Field Theory.
Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. December 1925


As the economic crisis grew in Weimar Germany, political instability intensified, contributing to the strengthening of radical nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Insults and threats against Einstein became more frequent, one of the leaflets even offered a large reward (50,000 marks) on his head. After the Nazis came to power, all the works of Einstein were either attributed to "Aryan" physicists, or declared a distortion of true science. Lenard, who headed the German Physics group, proclaimed: “The most important example of the dangerous influence of Jewish circles on the study of nature is Einstein with his theories and mathematical chatter, made up of old information and arbitrary additions ... We must understand that it is unworthy of a German to be the spiritual follower of a Jew ". An uncompromising racial purge unfolded in all scientific circles in Germany.
In 1933, Einstein had to leave Germany, to which he was very attached, forever.
Albert Einstein and his wife after their exile in Belgium, where they lived in the Villa Savoyarde in Haan. 1933


Villa Savoyarde in Haan (Belgium), where Einstein briefly lived after being expelled from Germany. 1933


Einstein gives an interview to journalists at Villa Savoyarde in Belgium. 1933


Albert Einstein with his wife in 1933 at a villa in Savoyarde.


Together with his family, he left for the United States of America with visitor visas.
Albert Einstein in Santa Barbara, 1933

Soon, in protest against the crimes of Nazism, he renounced German citizenship and membership in the Prussian and Bavarian academies of sciences.
After moving to the US, Albert Einstein was appointed professor of physics at the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The eldest son, Hans-Albert (1904-1973), soon followed him (1938); he subsequently became a recognized specialist in hydraulics and a professor at the University of California (1947). Einstein's youngest son, Eduard (1910-1965), fell ill with a severe form of schizophrenia around 1930 and ended his days in a Zurich psychiatric hospital. Einstein's cousin, Lina, died in Auschwitz, another sister, Bertha Dreyfus, died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp
Albert Einstein with his daughter and son. November 1930


In the United States, Einstein instantly became one of the most famous and respected people in the country, gaining a reputation as the most brilliant scientist in history, as well as the personification of the image of the “absent-minded professor” and the intellectual capabilities of man in general. In January of the following year, 1934, he was invited to the White House to see President Franklin Roosevelt, had a cordial conversation with him, and even spent the night there. Every day, Einstein received hundreds of letters of various content, to which (even children's ones) he tried to answer. Being a naturalist with a worldwide reputation, he remained an accessible, modest, undemanding and affable person.
Portrait of Albert Einstein. 1934


In December 1936, Elsa died of heart disease; Marcel Grossmann had died three months earlier in Zurich. Einstein's loneliness was brightened up by sister Maya,
Sister Maya

Margo's stepdaughter (Elsa's daughter from her first marriage), Ellen Dukas's secretary, and Tiger the cat. To the surprise of the Americans, Einstein never got a car and a TV. Maya was partially paralyzed after a stroke in 1946, and every evening Einstein read books to his beloved sister.
In August 1939, Einstein signed a letter written at the initiative of Leo Szilard, an immigrant physicist from Hungary, addressed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The letter drew the President's attention to the possibility that Nazi Germany would acquire an atomic bomb.
Albert Einstein receives a certificate of American citizenship from Judge Philip Foreman. October 1, 1940


After several months of deliberation, Roosevelt decided to take this threat seriously and opened his own project to create an atomic weapon. Einstein himself did not take part in these works. Later, he regretted the letter he signed, realizing that for the new US leader Harry Truman, nuclear energy serves as a tool of intimidation. In the future, he criticized the development of nuclear weapons, their use in Japan and testing at Bikini Atoll (1954), and considered his involvement in accelerating work on the American nuclear program the greatest tragedy of his life. Widely known were his aphorisms: "We won the war, but not the peace"; "If the third world war will be fought with atomic bombs, then the fourth - with stones and sticks."
70th anniversary celebration. 1949


In the postwar years, Einstein became one of the founders of the Pugwash Peace Movement. Although his first conference was held after the death of Einstein (1957), the initiative to create such a movement was expressed in the widely known Russell-Einstein Manifesto (written jointly with Bertrand Russell), which also warned of the danger of creating and using the hydrogen bomb. As part of this movement, Einstein, who was its chairman, together with Albert Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell, Frederic Joliot-Curie and other world-famous scientists, fought against the arms race, the creation of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Einstein also called for the creation of a world government in order to prevent a new war, for which he received sharp criticism in the Soviet press (1947)
Niels Bohr, James Frank, Albert Einstein, October 3, 1954


Until the end of his life, Einstein continued to work on the study of the problems of cosmology, but he directed his main efforts to the creation of a unified field theory.
In 1955, Einstein's health deteriorated rapidly. He wrote a will and told his friends: "I have fulfilled my task on earth." His last work was an unfinished appeal calling for the prevention of nuclear war.
His stepdaughter Margot recalled her last meeting with Einstein in the hospital: He spoke with deep calm, about doctors even with a touch of humor, and waited for his death as a forthcoming "phenomenon of nature." How fearless he was in life, so quiet and peaceful he met death. Without any sentimentality and without regrets, he left this world.
Albert Einstein in the last years of his life (probably 1950)

The scientist who turned mankind's ideas about the Universe upside down, Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955 at 1:25 a.m., at the age of 77 in Princeton, from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Before his death, he spoke a few words in German, but the American nurse was unable to reproduce them later.
On April 19, 1955, the funeral of the great scientist took place without wide publicity, at which only 12 of his closest friends were present. His body was burned in the Ewing Cemetery crematorium and the ashes scattered to the wind.
Newspaper headlines with obituaries. 1955


Einstein had a passion for music, especially 18th-century compositions. Over the years, among his preferred composers were Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Haydn and Schubert, and in recent years - Brahms. He played the violin well, with which he never parted.
Albert Einstein plays the violin. 1921

Violin Concerto by Albert Einstein. 1941


He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York with Julian Huxley, Thomas Mann, and John Dewey.
Thomas Mann with Albert Einstein at Princeton, 1938


He strongly condemned the "Oppenheimer case", who in 1953 was accused of "communist sympathies" and removed from secret work.
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein talk at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. 1940s

Alarmed by the rapid growth of anti-Semitism in Germany, Einstein supported the Zionist movement's call for a Jewish national home in Palestine and delivered a number of articles and speeches on the subject. The idea of ​​opening the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1925) received especially active assistance from him.
The leaders of the World Zionist Organization, upon their arrival in New York, met with Albert Einstein. In the photo Mossinson, Einstein, Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Ussyshkin. 1921


He explained his position:
Until recently, I lived in Switzerland, and while I was there, I did not realize my Jewishness ...
When I arrived in Germany, I first learned that I was a Jew, and it was more non-Jews than Jews who helped me make this discovery ... Then I realized that only a common cause, which would be dear to all Jews in the world, could lead to the revival of the people ... If If we did not have to live among intolerant, soulless and cruel people, I would be the first to reject nationalism in favor of universal humanity.
Dr. Albert Einstein and Meyer Weisgal arrived at the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine. 1946


Albert Einstein testifies on behalf of the UN about the illegal restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine.


In 1947, Einstein welcomed the establishment of the State of Israel, hoping for a binational Arab-Jewish solution to the Palestine problem. He wrote to Paul Ehrenfest in 1921: "Zionism is truly a new Jewish ideal and can restore the joy of existence to the Jewish people." Already after the Holocaust, he remarked: “Zionism did not protect German Jewry from destruction. But for those who survived, Zionism gave inner strength to endure the disaster with dignity, without losing healthy self-respect.” In 1952, Einstein even received an offer to become the second president of Israel, which the scientist politely refused, citing a lack of experience in such work. Einstein bequeathed all his letters and manuscripts (and even the copyright for the commercial use of his image and name) to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Albert Einstein with Ben Gurion, 1951


In addition
Albert Einstein on the steamship Portland, December 1931


Albert Einstein arriving at Newark Airport in April 1939.


Albert Einstein lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.1940s


Albert Einstein 1947

Albert Einstein

Genius of the first half of the 20th century. A scientist - who began to be recognized all over the world. Interesting personality, interesting life. Today we will tell you about the life of Albert Einstein in facts.

Theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics, Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1921, humanist public figure. Lived in Germany, Switzerland and the USA. Honorary doctor of about 20 leading universities in the world, a member of many Academies of Sciences, including a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Einstein was born into a Jewish family that was not rich. His father, Herman, worked in a company that stuffed featherbeds and mattresses. Mother, Paulina (nee Koch) was the daughter of a corn merchant.

Albert had a younger sister, Maria.

The future scientist did not live even a year in his hometown, since the family went to live in Munich in 1880.

In Munich, where Hermann Einstein, together with his brother Jakob, founded a small company selling electrical equipment.

Mother taught little Albert to play the violin, and he left music studies for the rest of his life.

Already in the United States in Princeton, in 1934, Albert Einstein gave a charity concert, where he played the works of Mozart on the violin in favor of scientists and cultural figures who emigrated from Nazi Germany.

In the gymnasium (now the Albert Einstein Gymnasium in Munich), he was not among the first students.

Albert Einstein received his primary education at a local Catholic school. According to his own recollections, in his childhood he experienced a state of deep religiosity, which ended at the age of 12.

Through reading popular science books, he came to the conclusion that much of what is stated in the Bible cannot be true, and that the state is deliberately deceiving the younger generation.

In 1895, he entered the Aarau school in Switzerland and successfully completed it.

In Zurich in 1896, Einstein entered the Higher Technical School. After graduating in 1900, the future scientist received a diploma as a teacher of physics and mathematics.

During World War II, Einstein was a technical consultant to the US Navy. It is known for certain that Russian intelligence sent their agents to him more than once for secret information.

In 1894, the Einsteins moved from Munich to the Italian city of Pavia, near Milan, where the brothers Hermann and Jacob moved their firm. Albert himself stayed with relatives in Munich for some time to complete all six classes of the gymnasium.

In the autumn of 1895, Albert Einstein arrived in Switzerland to take the entrance exams to the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic) in Zurich.

After graduating from the Polytechnic, Einstein, in need of money, began to look for work in Zurich, but could not even get a job as an ordinary school teacher.

The famous picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue was taken for annoying journalists who asked the great scientist just to smile at the camera.

After graduating from the Polytechnic, Einstein, in need of money, began to look for work in Zurich, but could not even get a job as an ordinary school teacher. This literally hungry period in the life of the great scientist affected his health: hunger caused a serious liver disease.

After Einstein's death, they managed to find his notebook, which was completely filled with calculus.

With employment, Albert was helped by his former classmate, Marcel Grossman. On his recommendations, in 1902, Albert got a job as a third-class examiner in the Berne Federal Office for Patenting Inventions. The scientist until 1909 evaluated applications for inventions.

In 1902, Einstein loses his father.

Einstein worked at the Patent Office from July 1902 to October 1909, primarily as a peer reviewer of invention applications. In 1903 he became a permanent employee of the Bureau. The nature of the work allowed Einstein to devote his free time to research in the field of theoretical physics.

Since 1905, all the physicists of the world have recognized the name of Einstein. The journal "Annals of Physics" published three of his articles at once, which marked the beginning of a scientific revolution. They were devoted to the theory of relativity, quantum theory, statistical physics.

Einstein had to work as an electrician.

“Why exactly did I create the theory of relativity? When I ask myself this question, it seems to me that the reason is the following. A normal adult does not think about the problem of space and time at all. In his opinion, he already thought about this problem in childhood. I developed intellectually so slowly that space and time occupied my thoughts when I became an adult. Naturally, I could penetrate deeper into the problem than a child with normal inclinations.

However, many scientists considered the "new physics" too revolutionary. It abolished the ether, absolute space and absolute time, revised Newton's mechanics, which served as the basis of physics for 200 years and was invariably confirmed by observations.

Einstein could not pay alimony to his wife. He offered her to give all the money if she received the Nobel Prize.

Among the closest friends of the great scientist was Charlie Chaplin.

Taking advantage of the incredible popularity of his own person, for some time the scientist took one dollar for each autograph. He donated the proceeds to charity.

On January 6, 1903, Einstein married twenty-seven-year-old Mileva Marich. They had three children. The first, even before marriage, was the daughter Lieserl (1902), but the biographers failed to find out her fate.

Einstein spoke 2 languages.

Hans Albert, Einstein's eldest son, became a great specialist in hydraulics, a professor at the University of California.

Einstein's favorite hobby was sailing. He did not know how to swim on the water.

In 1914, the family breaks up: Einstein leaves for Berlin, leaving his wife and children in Zurich. In 1919, an official divorce took place.

More often than not, the genius did not wear socks because he did not like to wear them.

After his death in 1955, pathologist Thomas Harvey removed the scientist's brain and took photographs from various angles. Then, cutting the brain into many small pieces, for 40 years he sent them to various laboratories for research by the best neurologists in the world.

Eduard, the youngest son of the great scientist, was ill with a severe form of schizophrenia and died in a psychiatric hospital in Zurich.

In 1919, after obtaining a divorce, Einstein married Else Löwenthal (nee Einstein), his first cousin on his mother's side. He adopts two of her children. In 1936, Elsa died of a heart disease.

Einstein's last words remained a mystery. An American woman sat next to him, and he uttered his words in German.

Einstein received his Ph.D. in 1906. By this time, he was already gaining worldwide fame: physicists from all over the world write letters to him, come to meet him. Einstein meets Planck, with whom they had a long and strong friendship.

Albert Einstein was very fond of Maxims by the outstanding French thinker and politician Francois de La Rochefoucauld. He read them constantly.

In 1909 he was offered a job at the University of Zurich as an extraordinary professor. However, due to the small salary, Einstein soon agrees to a better offer. He was invited to head the Department of Physics at the German University of Prague.

The great genius was always made fun of in elementary school.

During the First World War, the scientist openly expresses his pacifist views and continues scientific discoveries. After 1917, liver disease worsened, a stomach ulcer appeared, and jaundice began. Even without getting out of bed, Einstein continued his scientific research.

On the eve of his death, Einstein was offered an operation, but he refused, saying that "artificial life extension does not make sense."

Einstein's mother died in 1920 after a serious illness.

In literature, the genius of physics preferred Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Bertolt Brecht.

In 1921, Einstein finally becomes a Nobel laureate.

In 1923, Einstein spoke in Jerusalem, where it was planned soon (1925) to open the Hebrew University.

In 1827, Robert Brown observed under a microscope and subsequently described the chaotic movement of pollen floating in water. Einstein, on the basis of molecular theory, developed a statistical and mathematical model of such a movement.

Albert Einstein's last work was burned.

In 1924, the young Indian physicist Shatyendranath Bose, in a short letter, asked Einstein to help him publish an article in which he put forward the assumption that formed the basis of modern quantum statistics. Bose proposed to consider light as a gas of photons. Einstein came to the conclusion that the same statistics can be used for atoms and molecules in general.

In 1925, Einstein published a paper by Bose in a German translation, and then his own paper, in which he laid out a generalized Bose model applicable to systems of identical particles with integer spin, called bosons. Based on this quantum statistics, now known as the Bose-Einstein statistics, both physicists back in the mid-1920s theoretically substantiated the existence of the fifth state of aggregation of matter - the Bose-Einstein condensate.

In 1928, Einstein saw off Lorentz on his last journey, with whom he became very friendly in his last years. It was Lorentz who nominated Einstein for the Nobel Prize in 1920 and supported it the following year.

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling that possesses me because killing a person is disgusting. My attitude is not based on any speculative theory, but is based on the deepest antipathy to any kind of cruelty and hatred.

In 1929, the world celebrated Einstein's 50th birthday with a bang. The hero of the day did not take part in the celebrations and hid in his villa near Potsdam, where he grew roses with enthusiasm. Here he received friends - scientists, Rabindranath Tagore, Emmanuel Lasker, Charlie Chaplin and others.

In 1952, when the state of Israel had just begun to form into a full-fledged power, the great scientist was offered to become president. Of course, the physicist flatly refused such a high post, citing the fact that he was a scientist, and he did not have enough experience to govern the country.

In 1931, Einstein again visited the United States. In Pasadena, he was very warmly received by Michelson, who had four months to live. Returning to Berlin in the summer, Einstein, in a speech before the Physical Society, paid tribute to the memory of the remarkable experimenter who laid the foundation stone of the theory of relativity.

In 1955, Einstein's health deteriorated rapidly. He wrote a will and told his friends: "I have fulfilled my task on Earth." His last work was an unfinished appeal calling for the prevention of nuclear war.

Albert Einstein died on the night of April 18, 1955 in Princeton. The cause of death was a ruptured aortic aneurysm. According to his personal will, the funeral took place without wide publicity, they were attended by only 12 people close and dear to him. The body was burned in the Ewing Cemetery crematorium, the ashes scattered to the wind.

In 1933, Einstein had to leave Germany, to which he was very attached, forever.

In the United States, Einstein instantly became one of the most famous and respected people in the country, gaining a reputation as the most brilliant scientist in history, as well as the personification of the image of an “absent-minded professor” and the intellectual capabilities of a person in general.

Albert Einstein was a committed democratic socialist, humanist, pacifist and anti-fascist. The authority of Einstein, achieved thanks to his revolutionary discoveries in physics, allowed the scientist to actively influence the socio-political transformations in the world.

Einstein's religious views have been a subject of longstanding controversy. Some claim that Einstein believed in the existence of God, others call him an atheist. Both those and others used the words of the great scientist to confirm their point of view.

In 1921, Einstein received a telegram from New York rabbi Herbert Goldstein: "Do you believe in God full stop 50 words." Einstein kept within 24 words: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who manifests himself in the natural harmony of being, but not at all in God, who is busy with the destinies and deeds of people." Even more bluntly, he expressed himself in an interview with The New York Times (November 1930): “I do not believe in a God who rewards and punishes, in a God whose goals are molded from our human goals. I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, although weak minds, obsessed with fear or absurd selfishness, find refuge in such a belief.

Einstein has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities, including: Geneva, Zurich, Rostock, Madrid, Brussels, Buenos Aires, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Harvard, Princeton, New York (Albany) , Sorbonne.

In 2015, in Jerusalem, on the territory of the Hebrew University, a monument to Einstein was erected by the Moscow sculptor Georgy Frangulyan.

Einstein's popularity in the modern world is so great that there are controversial issues in the widespread use of the scientist's name and appearance in advertising and trademarks. Because Einstein bequeathed some of his estate, including the use of his images, to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the "Albert Einstein" brand was registered as a trademark.

Signing one of the photographs with his tongue hanging out, the genius said that his gesture was addressed to all of humanity. How can it be without metaphysics! By the way, contemporaries always emphasized the subtle humor of the scientist and the ability to joke witty.

Source-Internet

Albert Einstein - the most interesting facts about the great genius updated: December 14, 2017 by: website