Biography. Short biography of Albert Einstein

A. Einstein provided him with worldwide fame during his lifetime. Sixty years after his death, the world still admires the depth of theories and the boldness of the scientist's assumptions.

However, more and more often you can hear the question of what is the name of Einstein? Perhaps this is due to the fact that his name has never been heard, remaining only the letter "A" with a dot, or people are misled by a large number of famous people with such a surname. Let's see who Einstein was, what his name was, what contribution he made to the development of modern science, and what funny situations happened with his participation.

Brief biography of the scientist

The future physicist was born in Germany in 1879 to a Jewish family. Herman - that's the name of Albert Einstein's father, and the mother's name is Paulina. As you may have guessed, the parents named the baby Albert. Interestingly, as a child, Einstein could not be called a child prodigy. He studied poorly (maybe because he was bored), he was reluctant to communicate with his peers, and his disproportionately large head prompted those around him to think about the ugliness of the boy.

The lag in the study of gymnasium tricks led to the fact that the teachers considered Albert stupid, and classmates allowed themselves to laugh at him. Probably, later they were very surprised by his achievements and the fact that the whole world knew the name of Einstein.

Despite the fact that the young man did not even manage to graduate from the gymnasium, and from the first attempt to enter the technical school in Zurich, he nevertheless showed perseverance and was enrolled in a group of students. True, the program seemed uninteresting to him, and instead of studying, Albert preferred to sit in a cafe and read magazines with the latest scientific articles.

First job and interest in science

After graduating with grief in half from a technical school, and having received a diploma, Albert became an expert in the patent office. The work was quite easy for him, since Einstein was able to evaluate the technical characteristics in just minutes. He spent his free time developing his own theories, thanks to which, after a few years, the entire scientific community learned the name of Einstein and got acquainted with his theories.

Recognition in the world of science

After receiving his doctorate (philosophy of sciences) in 1905, Albert takes up active scientific work. His publications on the theory of the photoelectric effect and the private one caused an explosive and ambiguous reaction. Heated discussions, criticism and even anti-Semitism harassment are all part of Einstein's biography. By the way, it was because of his origin that Albert had to go to America.

Thanks to his revolutionary and ingenious developments, the scientist quickly took a high position in the American scientific world and was able to devote as much time as he wanted to such a science he loved.

Nobel Prize Award

The scientist received this most prestigious award for the fact that he was able to theoretically explain the nature of the photoelectric effect. He put forward an explanation for the existence of photons.

Thanks to the work of Einstein, quantum theory received a powerful impetus to development. So significant that even today many people are well acquainted with his work, they know the name of Einstein.

As you know, the Nobel Prize is an impressive amount of money. When Albert received it, he gave all the money to his ex-wife. This was their agreement, since during the divorce, Einstein was not able to pay her the alimony due to her.

Einstein's acquaintance with Marilyn Monroe

The huge popularity of the scientist and film star in the mid-50s of the last century led to the spread of gossip about their romance. Marilyn and her work were familiar to almost everyone, and many knew what to call Einstein (although they could not accurately describe the essence of his achievements). In addition, it is known that these celebrities had sympathy and mutual respect for each other.

Einstein's attitude towards war

The scientist was a pacifist, a fighter for equality and an opponent of racism. Being himself a victim of persecution, he always opposed the ideas of Nazism.

He repeatedly drew a comparison between the fate of blacks in America and Jews in Germany. His phrase is known that, in the end, we all remain human. No matter who he was or what Einstein was called, he was always a civil rights activist.

The scientist's statement is known that if only 2% of the country's young men do not perform compulsory military service, the government will not have the means to confront (prisons will not be able to accommodate such a number of people). The result was a massive youth movement opposed to the war. Those who shared these views pinned badges to their clothes on which “2%” was written.

A Few Facts About Einstein's Brain

Considering how famous the brilliant scientist was, it is not surprising that after his death they planned to thoroughly study his brain. Grandiose plans were disrupted by a mortuary worker who performed an autopsy. He fled with Albert's brain and refused to return it.

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia received more than 40 images of the scientist's thinking organ.

Interesting stories about Albert Einstein

The physicist died in 1955. On the eve of his death, he refused to perform the operation, saying that the artificial extension of life does not make sense. Albert Einstein spoke his last words in German. But they did not reach our days due to the fact that the nurse who was present at the time did not know this language.

Of course, a hundred more such articles can be written about this outstanding figure, but the information presented may well help to form an opinion about his personality and merits. They are enough to answer questions from the series: "What was Einstein's name: Albert or Victor?".

The great humanist, the author of the famous and intricate theory of relativity, the founder of the foundations of the development of modern physics and the famous scientist Albert Einstein always knew what value he was. Despite dozens of published materials, personal letters, photographs and memoirs, he remains one of the most mysterious people in the scientific world to this day. The truth of many facts of his difficult biography can be easily questioned, but there is still a rational grain in hundreds and even thousands of documents. Let's figure out together what he was like and how his life turned out.

Amazing Einstein: Biography of a Peculiar Man

As a child, no one would have thought that young Albert, who started talking at the age of seven, would have a great scientific future. He was considered a lazy bum, always distracted by something outside the window. He became interested in physics and mathematics only after he came across a volume of the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, who stood on the verge of the Enlightenment and romanticism. His writings so shocked the young man that he decided to understand the ideas of the philosopher with the help of the universal language of mathematics.

In early childhood, Albert Einstein was trained in a strict Catholic school in his native Munich. According to his personal memoirs, he experienced a deep religious awe during this period and positioned himself as a believer. All this lost all meaning for him at the age of twelve, when popular science literature forced him to critically examine the plausibility of the facts described in the Bible.

Characteristics of a historical person

He was a cheerful person, confident that any problem would "resolve" itself if it was ridiculed long enough. Close friends and acquaintances described him as a friendly, outgoing and never-downbeat shirt-guy. He was rather tall (1.75 m), broad-shouldered and round-shouldered, with a shock of completely unruly hair and huge dark brown eyes. Einstein spent years of his life in thought, but found time for other aspects of being. He literally adored music, especially Mozart and Bach, knew how to play the violin and often practiced it. Albert smoked a pipe and even was in the company of her admirers. He is said to have had many mistresses, as well as several illegitimate children.

The Nobel Committee found more than five dozen nominations for Einstein for his latest revolutionary theory. His name has consistently popped up in the lists of contenders for the award for twelve years. However, it was possible to get what was due only in 1922, and even then on the topic of the theory of the photoelectric effect. During his life, he managed to collect many titles and awards from prestigious universities in different cities. But from an outstanding scientist, he also turned into the hero of various novels, films and theatrical productions. In adulthood, the appearance of a professor with disheveled tufts of hair and a half-crazy look became the basis for the inspiration of many figures in popular culture.

Albert's birth and childhood

Hermann Einstein, the father of the future luminary of science, was a poor Jew in the town of Ulm. He prepared feathers and down for the production of pillows and mattresses. He married Paulina Koch, whose father was a corn farmer. On March 14, 1879, the wife gave birth to a tiny boy with a large head, who was named Albert. Paulina's parents were wealthy enough to help Herman move from the provincial province to Munich in a year. There they managed to open a very small company and start selling electrical equipment. A year later, the sister of the future genius, Maria, was born.

The boy grew up calm, almost never cried, but his mother was worried about his overly large head, and she even suggested hydrocephalus. In addition, the child stubbornly refused to speak. At the age of six, his mother gave him violin lessons. This liberated the boy, he literally blossomed and carried his love of music through his whole life.

While studying at the parochial school, where he was sent at the age of seven, the name Einstein made teachers wince in disgust. They considered him lazy and often punished him, which made him withdraw into himself. The religiosity inculcated at this time crumbled to dust when Albert fell into the hands of Euclid's Elements and the writings of Kant.

At the age of twelve, he entered the gymnasium, which now bears his name, but did not achieve great success. Excellent marks in the boy's diary were only in Latin, which he knew perfectly well from school. Mathematics was also given to Albert easily, he understood it, felt it intuitively. Subsequently, he will say that the education system, based on the authoritarianism of teachers and the rote memorization of material, has exhausted itself and only harms the very spirit of learning, killing creative thinking in the bud. In 1994, the family moved to Italy, but the young man stayed in Munich with his relatives to complete his studies. However, it was not possible to obtain a certificate of education then.

Becoming a scientist

After spending some time with his family, he was going to Zurich, where he hoped to enter the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic). Having brilliantly passed mathematics, he flunked French, which he did not know at all, and botany, which he simply was not interested in. The director of the school, himself a professor of mathematics, even then understanding who Albert Einstein was for science, gave good advice. He recommended that he enroll in his senior year at a school in the north of Switzerland and come back the following year. In September 1996, he finally passed all the necessary subjects, and by October he had already enrolled in the Polytechnic, which he successfully graduated at the dawn of the new century.

Interesting

In 1986, the idea came to renounce German citizenship. Albert wanted to obtain Swiss citizenship, but for this it was necessary to pay a huge amount - a thousand francs of duty. The future great physicist Einstein did not have such money, and his father had completely gone bankrupt by that time. Therefore, it was possible to do this only after five long years.

Despite the fact that Swiss citizenship was obtained, he could not find a place for himself. He had to starve, from which a serious liver disease began, which went with him until his death. Domestic difficulties did not become a reason to quit science, which he became interested in at the technical school. Already in 1901, he published and published an article in the Bulletin "Annals of Physics".

A fellow student named Marcel Grossman helped to cope with the plight. He gave excellent recommendations and the physicist was admitted to the FBP (Federal Patent Office) as an expert of the third class. The salary was three and a half thousand, which seemed to the impoverished scientist just a fabulous sum.

"Year of Miracles" of the beginning of the scientific revolution

In the history of world science, the year 1905 turned out to be special, for which it received the figurative name Annus Mirabilis. Einstein's three original papers marked the beginning of a real revolution. They were also published in the aforementioned Annals in Berlin.

• "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", with which, in fact, the notorious RT began.
• "On the Motion of Particles Suspended in a Fluid at Rest", which was entirely devoted to the Brownian motion of particles. She made a revolution in static.
• "On one heuristic point of view concerning the appearance and transformation of light", which laid the foundation for all quantum mechanics.

During this period, Albert was often asked the question: how did you manage to create your more than strange theory? Half in jest, or maybe half seriously, he answered that the slow development, which allowed him to remain a child with sufficient education, was to blame.

The heyday of the career of a brilliant physicist and scientific discoveries that turned the world upside down

Let not at one moment, but the physicist Einstein became famous precisely after the publication of the works of one thousand nine hundred and five. In April, he submitted his own dissertation to the University of Zurich, which he successfully defended in January. So a simple Jew from a German province became a real doctor of science in physics. Illustrious scientists with whom Albert actively corresponded called him a professor, but he officially received the title only four years later at the same educational institution.

To our great regret, the payment for the position of professor was meager, even compared to the Patent Office. Therefore, when he was offered a chair at the German University in Prague, he agreed without hesitation. Here he could already freely engage in science and came close to excluding Newtonian long-range interaction from the theory of gravitation, over which his colleagues struggled for a long time. In the eleventh year he visited the congress, where he met Poincaré for the only time. Three years later, he became a real professor at the University of Berlin, and in the fourteenth he was invited to St. Petersburg. Fearing Jewish pogroms, the scientist refused to go to Russia.

Since the 10th work, Einstein has been nominated for the Nobel Prize annually. The theory of relativity (RT) turned out to be so complicated and revolutionary that the members of the committee could not dare to recognize its validity. Albert nevertheless received the award, but only in 1922 and not at all for what he expected. She was awarded for the photoelectric effect, the work is experimental and well-tested. The scientist did not argue, he took the money (32 thousand dollars) and immediately gave it to his ex-wife.

Scientific discoveries that changed the world

The scientist Einstein was not in vain considered in the world of science to be a real ascetic, a revolutionary, who turned the worldview of mankind as a whole. He strove for maximum "logical simplicity" and managed to see something new in the familiar.

• The general theory of relativity is the main brainchild of a physicist. It is based on the negation of the ether and relies on the experiments carried out. This work has long been a working tool for astronomers and physicists. On its basis, time corrections are based in the GLONASS and GPS systems, it is used to calculate the acceleration parameters of elementary particles. To obtain nuclear energy and space flights, TO also turned out to be indispensable. Within the framework of this theory, the law of interaction between energy and mass (E = mc2) was discovered.
• Einstein made a huge contribution to the development of quantum mechanics. Even Schrödinger wrote that Albert's thoughts had a strong influence on him. Man has not yet learned to fully apply this discovery, but the development of a new quantum computer is in full swing, the speed of data processing in which will be beyond all our ideas.
• Albert Einstein found out that there are four types of particle interaction. By combining them, he created a unified field theory. He admitted that in addition to four dimensions (length, width, height, time), there is also a fifth, but due to its small size it is invisible. It was from these arguments that the notorious TO subsequently grew.

In 1905, the scientist found out that the photoelectric effect, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, is possible when a substance (environment) consists of individual particles (photons). Hitting the electrons, they pull them out of the atoms. Thanks to the knowledge of this principle, it was possible to build an atomic bomb, but most importantly, numerous power plants of this type.

Relocation of a physicist to the USA

Beginning in the 1930s, an economic crisis began to brew in Weimar Germany, and with it, like mushrooms after the rain, increasingly frequent reports of unrest and anti-Semitism appeared. Radical nationalist sentiments in society led to serious threats and direct insults to Einstein as a Jew. The Nazis, who came to power, quickly attributed to themselves all the discoveries of the physicist, and even fifty thousand rewards were offered for his life and head. Racial cleansing could affect anyone, because in the thirty-third year the scientist finally left Germany with its progressive Nazism, and went to the United States.

In the town of Princeton, he took the place of professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study. A year later, he was summoned and honored with a personal meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt. During the Second World War, it was Einstein who was entrusted with the responsible task of advising the US Navy. The renowned scientist also put his signature under the petition written by Leo Siladra. It talked about the dangers of the Nazis building an atomic bomb. Roosevelt took the paper seriously and created his own agency to develop such weapons.

The personal life of a genius: what did Einstein do

The great physicist was not handsome, but he had a special approach to women. Contemporaries considered Albert a real "womanizer, dragging behind every skirt." Not always fleeting novels ended calmly, without tears, tantrums and other accompanying "charms" that Einstein himself could not stand.

Wives and children

The first passion of the physicist was Maria Winteler, whom he met at the Zurich Polytechnic University. It didn’t go further than violent passions, although the parents were already preparing the dowry. In 1998, while working on the theory of gravity, he met a Serbian woman, Mileva Marich, and fell in love again. What he saw in this rude woman, limping on one leg and completely devoid of charm, no one understood. Albert's mother, Paulina, opposed this marriage and for several years the couple lived just like that. Out of wedlock, their firstborn was also born - daughter Liesel or Lieserl, but the young father was in no hurry to recognize paternity. What happened to the baby then, no one knows, her trace has been lost, and her fate is unknown.

After that, he agreed to marry Mileva, but set a number of conditions that clearly infringed on the rights of a woman (not to enter the room when he was working and leave her on demand, take care of her husband, not discuss his decisions, and so on). But if you want to get married, then you won’t dance like that, and she agreed. They got married, and a year later (May 14, 1904) a son, Hans Albert, was born in marriage, who later became an engineer in hydraulic systems. The second son, Edward, was born (1910) mentally handicapped, and in the thirtieth year he was finally given a terrible diagnosis - schizophrenia. He died in a mental hospital in 1965, having never left it after twenty years.

After the marriage, it was very difficult to persuade Mileva to divorce, but Albert succeeded. He promised her to give all the money after receiving the Nobel Prize, which there was no doubt in awarding, and it worked. He kept his word and transferred the funds to his ex-wife. The second wife was the second cousin Elsa Lowenthal, who turned a blind eye to all his adventures and oddities. She was previously married and had two lovely daughters, whom Albert not only adopted, but also considered the closest people in the world.

This was followed by a series of mistresses, starting with the secretary Betty Neumann. The man offered her to live together, but a young girl, twenty years younger than the professor, could not agree to such a thing. The pretty Tony Mendel was next in line and lived next door. Ethel Mikhanovskaya, a friend of the adopted daughter, turned out to be too young, naive and romantic. She had to be abandoned because of Elsa's howls and tears. Margaret Lebach almost took him away from the family, but his wife survived. He did not want to change her for anyone: she was his wife, mother and even more. They say that in his later years, Einstein had an affair with Margarita Konenkova, the wife of a famous Soviet sculptor.

The political beliefs of the scientist and the philosophy of Einstein

Albert early learned the injustice of the social order. Therefore, he forever remained a convinced pacifist, socialist, humanist and anti-fascist. He vehemently condemned the alienation of man, opposing himself to those around him under capitalism.

He considered the high goal of building a socialist system, but without signs of totalitarianism in the management of society. For him, coercion, violence, and even more so the killing of a person was extremely unacceptable due to pacifist thinking. In 1927, he even actively participated in the Brussels Congress of the Anti-Imperialist League. During the beginning of the anti-Semitic pogroms in Germany, he actively supported the Zionist groups.

The scientist Einstein was always keenly interested in the philosophical aspect of science. The main authority, in his own words, was Spinoza, whose ideas were so close to physics. He did not accept the overtly positivist positions of Poincaré and Mach. Regarding religion, Albert's position was also not unambiguous; at different periods of his life, he spoke in different ways. As a result, agnosticism turned out to be closest to him. That is, he did not deny the possibility of the existence of deities, but he did not take on faith that which was not (could not be) proven experimentally.

Public recognition of scientific discoveries: in memory of the genius Einstein

Einstein received public recognition during his lifetime, which resulted in many titles and awards. Doctoral degrees from various universities, not to mention the notorious "Nobel Prize", which he nevertheless waited for, despite the skepticism of his colleagues - all this can be safely counted at the expense of his incredible intellect.

• In the 21st year of the twentieth century, he became an honorary citizen of New York, and two years later, of Tel Aviv.
• In the thirty-first he was awarded the Jules Janssen prize from the French Society of Astronomers.
• In 1923, in Germany, Einstein was awarded the Order of Merit, which he himself refused ten years later due to rampant Nazism in the country.
• For his theory of relativity, incomprehensible to many, and the most powerful contribution to quantum theory, he was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London.

This is only a small fraction of those titles, titles and awards that this amazing scientist deserved and received. Many monuments have been erected in his honor, and avenues, squares and streets in different cities of the world are named after him. There is an asteroid named after him, and in Philadelphia even the medical center is called Einstein's. They beat his image in a number of computer games (Civilization IV, Command & Conquer: Red Alert), as well as feature films and documentaries (Einstein's Great Idea, IQ, Genius). Thanks to his unusual appearance and habits, he became the hero of many novels, novels and stories.

The Death of a Scientist: Myths and Legends Around the Person of a Theoretical Researcher

In the fifty-fifth year, the health of the great physicist deteriorated markedly. Then he wrote a will and even told his friends that he had already completed his mission on Earth. On April 18, 1955, world-famous scientist Albert Einstein died of an aortic aneurysm at Princeton Hospital. The nurse testified that he tried to speak German, but did not have time to identify exactly what he said. They did not bury him - he forbade it. The body was burned in a crematorium, and the ashes were scattered to the wind.

The versatile personality of the physicist, who did not fit into the standard framework, caused the appearance after his death of many myths and legends, which he so did not want during his lifetime. Firstly, they said that the first wife "had a hand" in TO, but there was no evidence of this. Secondly, many doubt that the ideas of this theory came to his mind, and were not actually "suggested" by Poincaré or Hilbert. In addition, he is now positioned as a vegetarian. However, the truth is that he began to hold such views only in the last year before his death.

Interesting facts about the unusual life of the smartest person

As a child, Albert was considered inferior due to the fact that he was not distinguished by the usual childish talkativeness. In addition, he had a large head, which even his mother was worried about.

Einstein never liked sports and perceived any physical activity as violence against a person. He liked to repeat that, returning from work, "wants to do nothing."

The scientist did not like science fiction. He believed that all kinds of assumptions can significantly distort the results of real research, affect them.

Einstein allowed to study his own brain after death.

Like the famous literary character Sherlock Holmes, Albert loved to smoke a pipe and play the violin in the kitchen.

It is believed that it was this physicist, together with his friend Leo Szilard, who invented a refrigerator that could work without consuming electricity.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation considered him a Soviet spy. Starting from the thirty-third and until his death, he was followed.

Apt and witty Einstein quotes

How much we know, but how little we understand.

Nationalism is a common childhood disease. It is a kind of measles of humanity.

God does not play dice.

I managed to survive two wars, two wives and even Hitler.

I don't tend to think about the future. It will come too soon.

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. 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 a co-owner of a small enterprise for the production of feather stuffing for mattresses and featherbeds.
Hermann Einstein

Mother, Pauline 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 USA 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) and the authoritarian attitude of teachers towards students caused Albert Einstein's rejection, so he often got into arguments 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 methods 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 haunted 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 the difficulties, recommending Einstein for the position of an expert of 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, however, they 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 leadership of the International Institute of Physics he founded, provided a unique opportunity for physicists to discuss the fundamental problems that were at the center of their attention at various periods.
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 upon a time, Mach's criticism of Newtonian mechanics made a huge 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, thus 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 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 Lorenz, 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 (from 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 a 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 up 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 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 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 a 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 Margo 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 was born on March 14, 1879, in the city of Ulm, in southern Germany. His parents, Herman and Paulina Einstein, had their own business, which brought in a stable but small income. When little Albert was only a year old, the family moved to Munich, the reason for the move was the founding of a small company for the sale of electrical equipment, which his father, Hermann Einstein, founded together with his brother Jakob. Here, in Munich, the younger sister of the great scientist, Maria, was born.

Attending a Catholic school, Albert from an early age was interested in a variety of areas in science, and the boy also studied religion. However, already at the age of 12, having read many educational books (which were far from being for children), the future scientist came to the conclusion that the Bible is not a source, much less a guarantor of absolute righteousness. Moreover, Albert, who decided for himself that the Bible is just a way for the state to influence young minds, once and for all revised his views on this issue.

Around the same age, Einstein first read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and also thoroughly studied Euclidean geometry, with only books and a huge thirst for knowledge at his disposal.

It cannot be said that learning was easy for Einstein, although he was always one of the first. While still a student at the gymnasium, Einstein was aware of the problems of the existing education system: memorization of material, authoritarian treatment of teachers with students, and as a result, constant disputes with teachers. Albert never received his graduation document, despite the fact that he even had to stay with relatives, while the whole family moved to an Italian town, due to the transfer of his father's company.

Then there was the Swiss Polytechnic, which did not submit to him the first time. Einstein passed the exams in physics with excellent marks, while failing a number of other subjects. Having seen a promising student in the young man, the director of the university advised him to still get a secondary education in one of the Swiss schools for further studies at the institute. Heeding the advice of an experienced, Einstein entered the school and, having received a certificate, became a student at the Polytechnic.

Albert Einstein in 1893, at the age of 14.

Graduation from the university and the beginning of scientific activity

Just as in school, the intelligent, well-read and gifted Einstein was completely incomprehensible and unacceptable to the teaching methods of professors in a higher educational institution. However, the young man decided not to repeat school mistakes and nevertheless received a diploma in acquiring a degree in 1900. Having passed the exams well, Einstein, however, did not find support among the luminaries of science - no one wanted to help pave the way for the future of a young and daring scientist. This period in Einstein's life becomes a real test - he cannot find a job, there is a catastrophic lack of money, and no one is interested in his works. It got to the point where he just didn't have anything to eat. Subsequently, this affected his health - Einstein developed a chronic liver disease that tormented him for the rest of his life.

But the scientist did not despair, continuing to persevere in physics. Luck came to him in the person of a former classmate, who helped the scientist find a job. However, he had to work not in his specialty - Einstein was to take the position of an evaluator in the Federal Bureau of Patenting Inventions. He devoted himself to this place for seven whole years - from 1902 to 1907, while not forgetting for a second about physics. Fortunately, his work schedule allowed him to devote a sufficient amount of time to scientific research.

In 1905, the general public learned about Einstein. The profile German journal "Annals of Physics" published three works of the scientist at once:

• "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Origin and Transmutation of Light". One of the fundamental works on which the science of “quantum theory” was subsequently built;
• "On the Motion of Particles Suspended in a Fluid at Rest Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat". The work is devoted to Brownian motion and is a significant contribution to the advancement of statistical physics;
• "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". Today it is generally accepted that it was this article that formed the basis of the doctrine called "the theory of relativity."

A non-standard view of the structure of theories

Einstein's research work was not perceived by his colleagues for a long time. The thing is, they just didn't get it. Having a rather specific view on the creation of theories, he was sure that experience is the only source of knowledge, while theory is an intuitive creation of the human mind, and therefore there are not so many grounds for linking an experiment with a theoretical basis. However, there were those who supported the scientist in his activities. Among them was Max Planck, with the help of which Einstein later managed to become director of the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

General relativity, eclipse and world recognition

Work on the theory of gravitation was long and painstaking and lasted from 1907 to 1915. Einstein worked on a new discovery based on the principles of the theory of relativity. The essence of the work was that the connection between the space-time geometry and the gravitational field is inseparable. According to Einstein, space-time in the presence of gravitating masses becomes non-Euclidean. The final result of the work - an equation that clearly demonstrates the essence of his theory - was presented in 1915 at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences (Berlin). The theory would later be recognized as the pinnacle of Albert Einstein's work.

However, there is still a lot of time before this event, and at the time of the public relativity, few people are interested in it. The turning point in the life of the scientist was 1919, when by observation it was possible to verify one of the aspects of the theory, in which it was stated that a beam of light from a distant star is bent by the gravitational field of the Sun. In order to experimentally test the theory, a total solar eclipse was needed, and it was precisely this that was observed in the 19th year of the twentieth century, in three parts of the globe. Enlisting the support of astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, the expedition led by Einstein obtained information confirming the general theory of relativity. So Albert Einstein was first recognized by the scientific community around the world.

Albert did not want to stop there, working hard on new research and it bore fruit. Already in 1921, Einstein received the Nobel Prize for quantum theory, became an honorary member of many scientific academies, and his opinion instantly turned from "non-standard" to "authoritative". Participating in various world conferences, he discussed with the leading scientists of the time, and their passionate debates were a significant contribution to the advancement of science more than one step forward. One of the most famous dialogues took place with Bohr, with whom they discussed the problems of quantum mechanics.

Life after general relativity

After the creation of general relativity, Einstein, inspired by success and believing in his own strength, wants to confirm this with the next, even more grandiose project - he plans to create a unified theory of all kinds of interactions. Even after immigrating to the United States, in connection with the rise of the Nazis, Albert continued to work on his idea. In parallel, the genius of physics taught at the Princeton Institute for Basic Research.

However, his grandiose theory was not destined to see the world. Due to the meager amount of information available before the war, the unrealistic efforts made by Einstein for more than a quarter of a century turned out to be in vain.

Personal life

The first wife of a genius was a girl with Serbian roots named Mileva Marich, who taught physics and mathematics. Their acquaintance happened during a joint work on the law of gravity. The woman bore Einstein three heirs. The couple divorced after Marich found out about her husband's secret correspondence with his cousin Elsa Leventhal, who later became his second legal wife. In the second marriage, Einstein, who lost his own children (Maric took them with her to Zurich), raised Elsa's children from her first marriage; The spouses did not have common children.

Awards

Among Einstein's awards are the medals of Barnard, Matteucci, Copley and others. Also, Albert Einstein is officially an honorary citizen of American New York and Israeli Tel Aviv.

Theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics, Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm (Germany). His father, Hermann Einstein, was the owner of an electrical equipment company, and his mother, Pauline Einstein, was a housewife. In 1880, the Einstein family moved to Munich, where in 1885 Albert became a pupil in a Catholic elementary school. In 1888 he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium (Luitpold Gymnasium).

In 1894, Einstein's parents moved to Italy, and Albert, not having completed his Abitur, was soon reunited with them. He continued his education already in Switzerland, where from 1895 to 1896 he was a student at a school in Aarau. In 1896, Einstein entered the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic) in Zurich, after which he was to become a teacher of physics and mathematics. In 1901, he received a diploma, as well as Swiss citizenship (Einstein renounced German citizenship in 1896). For a long time, Einstein could not find a teaching position and eventually got a job as a technical assistant at the Swiss Patent Office.

In 1905, three of the most important scientific works of Albert Einstein were published at once, devoted to the special theory of relativity, quantum theory and Brownian motion. In the article "Does the inertia of a body depend on the content of energy in it" Einstein first introduced the formula for the relationship between mass and energy into physics, and in 1906 he wrote it down as the formula E = mc2. It underlies the relativistic principle of conservation of energy, the entire nuclear power industry.

In early 1906, Einstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich. At the same time, until 1909, he remained an employee of the patent office, until he was appointed extraordinary professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich. In 1911, Einstein became a professor at the German University in Prague, and in 1914 he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and professor at the University of Berlin. He also became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

In 1916, Einstein predicted the phenomenon of induced (forced) emission of atoms, which is the basis of quantum electronics. Einstein's theory of stimulated, ordered (coherent) radiation led to the discovery of lasers.

In 1917, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, a concept that justifies the extension of the principle of relativity to systems moving with acceleration and curvilinear relative to each other. Einstein's theory for the first time in science substantiated the relationship between the geometry of space-time and the distribution of mass in the universe. The new theory was based on Newton's theory of gravity.

Although both special and general relativity were too revolutionary to win immediate acceptance, they soon received a number of confirmations. One of the first was to explain the precession of Mercury's orbit, which could not be fully understood within the framework of Newtonian mechanics. During a total solar eclipse in 1919, astronomers were able to observe a star hidden behind the edge of the Sun. This indicated that the rays of light are bent under the influence of the gravitational field of the Sun. World fame came to Einstein when reports of the observation of the solar eclipse of 1919 spread around the world. In 1920, Einstein became a visiting professor at the University of Leiden, and in 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the laws of the photoelectric effect and his work on theoretical physics. In 1924-1925, Einstein made a major contribution to the development of Bose quantum statistics, which is now called Bose-Einstein statistics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, anti-Semitism was gaining strength in Germany, and the theory of relativity was subjected to scientifically unfounded attacks. In an atmosphere of slander and threats, scientific creativity was impossible, and Einstein left Germany.

In 1932, Einstein lectured at the California Institute of Technology, and from April 1933 he received a professorship at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (USA), where he worked until the end of his life.

For the last 20 years of his life, Einstein developed a "unified field theory", trying to bring together the theories of gravitational and electromagnetic fields. Although Einstein did not solve the problem of the unity of physics, mainly due to the undeveloped concepts of elementary particles, subatomic structures and reactions at that time, the very methodology of the formation of the "unified field theory" clearly showed its significance in the creation of modern concepts of the unification of physics.

Einstein paid much attention to the problems of ethics, humanism and pacifism. He developed the concept of the scientist's ethics, his responsibility to humanity for the fate of his discovery. Ethical and humanistic ideals of Einstein were realized in his social activities. In 1914, Einstein spoke out against the German "patriots" and, during the First World War, signed the anti-war manifesto of German pacifist professors. In 1919, Einstein signed the pacifist manifesto of Romain Rolland and put forward the idea of ​​creating a world government in order to prevent wars.

When Einstein received information about the German uranium project during World War II, despite his pacifist beliefs, he and Leo Szilard sent a letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt outlining the possible consequences of the Nazis building the atomic bomb. The letter had a significant impact on the decision of the US government to speed up the development of atomic weapons.

After the collapse of Nazi Germany, Einstein, along with other scientists, appealed to the President of the United States not to use the atomic bomb in the war with Japan.

This appeal did not prevent the tragedy of Hiroshima, and Einstein intensified his pacifist activities, became the spiritual leader of campaigns for peace, disarmament, for the ban on atomic weapons, for an end to the Cold War.

Shortly before his death, he put his signature under the appeal of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, addressed to the governments of all countries, warning them of the danger of using the hydrogen bomb and calling for a ban on nuclear weapons. Einstein advocated the free exchange of ideas and the responsible use of science for the benefit of mankind.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, he was awarded many other awards, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London (1925), the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute (1935). Einstein was an honorary doctor of many universities and a member of the world's leading academies of science.

Among the many honors given to Einstein was an offer to become the President of Israel, which followed in 1952. The scientist refused this offer.

In 1999, Time magazine named Einstein the Man of the Century.

Einstein's first wife was Mileva Marich, his classmate at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. They married in 1903 despite the fierce opposition of his parents. From this marriage, Einstein had two sons: Hans-Albert (1904-1973) and Eduard (1910-1965). The couple divorced in 1919. That same year, Einstein married his cousin Elsa, a widow with two children. Elsa Einstein died in 1936.

In his spare time, Einstein liked to play music. He began learning to play the violin when he was six years old and continued to play throughout his life, sometimes in an ensemble with other physicists, such as Max Planck, who was an excellent pianist. Einstein was also fond of sailing.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources