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"Einstein" redirects here. For the unit, see einstein (unit)

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879–April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He proposed the theory of relativity and also made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and "for his services to Theoretical Physics."

After his general theory of relativity was formulated, Einstein became world-famous, an unusual achievement for a scientist. In his later years, his fame exceeded that of any other scientist in history, and in popular culture, Einstein has become a byword for great intelligence or even genius. His is also one of the world's most recognizable faces. This popularity has also lead to widespread use of Einstein in advertisement and merchandising, eventually including the registration of "Albert Einstein" as a trademark.

Biography

Early years

Youth and college

Einstein was born at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany, about 100 km east of Stuttgart. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a featherbed salesman who later ran an electrochemical works, and his wife Pauline, whose maiden name was Koch. They were married in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. The family was Jewish (and non-observant); Albert attended a Catholic elementary school and, at the insistence of his mother, was given violin lessons.

At age five, his father showed him a pocket compass, and Einstein realized that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience as one of the most revelatory of his life. Though he built models and mechanical devices for fun, he was considered a slow learner, possibly due to dyslexia, simple shyness, or the significantly rare and unusual structure of his brain (as seen following his death). He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect. Another, more recent, theory about his mental development is that he suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a disorder related to autism.

Einstein began to learn mathematics around age twelve. There is a recurring rumor that he failed mathematics later in his education, but this is untrue; a change in the way grades were assigned caused confusion years later. Two of his uncles fostered his intellectual interests during his late childhood and early adolescence by suggesting and providing books on science and mathematics.

In 1894, following the failure of Hermann's electrochemical business, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia, Italy (near Milan). Albert remained behind to finish school, completing a term by himself before rejoining his family in Pavia.

His failure of the liberal arts portion of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Federal Swiss Polytechnic University, in Zurich) entrance exam the following year was a setback; he was sent by his family to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school, where he received his diploma in 1896. Einstein subsequently enrolled at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. The same year, he renounced his German citizenship, becoming stateless.

In 1898, Einstein met and fell in love with Mileva Marić, a Serbian classmate (and friend of Nikola Tesla). In 1900, he was granted a teaching diploma by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule and was accepted as a Swiss citizen in 1901. During this time Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Mileva. He and Mileva had an illegitimate daughter, Liserl, born in January 1902.

Work and doctorate

Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post, mostly because his brashness as a young man had apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. There, Einstein judged the worth of inventors' patent applications for devices that required a knowledge of physics to understand. He also learned how to discern the essence of applications despite sometimes poor descriptions, and was taught by the director how "to express myself correctly". He occasionally rectified their design errors while evaluating the practicality of their work.

Einstein married Mileva on January 6 1903. Einstein's marriage to Mileva, who was a mathematician, was both a personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred lovingly, or perhaps with some chagrin, to Mileva as "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am". A remark by Abram Joffe, a Soviet physicist who knew Einstein, has occasionally been taken to imply that Einstein was assisted by Mileva, but this appears to be a misinterpretation. Ronald W. Clark, a biographer of Einstein, claimed that Einstein depended on the distance that existed in his and Mileva's marriage in order to have the solitude necessary to accomplish his work.

On May 14 1904, the couple's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born. In 1904, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent. He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "On a new determination of molecular dimensions" in 1905.

That same year, he wrote four articles that provided the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to refer to or many scientific colleagues to discuss the theories with. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel prizes. Only the paper on the photoelectric effect would win. This is something of an irony, not only because Einstein is far better-known for relativity, but also because the photoelectric effect is a quantum phenomenon, and Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would take. What makes these papers remarkable is that, in each case, Einstein boldly took an idea from theoretical physics to its logical consequences and managed to explain experimental results that had baffled scientists for decades.

He submitted these papers to the "Annalen der Physik". They are commonly referred to as the "Annus Mirabilis Papers" (from Latin: Extraordinary Year). The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) plans to commemorate the 100th year of the publication of Einstein's extensive work in 1905 as the 'World Year Of Physics 2005'.

Brownian motion

The first article in 1905, named "On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", covered his study of Brownian motion. Using the then-controversial kinetic theory of fluids, it established that the phenomenon, which still lacked a satisfactory explanation decades after it was first observed, provided empirical evidence for the reality of atoms. It also lent credence to statistical mechanics, which was also controversial at the time.

Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists hotly debated the question of whether atoms were real entities. Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school, later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to a belief in atoms by Einstein's complete explanation of Brownian motion.

Photoelectric effect

The second paper, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", proposed the idea of "light quanta" (now called photons) and showed how it could be used to explain such phenomena as the photoelectric effect. The idea of light quanta was motivated by Max Planck's earlier derivation of the law of black-body radiation by assuming that luminous energy could only be absorbed or emitted in discrete amounts, called quanta. Einstein showed that, by assuming that light actually consisted of discrete packets, he could explain the mysterious photoelectric effect.

The idea of light quanta contradicted the wave theory of light that followed naturally from James Clerk Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic behavior and, more generally, the assumption of infinite divisibility of energy in physical systems. Even after experiments showed that Einstein's equations for the photoelectric effect were accurate, his explanation was not universally accepted. However, by 1921, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and his work on photoelectricity was mentioned by name in the award citation, most physicists thought that the equation (hf = ø + E_k) was correct and light quanta were possible.

The theory of light quanta was a strong indication of wave-particle duality, the concept, used as a fundamental principle by the creators of quantum mechanics, that physical systems can display both wave-like and particle-like properties. A complete picture of the photoelectric effect was only obtained after the maturity of quantum mechanics.

Special relativity

Einstein's third paper that year was called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (original German title: "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper"). While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to Mileva about "our work on relative motion", and this has led some to ask whether Mileva played a part in its development. However, it is possible, and perhaps likely, that, having already mentioned this momentous work to his wife, he was simply referring to it in an endearing manner. This paper introduced the special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity. Special relativity solved the puzzle that had been apparent since the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had shown that light waves could not be travelling through any medium (other known waves travelled through media—such as water or air). The speed of light was thus fixed, and not relative to the movement of the observer. This was impossible under Newtonian classical mechanics.

It had already been conjectured by George Fitzgerald in 1894 that the Michelson-Morley result could be accounted for if moving bodies were foreshortened along the direction of their motion. Indeed, some of the paper's core equations, the Lorentz transforms, had been introduced in 1903 by the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, giving mathematical form to Fitzgerald's conjecture. But Einstein revealed the underlying reasons for this geometrical oddity. His explanation arose from two axioms: Galileo's old idea that the laws of nature should be the same for all observers that move with constant speed relative to each other, and the rule that the speed of light is the same for every observer. Special relativity has several striking consequences, because the absolute concepts of time and size are rejected. The theory came to be called the "special theory of relativity" to distinguish it from his later theory of general relativity, which considers all observers to be equivalent.

The theory abounds with paradoxes, and appeared to make little sense, landing Einstein substantial ridicule; but he eventually managed to work out the apparent contradictions and solve the problems.

Energy equivalency

A fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", published late in 1905, showed one further deduction from relativity's axioms, the energy-mass relation, originally written by Einstein as m = L / c (sic). That deduction, rewritten using a different symbol for energy, is the famous equation that the energy of a body at rest (E) equals its mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared:

${\displaystyle E=mc^{2}}$

Einstein considered this equation to be of paramount importance because it showed that a massive particle possesses an energy, the "rest energy", distinct from its classical kinetic and potential energies. Nevertheless, most scientists simply regarded the finding as a curiosity until the 1930s.

The mass-energy relation can be used to understand how nuclear weapons produce such phenomenal amounts of energy. By measuring the mass of atomic nuclei and dividing them by their atomic number, both of which are easily measured, one can calculate the binding energy which is trapped in different atomic nuclei. This allows one to figure out which nuclear reactions will release energy and how much energy they will release. A simple calculation using the mass of the uranium nuclei and the masses of the products of nuclear fission reveals that large amounts of energy are released upon fission.

According to Umberto Bartocci (University of Perugia historian of mathematics), the famous equation was first published two years prior by Olinto De Pretto, who was an industrialist from Vicenza, Italy, though this is not generally regarded as true or important by mainstream historians. Though De Pretto may have introduced the formula, it was Einstein who connected it with the theory of relativity.

Middle years

In 1906, Einstein was promoted to technical examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was licensed in Berne, Switzerland as a teacher and lecturer (known as a Privatdozent) who had no share in the university administration. Einstein's second son, Eduard, was born on July 28 1910. In 1911, Einstein became a full professor at the University of Prague. At that time, he worked closely with the mathematician Marcel Grossman. In 1912, Einstein started to refer to time as the fourth dimension.

In 1914, just before the start of World War I, Einstein settled in Berlin as professor at the local university and became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His pacifism and Jewish origins irritated German nationalists. After he became world-famous, nationalist hatred of him grew, and, for the first time, he was the subject of an organized campaign intended to discredit his theories.

From 1914 to 1933 he served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and it was during this time that he was awarded his Nobel Prize and made his most groundbreaking discoveries.

Einstein divorced Mileva on February 14 1919 and married his cousin Elsa Loewenthal (née Einstein: Loewenthal was the surname of her first husband, Max) on June 2 1919. Elsa was Albert's first cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally). She was three years older than Albert, and had nursed him to health after he had suffered a partial nervous breakdown combined with a severe stomach ailment. There were no children from this marriage.

The fate of Albert and Mileva's first child, Lieserl, is unknown: some believe she died in infancy, while others believe she was given out for adoption. Eduard was institutionalized for schizophrenia and died in an asylum, while Hans became a professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, having little interaction with his father.

In 1922, Einstein and his wife Elsa boarded the S.S. Kitano Maru bound for Japan. The trip also took them to other ports including Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

General relativity

In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described his theory of general relativity. The final lecture climaxed with his introduction of an equation that replaced Newton's law of gravity. This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it was in Newton's law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time. The theory provided the foundation for the study of cosmology and gave scientists the tools for understanding many features of the universe that were not discovered until well after Einstein's death. A truly revolutionary theory, general relativity has become a method of perceiving all of physics.

The theory was derived with mathematical reasoning and rational analysis, not with experimentation or observation, leading scientists to be skeptical. But his equations enabled predictions to be made, and when those predictions were tested by Arthur Eddington by measuring, during a solar eclipse, how much the light emanating from a star passing close to the sun was bent by the sun's gravity, they proved correct. On November 7, 1919, The Times reported the confirmation, cementing Einstein's fame, and from then on, the theory has "passed" every test up to now (unlike many other scientific theories).

There were, however, many who were still unconvinced in the scientific community. Their reasons varied, ranging from those who disagreed with Einstein's interpretations of the experiments to those who simply thought that life without an absolute frame of reference was intolerable. In Einstein's view, many of them simply could not understand the mathematics involved. Einstein's public fame which followed the 1919 eclipse created resentment among this faction, some of which would last well into the 1930s.

Einstein's relationship with quantum physics was quite remarkable. He was the first, even before Max Planck, the discoverer of the quantum, to say that quantum theory was revolutionary. His idea of light quanta was a landmark break with the classical understanding of physics. In 1909, Einstein presented his first paper to a gathering of physicists and told them that they must find some way to understand waves and particles together.

In the early 1920s, Einstein was the lead figure in a famous weekly physics colloquium at the University of Berlin. On March 30 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture on his new theory of relativity. In the same year, he was finally awarded the Nobel Prize for his work. Though he is now most famous for his work on relativity, it was for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the Prize: in 1921 his work on relativity was still too disputed to merit a Nobel Prize, so the Nobel committee decided that citing his earlier, less-contested theory would be a better political move.

Copenhagen interpretation

In the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new quantum mechanics, Einstein balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations because it settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical behavior. Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available, but he looked for an explanation that would be more "complete", i.e. deterministic. His belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things" had led to his successes with atoms, photons, and gravity, and he was unwilling to abandon that faith.

Einstein's famous remark, "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice," appeared in a 1926 letter to Max Born. It was not a rejection of probabilistic theories per se—Einstein had used statistical analysis in his work on Brownian motion and photoelectricity, and in papers published before the miraculous year of 1905, had even discovered Gibbs ensembles on his own—but he did not believe that, at bottom, physical reality behaves randomly.

Bose-Einstein statistics

In 1924, Einstein received a short paper from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose describing light as a gas of photons and asking for Einstein's assistance in publication. Einstein realised that the same statistics could be applied to atoms, and published an article in German (then the lingua franca of physics) which described Bose's model and explained its implications. Bose-Einstein statistics now describe any assembly of these indistinguishable particles known as bosons. Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in the development of the Quantum Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model—although he realised that this was less significant than the Bose-Einstein model, and declined to have his name included on the paper.

Later years

Einstein and former student Leó Szilárd co-invented a unique type of refrigerator (usually called the Einstein Refrigerator) in 1926. On November 11 1930, US patent number 1,781,541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd. The patent covered a thermodynamic refrigeration cycle providing cooling with no moving parts, at a constant pressure, with only heat as an input. The refrigeration cycle used ammonia, butane, and water.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, expressions of hatred for Einstein reached new levels. He was accused by the National Socialist regime of creating "Jewish physics" in contrast with Deutsche Physik—"Aryan physics". Nazi physicists (notably including the Nobel laureates Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard) continued the attempts to discredit his theories and to politically blacklist those German physicists who taught them (such as Werner Heisenberg). Einstein had already fled to the United States, where he was given permanent residency. He accepted a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton Township, New Jersey. He became an American citizen in 1940 (though he maintained possession of his Swiss citizenship).

Einstein spent the last forty years of his life trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism, giving a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics. He was looking for a classical unification of gravity and electromagnetism.

Institute for Advanced Study

His work at the Institute for Advanced Study focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he referred to as the Unified Field Theory. He attempted to construct a model, under the appropriate conditions, which described all of the fundamental forces as different manifestations of a single force. His attempt was in a way doomed to failure because the strong and weak nuclear forces were not understood independently until around 1970, 15 years after Einstein's death. Einstein's goal survives in the current drive for unification of the forces, embodied most notably by string theory.

Generalized theory

Einstein began to form a generalized theory of gravitation with the universal law of gravitation and the electromagnetic force in his first attempt to demonstrate the unification and simplification of the fundamental forces. In 1950, he described his work in a Scientific American article. Einstein was guided by a belief in a single statistical measure of variance for the entire set of physical laws, and he investigated the similar properties of the electromagnetic and gravity forces, as they are infinite and obey inverse-square laws.

Einstein's generalized theory of gravitation is a universal mathematical approach to field theory. He investigated reducing the different phenomena by the process of logic to something already known or evident. Einstein tried to unify gravity and electromagnetism in a way that also led to a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics.

Einstein assumed a four-dimensional space-time continuum expressed in axioms represented by five component vectors. Particles appear in his research as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. Einstein treated subatomic particles as objects embedded in the unified field, influencing it and existing as an essential constituent of the unified field but not of it. Einstein also investigated a natural generalization of symmetrical tensor fields, treating the combination of two parts of the field as being a natural procedure of the total field and not the symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts separately. He researched a way to delineate the equations to be derived from a variational principle.

Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation (being characterized as a "mad scientist" in these endeavors) and was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts at constructing a theory that would unify general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Final years

In 1948, Einstein served on the original committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis University. In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he take the post of second president. He declined the offer, and remains the only United States citizen to ever be offered a position as a foreign head of state. On March 30 1953, Einstein released a revised unified field theory.

He died in his sleep at a hospital in Princeton, New Jersey on April 18, 1955, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. The only person present at his deathbed, a hospital nurse, said that just before his death he mumbled several words in German that she did not understand. He was cremated without ceremony on the same day he died at Trenton, New Jersey in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.

His brain was preserved in a jar by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein. Harvey found nothing unusual with his brain, but in 1999 further analysis by a team at McMaster University revealed that his parietal operculum region was missing, and to compensate his inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal. The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition and imagery of movement.

Personality

Albert Einstein was much respected for his kind and friendly demeanor rooted in his pacifism. He was modest about his abilities, and had distinctive attitudes and fashions—for example, he minimized his wardrobe so that he would not need to waste time in deciding on what to wear. He occasionally had a playful sense of humour, and enjoyed playing the violin and sailing. He was also the stereotypical "absent-minded professor"; he was often forgetful of everyday items, such as keys, and would focus so intently on solving physics problems that he would often become oblivious to his surroundings.

Religious views

Einstein's religious views are generally considered deist: he believed in a "God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men". Einstein wanted "to know how God created the world": after being pressed on his religious views by Martin Buber, Einstein exclaimed, "What we (physicists) strive for is just to draw His lines after Him." Summarizing his religious beliefs, he once said: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind." He also expressed admiration for Buddhism, which he said "has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

Political views

Einstein considered himself a pacifist and humanitarian , and in later years, a socialist. Einstein once said, "I believe Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil." Einstein's views on other issues, including socialism, McCarthyism and racism, were controversial (see Einstein on socialism). Einstein was a co-founder of the liberal German Democratic Party.

The American FBI kept a 1,427 page file on his activities and recommended that he be barred from immigrating to the United States under the Alien Exclusion Act, alleging that Einstein "believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches a doctrine which, in a legal sense, as held by the courts in other cases, 'would allow anarchy to stalk in unmolested' and result in 'government in name only'", among other charges.

Einstein opposed tyrannical forms of government, and for this reason (and his Jewish background), opposed the Nazi regime and fled Germany shortly after it came to power. He initially favored construction of the atomic bomb, in order to ensure that Hitler did not do so first, and even sent a letter to President Roosevelt (dated August 2 1939, before World War II broke out, and likely authored by Leó Szilárd) encouraging him to initiate a program to create a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt responded to this by setting up a committee for the investigation of using uranium as a weapon, which in a few years was superseded by the Manhattan Project.

After the war, though, Einstein lobbied for nuclear disarmament and a world government: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Einstein was a supporter of Zionism. He supported Jewish settlement of the ancient seat of Judaism and was active in the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which published (1930) a volume titled About Zionism: Speeches and Lectures by Professor Albert Einstein, and to which Einstein bequeathed his papers. However, he opposed nationalism and expressed skepticism about whether a Jewish nation-state was the best solution. He may have originally imagined Jews and Arabs living peacefully in the same land. In later life he was offered the post of second president of the newly-created state of Israel, but declined the offer, claiming that he lacked the necessary people skills.

Einstein, along with Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, fought against nuclear tests and bombs. With the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Russell, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and organized several conferences.

Popularity and cultural impact

In 1999, Einstein was named "Person of the Century" by Time magazine.

Entertainment

Albert Einstein has become the subject of a number of novels, films and plays, including Nicolas Roeg's film Insignificance, Fred Schepisi's film I.Q., and Alan Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams. Einstein was even the subject of Philip Glass's groundbreaking 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach.

He is often used as a model for depictions of eccentric scientists in works of fiction; his own character and distinctive hairstyle suggest eccentricity, electricity or even lunacy and are widely copied or exaggerated.

On Einstein's 72nd birthday in 1951, an unknown UPI photographer was trying to coax him into smiling for the camera. Having done this for the photographer many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead . The image has become an icon in pop culture for its contrast of the genius scientist displaying a moment of levity. Yahoo Serious, an Australian film maker, used the photo as an inspiration for the intentionally anachronistic movie Young Einstein.

Name trademarking

"Albert Einstein" is a registered trademark of The Roger Richman Agency, Inc., which controls the (commercial) usage of the name. Advertisements and merchandise including the name, likeness and image of Albert Einstein must be licensed by this agency. In this specific case the agency acts as a representative of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which Einstein himself had supported actively, and the university benefits from all of the license fees. Furthermore, the agency may entirely prevent usage of Albert Einstein in a way that does not conform to the public image of the trademark. The agency's website dedicated to Albert Einstein states that "When written in copy on all materials, the name 'Albert Einstein™' must always bear a ™ symbol." .

Honors in the scientific community

A unit used in photochemistry, the einstein, the chemical element einsteinium, and the asteroid 2001 Einstein were named in his honor.

References

• Clark, Ronald W. (1971). Einstein: The Life and Times. ISBN 0-380-44123-3
• Pais, Abraham (1982). Subtle is the Lord. The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. ISBN 0-19-520438-7
• Michael H. Hart, The 100, Carol Publishing Group, July 1992, paperback, 576 pages, ISBN 0806513500
• John Stachel, Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics, Princeton University Press, 1998, ISBN 0691059381
• Peter D. Smith, Einstein (Life & Times S.), Haus Publishing Ltd, 2003, ISBN 1904341152
• Martinez, Alberto A. Physics World, April 2004. "Arguing about Einstein's wife"

Works by Albert Einstein

• Ideas & Opinions ISBN 0517003937
• World As I See It ISBN 080650711X
• Relativity: The Special and General Theory ISBN 0517884410 (Project Gutenberg E-text)
• "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Annalen der Physik. June 30, 1905
• "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?". Annalen der Physik. September 27, 1905.
• "Inaugural Lecture to the Prussian Academy of Sciences". 1914.
• "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity". Annalen der Physik, 49. 1916.
• "On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation". April, 1950.

External links

• S. Morgan Friedman, "Albert Einstein Online"—Comprehensive listing of online resources about Einstein.
• Audio excerpts of famous speeches: E=mc and relativity, Impossibility of atomic energy, arms race (From Time magazine archives)
• MacTutor Einstein History
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921—Albert Einstein
• Theory of relativity in 4-letter words or shorter.
• A history of the E=mc equation
• Juergen Schmidhuber's Einstein biographical highlights
• Einstein's letter to Roosevelt
• FBI files—investigation regarding affiliation with the Communist Party
• Einstein family pictures
• PBS's NOVA—Einstein
• PBS's Einstein's wife: Mileva Maric
• Did Einstein cheat?
• Albert Einstein Biography from "German-American corner: History and Heritage"
• Official Einstein Archives Online—3000 documents
• Albert Einstein Life
• Albert Einstein Archive
• Einstein Papers Project
• Max Planck Institute's Living Einstein
• American Institute of Physics's Einstein
• American Museum of Natural History's Einstein
• The Albert Einstein Institution

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