Albert Einstein - Biography, Facts and Pictures Albert Einstein Lived 1879 – 1955. Albert Einstein rewrote the laws of nature. He completely changed the way we understand the behavior of things as basic as light, gravity, and time. Although scientists today are comfortable with Einstein’s ideas, in his time, they were completely revolutionary. Most people did not even begin to understand them. If you’re new to science, you’ll probably find that some of his ideas take time to get used to! Advertisements Quick Guide to Albert Einstein’s Scientific Achievements Albert Einstein: • provided powerful evidence that atoms and molecules actually exist, through his analysis of Brownian motion. • explained the photoelectric effect, proposing that light came in bundles. Bundles of light (he called them quanta) with the correct amount of energy can eject electrons from metals. • proved that everyone, whatever speed we move at, measures the speed of light to be 300 million meters per second in a vacuum. This led to the strange new reality that time passes more slowly for people traveling at very high speeds compared with people moving more slowly.

• discovered the hugely important and iconic equation, E = mc2, which showed that energy and matter can be converted into one another. • rewrote the law of gravitation, which had been unchallenged since Isaac Newton published it in 1687. In his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein: » showed that matter causes space to curve, which produces gravity. » showed that the path of light follows the gravitational curve of space. » showed that time passes more slowly when gravity becomes very strong. • became the 20th century’s most famous scientist when the strange predictions he made in his General Theory of Relativity were verified by scientific observations. • spent his later years trying to find equations to unite quantum physics with general relativity. This was an incredibly hard task for him to set himself. To date, it has still not been achieved. His Beginnings Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He was not talkative in his childhood, and until the age of three, he didn’t talk much. He spent his teenage years in Munich, where his family had an electric equipment business.

As a teenager, he was interested in nature and showed a high level of ability in mathematics and physics. Einstein loved to be creative and innovative. He loathed the uncreative spirit in his school at Munich. His family’s business failed when he was aged 15, and they moved to Milan, Italy. Aged 16, he moved to Switzerland, where he finished high school. In 1896 he began to study for a degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He didn’t like the teaching methods there, so he bunked classes to carry out experiments in the physics laboratory or play his violin. With the help of his classmate’s notes, he passed his exams; he graduated in 1900. Einstein was not considered a good student by his teachers, and they refused to recommend him for further employment. Einstein 1903 While studying at the Polytechnic, Einstein had learned about one of the biggest problems then baffling physicists. This was how to marry together Isaac Newton’s laws of motion with James Clerk Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism.

In 1902 he obtained the post of an examiner in the Swiss Federal patent office, and, in 1903, he wedded his classmate Mileva Maric. He had two sons with her but they later divorced. After some years Einstein married Elsa Loewenthal. Early Scientific Publications Einstein continued to work in the patent office, during which time he made most of his greatest scientific breakthroughs. The University of Zurich awarded him a Ph.D. in 1905 for his thesis “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.” 1905: The Year of Miracles In 1905, the same year as he submitted his doctoral thesis, Albert Einstein published four immensely important scientific papers dealing with his analysis of: Brownian motion the equivalence of mass and energy the photoelectric effect special relativity Each of these papers on their own was a huge contribution to science. To publish four such papers in one year was considered to be almost miraculous. Einstein was just 26 years old. Mass Energy Equivalence Einstein gave birth in 1905 to what has become the world’s most famous equation: E = mc2 The equation says that mass (m) can be converted to energy (E).

A little mass can make a lot of energy, because mass is multiplied by c2 where c is the speed of light, a very large number. A small amount of mass can make a large amount of energy. Conversion of mass in atomic nuclei to energy is the principle behind nuclear weapons and explains the sun’s source of energy. The Photoelectric Effect If you shine light on metal, the metal may release some of its electrons. Einstein said that light is made up of individual ‘particles’ of energy, which he called quanta. When these quanta hit the metal, they give their energy to electrons, giving the electrons enough energy to escape from the metal. Einstein showed that light can behave as a particle as well as a wave. The energy each ‘particle’ of light carries is proportional to the frequency of the light waves. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity In Einstein’s third paper of 1905 he returned to the big problem he had heard about at university – how to resolve Newton’s laws of motion with Maxwell’s equations of light. His approach was the ‘thought experiment.’ He imagined how the world would look if he could travel at the speed of light.

He realized that the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and regardless of what you did – whether you moved quickly toward a ray of light as it approached you, or quickly away from the ray of light – you would always see the light ray to be moving at the same speed – the speed of light! This is not obvious, because it’s not how things work in everyday life, where, for example, if you move towards a child approaching you on a bike he will reach you sooner than if you move away from him. With light, it doesn’t matter whether you move towards or away from the light, it will take the same amount of time to reach you. This isn’t an easy thing to understand, so don’t worry about it if you don’t! (Unless you’re at university studying physics.) Every experiment ever done to test special relativity has confirmed what Einstein said. If the speed of light is the same for all observers regardless of their speed, then it follows that some other strange things must be true. In fact, it turns out that time, length, and mass actually depend on the speed we are moving at. The nearer the speed of light we move, the bigger differences we seen in these quantities compared with someone moving more slowly.

For example, time passes more and more slowly as we move faster and faster. Einstein Becomes Known to the Wider Physics Community As people read Einstein’s papers and argued about their significance, his work gradually gained acceptance, and his reputation as a powerful new intellect in the world of physics grew. In 1908 he began lecturing at the University of Bern, and the following year resigned from the Patent Office. In 1911 he became a professor of physics at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague, before returning to Zurich in 1912 to a professorship there. Working on the general theory of relativity, in 1911 he made his first predictions of how our sun’s powerful gravity would bend the path of light coming from other stars as it traveled past the sun. The General Theory of Relativity – Einstein Becomes Famous Worldwide A very, very rough approximation: the earth’s mass curves space. The moon’s speed keeps it rolling around the curve rather than falling to Earth.

If you are on Earth and wish to leave, you need to climb out of the gravity well Einstein published his general theory of relativity paper in 1915, showing, for example, how gravity distorts space and time. Light is deflected by powerful gravity, not because of its mass (light has no mass) but because gravity has curved the space that light travels through. In 1919 a British expedition traveled to the West African island of Principe to observe an eclipse of the sun. During the eclipse they could test whether light from far away stars passing close to the sun was deflected. They found that it was! Just as Einstein had said, space truly was curved. On November 7, 1919, the London Times’ headline read: Revolution in science – New theory of the Universe – Newtonian ideas overthrown. Honors and More Honors Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

People are sometimes surprised to learn that the award was not made for his work in special or general relativity, but for his overall services to theoretical physics and one of the works from his miracle year specifically – the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect in 1905. The Royal Society of London awarded him its prestigious Copely Medal in 1925 for his theory of relativity and contributions to the quantum theory. The Franklin Institute awarded him with the Franklin medal in 1935 for his work on relativity and the photo-electric effect. Universities around the world competed with one another to award him honorary doctorates, and the press wrote more about him than any other scientist – Einstein became a celebrity. Einstein’s Later Years Einstein made his greatest discoveries when he was a relatively young man. In his later years he continued with science, but made no further groundbreaking discoveries. He became interested in politics and the state of the world. Einstein had been born German and a Jew. He died an American citizen in 1955. Einstein was in America when Hitler came to power. He decided it would be a bad idea to return to Germany, and renounced his German citizenship.

Einstein did not practice Judaism, but strongly identified with the Jewish people persecuted by the Nazi Party, favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine with the rights of Arabs protected. It was Einstein’s wish that people should be respected for their humanity and not for their country of origin or religion. Expressing his cynicism for nationalistic pride, he once said: “If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.” Advertisements Author of this page: The Doc Top image of Einstein digitally enhanced and colorized by this website. © All rights reserved. Cite this Page Please use the following MLA compliant citation: “Albert Einstein.” Famous Scientists. famousscientists.org. 1 Jul. 2014. Web.

< The 10 Greatest Physicists in History Brahmagupta 10 of Science’s Best BAD ideas – Part… Isaac Newton Albert Einstein - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Einstein’s Early Life (1879-1904) Born on March 14, 1879, in the southern German city of Ulm, Albert Einstein grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Munich. As a child, Einstein became fascinated by music (he played the violin), mathematics and science. He dropped out of school in 1894 and moved to Switzerland, where he resumed his schooling and later gained admission to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. In 1896, he renounced his German citizenship, and remained officially stateless before becoming a Swiss citizen in 1901. Did You Know? Almost immediately after Albert Einstein learned of the atomic bomb's use in Japan, he became an advocate for nuclear disarmament. He formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and backed Manhattan Project scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer in his opposition to the hydrogen bomb.

While at Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with his fellow student Mileva Maric, but his parents opposed the match and he lacked the money to marry. The couple had an illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, born in early 1902, of whom little is known. After finding a position as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Einstein married Maric in 1903; they would have two more children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910). Einstein’s Miracle Year (1905) While working at the patent office, Einstein did some of the most creative work of his life, producing no fewer than four groundbreaking articles in 1905 alone. In the first paper, he applied the quantum theory (developed by German physicist Max Planck) to light in order to explain the phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect, by which a material will emit electrically charged particles when hit by light. The second article contained Einstein’s experimental proof of the existence of atoms, which he got by analyzing the phenomenon of Brownian motion, in which tiny particles were suspended in water.

In the third and most famous article, titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein confronted the apparent contradiction between two principal theories of physics: Isaac Newton’s concepts of absolute space and time and James Clerk Maxwell’s idea that the speed of light was a constant. To do this, Einstein introduced his special theory of relativity, which held that the laws of physics are the same even for objects moving in different inertial frames (i.e. at constant speeds relative to each other), and that the speed of light is a constant in all inertial frames. A fourth paper concerned the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, concepts viewed previously as completely separate. Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 (where “c” was the constant speed of light) expressed this relationship. From Zurich to Berlin (1906-1932) Einstein continued working at the patent office until 1909, when he finally found a full-time academic post at the University of Zurich. In 1913, he arrived at the University of Berlin, where he was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

The move coincided with the beginning of Einstein’s romantic relationship with a cousin of his, Elsa Lowenthal, whom he would eventually marry after divorcing Mileva. In 1915, Einstein published the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterwork. This theory found that gravity, as well as motion, can affect time and space. According to Einstein’s equivalence principle–which held that gravity’s pull in one direction is equivalent to an acceleration of speed in the opposite direction–if light is bent by acceleration, it must also be bent by gravity. In 1919, two expeditions sent to perform experiments during a solar eclipse found that light rays from distant stars were deflected or bent by the gravity of the sun in just the way Einstein had predicted. The general theory of relativity was the first major theory of gravity since Newton’s, more than 250 years before, and the results made a tremendous splash worldwide, with the London Times proclaiming a “Revolution in Science” and a “New Theory of the Universe.” Einstein began touring the world, speaking in front of crowds of thousands in the United States, Britain, France and Japan.

In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, as his work on relativity remained controversial at the time. Einstein soon began building on his theories to form a new science of cosmology, which held that the universe was dynamic instead of static, and was capable of expanding and contracting. Einstein Moves to the United States (1933-39) A longtime pacifist and a Jew, Einstein became the target of hostility in Weimar Germany, where many citizens were suffering plummeting economic fortunes in the aftermath of defeat in the Great War. In December 1932, a month before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Einstein made the decision to emigrate to the United States, where he took a position at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . He would never again enter the country of his birth. By the time Einstein’s wife Elsa died in 1936, he had been involved for more than a decade with his efforts to find a unified field theory, which would incorporate all the laws of the universe, and those of physics, into a single framework.

In the process, Einstein became increasingly isolated from many of his colleagues, who were focused mainly on the quantum theory and its implications, rather than on relativity. Einstein’s Later Life (1939-1955) In the late 1930s, Einstein’s theories, including his equation E=mc2, helped form the basis of the development of the atomic bomb. In 1939, at the urging of the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to approve funding for the development of uranium before Germany could gain the upper hand. Einstein, who became a U.S. citizen in 1940 but retained his Swiss citizenship, was never asked to participate in the resulting Manhattan Project, as the U.S. government suspected his socialist and pacifist views. In 1952, Einstein declined an offer extended by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s premier, to become president of Israel. Throughout the last years of his life, Einstein continued his quest for a unified field theory.

Though he published an article on the theory in Scientific American in 1950, it remained unfinished when he died, of an aortic aneurysm, five years later. In the decades following his death, Einstein’s reputation and stature in the world of physics only grew, as physicists began to unravel the mystery of the so-called “strong force” (the missing piece of his unified field theory) and space satellites further verified the principles of his cosmology. Tags Albert Einstein - Physicist, Scientist - Biography.com Albert Einstein Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, among other feats. He is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. IN THESE GROUPS » quotes “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” “A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or are the others crazy?” “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.

I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.” “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” “Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.” “[T]he distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.'” “Living in this 'great age' it is hard to understand that we belong to this mad, degenerate species which imputes free will to itself. If only there were somewhere an island for the benevolent and the prudent! Then also I would want to be an ardent patriot.” “I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] is not playing at dice.” “How strange is the lot of us mortals!

Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.” “I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.” “I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.” “My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own.” “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.” “An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates.

For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.” “My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family. ” “Everybody is a genius.” “” Albert Einstein Albert Einstein - Mini Biography (TV-14; 3:46) Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein is one of the most influential and well-known physicist in history. Learn more about his life and work in this mini biography. Synopsis Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein had a passion for inquiry that eventually led him to develop the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and immigrated to the U.S. in the following decade after being targeted by the Nazis.

Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century, with his work also having a major impact on the development of atomic energy. With a focus on unified field theory during his later years, Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey. Background and Early Life Born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany, Albert Einstein grew up in a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who with his brother founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a Munich-based company that manufactured electrical equipment. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him. Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. However, he felt alienated there and struggled with the institution's rigid pedagogical style. He also had what were considered to be speech challenges, though he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin that would stay with him into his later years.

Most significantly, Einstein's youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry. Towards the end of the 1880s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student who sometimes dined with the Einstein family, became an informal tutor to young Albert. Talmud had introduced his pupil to a children’s science text that inspired Einstein to dream about the nature of light. Thus, during his teens, Einstein penned what would be seen as his first major paper, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields." Resident of Switzerland Hermann Einstein relocated the family to Milan, Italy, in the mid-1890s after his business lost out on a major contract. Albert was left at a relative's boarding house in Munich to complete his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Faced with military duty when he turned of age, Albert allegedly withdrew from classes, using a doctor’s note to excuse himself and claim nervous exhaustion. With their son rejoining them in Italy, his parents understood Einstein's perspective but were concerned about his future prospects as a school dropout and draft dodger.

Einstein was eventually able to gain admission into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, specifically due to his superb mathematics and physics scores on the entrance exam. He was still required to complete his pre-university education first, and thus attended a high school in Aarau, Switzerland helmed by Jost Winteler. Einstein lived with the schoolmaster's family and fell in love with Wintelers' daughter, Marie. Einstein later renounced his German citizenship and became a Swiss citizen at the dawn of the new century. Marriage and Family While attending school in Zurich, Einstein developed lasting friendships and alliances, also meeting his future wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian physics student. After graduating from Polytechnic, Einstein faced major challenges in terms of finding academic positions, having alienated some professors over not attending class more regularly in lieu of studying independently. Meanwhile, Einstein continued to grow closer to Maric, but his parents were strongly against the relationship due her ethnic background. Nonetheless, Einstein continued to see her, with the two developing a correspondence via letters in which he expressed many of his scientific ideas.

In 1902 the couple had a daughter, Lieserl, who might have been later raised by Maric's relatives or given up for adoption. Her ultimate fate and whereabouts remain a mystery. Einstein eventually found steady work in 1902 after receiving a referral for a clerk position in a Swiss patent office. Einstein’s father passed away shortly thereafter, and the young scientist married Milena Maric on Jan. 6, 1903. The couple went on to have two sons, Hans and Eduard. The marriage would not be a happy one, however, with the two divorcing in 1919 and Maric having an emotional breakdown in connection to the split. Einstein, as part of a settlement, agreed to give Maric any funds he might receive from possibly winning the Nobel Prize in the future. He had also begun an affair some time earlier with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, whom Einstein wed during the same year of his divorce. He would continue to see other women throughout his second marriage, which ended with Löwenthal's death in 1936.

Miracle Year While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity. In 1905—seen by many as a "miracle year" for the theorist—Einstein had four papers published in the Annalen der Physik, one of the best known physics journals of the era. The four papers focused on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity (the most widely circulated of the write-ups) and the matter/energy relationship, thus taking physics in an electrifying new direction. In his fourth paper, Einstein came up with the equation E=mc2, suggesting that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, foreshadowing the development of atomic power. Famed quantum theorist Max Planck backed up the assertions of Einstein, who thus became a star of the lecture circuit and academia, taking on various positions before becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1913 to 1933.

Relativity and Nobel Prize In November, 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which he considered the culmination of his life research. He was convinced of the merits of general relativity because it allowed for a more accurate prediction of planetary orbits around the sun, which fell short in Isaac Newton ’s theory, and for a more expansive, nuanced explanation of how gravitational forces worked. Einstein's assertions were affirmed via observations and measurements by British astronomers Sir Frank Dyson and Sir Arthur Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse, and thus a global science icon was born. In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics though he wasn't actually given the award until the following year due to a bureaucratic ruling. Because his ideas on relativity were still considered questionable, he received the prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect though Einstein still opted to speak about relativity during his acceptance speech. In the development of his general theory, Einstein had held on to the belief that the universe was a fixed, static entity, aka a "cosmological constant," though his later theories directly contradicted this idea and asserted that the universe could be in a state of flux.

Astronomer Edwin Hubble deduced that we indeed inhabit an expanding universe, with the two scientists meeting at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles in 1930. While Einstein was travelling and speaking internationally, the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler , were gaining prominence with violent propaganda and vitriol in an impoverished post-WWI Germany. The party influenced other scientists to label Einstein's work "Jewish physics." Jewish citizens were barred from university work and other official jobs, and Einstein himself was targeted to be killed. Move to U.S. and Atomic Energy In 1933, Einstein took on a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey and never went back to his native land. It was here that he would spend the rest of his life working on a unified field theory—an all-embracing paradigm meant to unify the varied laws of physics. Other European scientists also left regions threatened by Germany and immigrated to the states, with there being concern over Nazi strategies to create an atomic weapon. In 1939, Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard wrote to President Franklin D.

Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb and to galvanize the United States to create its own nuclear weapons. The U.S. would eventually initiate the Manhattan Project, though Einstein would not take direct part in its implementation due to his pacifist and socialist affiliations. Einstein was also the recipient of much scrutiny and major distrust from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover . Not long after he began his career at Princeton, Einstein expressed an appreciation for American "meritocracy" and the opportunities people had for free thought, a stark contrast to his own experiences coming of age. In 1935, Einstein was granted permanent residency in his adopted country and became an American citizen a few years later. During WWII, he worked on Navy-based weapons systems and made big monetary donations to the military by auctioning off manuscripts worth millions. Global and Domestic Activism After learning of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, Einstein became a major player in efforts to curtail usage of the a-bomb.

The following year he and Szilard founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, and in 1947, via an essay for The Atlantic Monthly, Einstein espoused working with the United Nations to maintain nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conflict. Around this time, Einstein also became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, seeing the parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany and African Americans in the United States. He corresponded with scholar/activist W.E.B. Du Bois as well as performing artist Paul Robeson and campaigned for civil rights, calling racism a "disease" in a 1946 Lincoln University speech. After the war, Einstein continued to work on his unified field theory and key aspects of the theory of general relativity, such as wormholes, the possibility of time travel, the existence of black holes and the creation of the universe. However, he became increasingly isolated from the rest of the physics community, whose eyes were set on quantum theory. In the last decade of his life, Einstein, who had always seen himself as a loner, withdrew even further from any sort of spotlight, preferring to stay close to Princeton and immerse himself in processing ideas with colleagues.

Final Years and Legacy On April 17, 1955, while working on a speech to honor Israel's seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was taken to the University Medical Center at Princeton for treatment but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate. "I want to go when I want," he stated at the time. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." Einstein died at the university medical center early the next morning—April 18, 1955—at the age of 76. During the autopsy, Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain, reportedly without the permission of his family, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience. Einstein's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location, following his wishes. After decades of study, Einstein's brain is now located at the Princeton University Medical Center.

A veritable mountain of books have been written on the iconic thinker's life, including Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe, both from 2007. Einstein's own words are presented in the collection The World as I See It. Videos Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information Science Top 5: Greatest scientists | KSL.com Science Top 5: Greatest scientists By Scott Dunn, KSL.com Contributor | Posted Sep 30th, 2011 @ 12:15pm 43  Here are the five greatest scientists in history, listed in no particular order. They are chosen here for their lasting influence on scientific progress and international culture. 1. No list of the greatest scientists would be complete without Albert Einstein . Einstein seems to have become a scientist without really planning on it . His father wanted him to work as an electrical engineer, but he got a job as a patent examiner instead. It was while Einstein was working in the patent office that he developed an interest in the problems he is so famous for investigating.

His work with the patent office required him to determine if a new invention was novel, but as he thought about the operation of each invention, he mentally explored the physical forces relied upon to make each invention work. It was this curiosity about mechanics that helped to give rise to his work on relativity. Einstein was one of the most prolific scientists of the 20th century and wrote over 300 papers. What made him world-famous was not just his theory of general relativity, but confirmation of it. His theory of general relativity indicated that gravity could bend light , and that part of his theory was confirmed during the solar eclipse of 1911. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. –Albert Einstein Einstein was also a peace activist. His work on relativity helped engineers to create an atomic bomb during World War II. He knew full well the danger surrounding the eventuality of atomic weapons. He is famously quoted as saying "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." 2. Linus Pauling , chemist, biochemist, peace activist.

He is one of only four people who have been awarded the Nobel Prize more than once - both the chemistry and peace prizes. Pauling was awarded the Nobel in chemistry in 1954 for his work on the nature of the chemical bond. He was one of the first to apply quantum mechanics to the chemical bond as a set of rules that characterize chemical bonds and complex molecules better than any other tools in his time. His book, " The Nature of the Chemical Bond ," is one of the most influential chemistry books in history and has been cited more than 16,000 times and is still cited to this day. Pauling was one of the first scientists to warn the public of the dangers of open air nuclear weapons testing. In 1946, he joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists , chaired by fellow scientist, Einstein. Their mission was to warn the public of the dangers associated with the testing of nuclear weapons. In 1962, Pauling received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. He was also called "unpatriotic" and ousted from his job for his work as a peace activist. Turing was instrumental in breaking the codes used for communicating in secret by the Germans during World War II. 3.

Alan Turing is considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He formalized the concept of the algorithm, a series of mathematical steps used to process numbers, or to calculate a function. To put this in perspective: All computers run software. All software is coded instructions consisting of discrete steps, and each instruction can be thought of as a function. Turing gave us the all of the basic programming concepts that we use in modern computing today. Turing was instrumental in breaking the codes used for communicating in secret by the Germans during World War II. He worked at Blechley Park , Britain's codebreaking center, where he created several ciphers used to break the German codes. After the war, he created one of the first designs for a stored program computer known as the Autmatic Computing Engine. Turing is best known for the Turing Test . The Turing Test is used to determine if a machine can think. A machine passes this test if a human conducting an interview with the machine cannot determine if the machine is human or not. A good example of a machine that uses artificial intelligence is the IBM Watson machine , a machine that was a competitor on Jeopardy and won! 4.

Gallileo is considered the father of modern astronomy and the father of modern science. Galileo left us with the foundation for the modern scientific method. Like many scientists since his time, he developed methods of observation and documentation that made his findings available for peer review. He was also one of the first scientists to explain physics in terms of mathematics by comparing his observations to his calculations of the orbits of the planets. Galileo is most famous for his discovery of four moons around Jupiter he observed with a telescope of his own design, and his observations that provided support of heliocentrism . Heliocentrism is an astronomical model that holds that the Earth revolves around the sun. Galileo's support of heliocentrism met with widespread opposition, not just from other scientists but also from the Roman Catholic Church. His works on heliocentrism were investigated by the Roman Inquisition leading to censorship of his works and subsquent house arrest for the remainder of his life. 5. Charles Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution. He was a disciplined observer and put that discipline to use in many places. From the Galapagos Islands to the farm, he observed how species breed and evolved together according to natural selection .

While Darwin is usually remembered for the phrase "survival of the fittest," he also identified love as a key component of life. In fact, in his thesis, " The Descent of Man ," the word "love" appears 95 times, but the phrase "survival of the fittest", appears only twice. Darwin noticed that cooperation plays a defining role in life, holding it as more important even than competition. It is interesting to see the ways in which Darwin is remembered. For example, on an annual basis, the Darwin Award takes note of the forces of natural selection in modern times. Darwin's theories provide grist for countless debates, yet there is no better theory to explain the rise of man from the pimordial ooze. Scott Dunn is an IT professional, teacher and writer living in Salt Lake City. He is also a passionate Linux enthusiast. Albert Einstein biography | birthday, trivia | German Physicist | Who2 Albert Einstein Biography Physicist Thanks to his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein became the most famous scientist of the 20th century.

In 1905, while working in a Swiss patent office, Albert Einstein published a paper proposing a “special theory of relativity,” a groundbreaking notion which laid the foundation for much of modern physics theory. (The theory included his famous equation E=mc² — that is, energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared.) Einstein’s work had a profound impact on everything from quantum theory to nuclear power and the atom bomb. He continued to develop and refine his early ideas, and in 1915 published what is known as his general theory of relativity. By 1920 Einstein was internationally renowned; he won the Nobel Prize in 1921, not for relativity but for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. In 1933 Einstein moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies until the end of his life. Einstein’s genius is often compared with that of Sir Isaac Newton ; in 2000 Time magazine named him the leading figure of the 20th century.

Extra credit Albert Einstein was famously rumpled and frizzy-haired, and over time his image has become synonymous with absent-minded genius… He sent a famous letter to Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, warning that Germany was developing an atomic bomb and urging Allied research toward the same goal… Albert Einstein married Mileva Maric in 1903. They had two sons: Hans Albert (b. 1904) and Eduard (b. 1910). They also had a daughter born before their marriage, Leiserl (b. 1902). She apparently was given for adoption or died in infancy. Mileva and Albert were divorced in 1914… He married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal in 1919, and they remained married until her death in 1936… The Institute for Advanced Studies has no formal link to Princeton University; however, according the IAS website, the two institutions “have many historic ties and ongoing relationships”… The Albert Einstein College of Medicine opened in New York City in 1955. It is part of Yeshiva University. Albert Einstein did not create the school, but gave his permission to have his name used.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Albert Einstein (1879-1955) The father of modern physics Do you recognise the person in the picture on the right? It's Einstein! You probably know him for his famous equation E = mc². Did you know you can measure the speed of light using Einstein's famous equation, a chocolate bar and a microwave? Try it - measure the speed of light using chocolate . From a terrible student to the world's most famous scientist Now, nearly everyone knows who Einstein is. When Einstein was younger, it wasn't obvious that he would go on to become the most famous scientist ever. Einstein eventually completed his high school and university education, but he didn't do well enough at university to get the teaching job he wanted. Instead, Einstein went to work in a patent office. Luckily for us, his job was so boring that it gave him lots of time to think. This is where Einstein developed his most famous ideas. Why is Einstein so famous? Einstein is the father of modern physics. He revolutionised the way we look at the world. What are his most famous theories?

Theory of Relativity Einstein showed that Newton was right about most things, but wrong about how gravity affected very large and very distance objects. It's actually two theories - Special Relativity and General Relativity. Einstein's Theory of Relativity changed the way we think about space and time General Relativity says that large objects cause space to bend in the same way that putting a tennis ball on a thin sheet would cause the sheet to bend. The larger the object, the more space bends. Special Relativity says it's impossible to determine if you're moving unless you can look at another object. It also shows that measurements of distance and time depend on how fast you are travelling. This means that if someone your age goes into space for ten years and travels millions of miles, that person will come back looking two years younger than you! Showing that light is made up of packets of energy called photons. This led to later scientists developing quantum theory. Go to Dr Quantum explains quantum physics to find out more! Here's how Einstein did it: Showing that everything is made up of atoms. Einstein managed to do this without seeing an atom. Instead, he looked at pollen grains in water and realised that something smaller than pollen was making the pollen grains move around.

With those three theories, Einstein changed the way we think about space, time and matter. Not bad for someone who was expelled from school and couldn't get the job he wanted! I'm sorry, it appears you do not have flash installed. Curriculum information Summary Although he did not get his Nobel prize for it, Einstein is most famous for his theory of Relativity. Find out about gravity, relativity and Einstein's quantum description of light (for which he was awarded the Nobel prize). Curriculum key words Albert Einstein ALBERT EINSTEIN email this page to a friend 'My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is abhorrent. My attitude is not derived from intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.' 'Science is a powerful instrument. How it is used, whether it is a blessing or a curse to mankind, depends on mankind and not on the instrument. A knife is useful, but it can also kill.' Albert Einstein had two public passions. One was his work: he was a dedicated and ground-breaking scientist. The other was peace, to which he was committed all his life. Both passions involved journeys of discovery.

When the two paths met, one of the great modern problems was exposed: how responsible are scientists for the consequences of their discoveries? Young Einstein Albert Einstein was born in Germany on March 14 1879. His mother noticed that the back of her baby's head was unusually large, and for a moment thought there was something wrong. With her encouragement Albert was taught to play the violin when still very young, and he became an excellent musician. (As an adult he would take his fiddle everywhere: he found that playing it relaxed him.) He learned to sail, too, which he loved. And he knew by the age of 12 what he wanted to spend his life studying: nothing less than the behaviour of the universe. To a child like Albert, school could only be pedestrian, intimidating and alien. He loathed the 'dull, mechanical method of teaching'; he didn't fit in, he didn't work, and was thought 'precocious and insolent'; at 15 he took seriously the suggestion of an unfriendly tutor, and left.

Somehow he got together the qualifications he needed to get into the renowned Polytechnic in the Swiss city of Zürich, where, at last, he could study physics as he wished (though even there one of his maths tutors called him a lazy dog). By this time it was obvious that Albert Einstein was an unusual young man, whose greatest pleasure and satisfaction was in thinking about scientific theory, and who never wore socks ('not even when he was invited to the White House!' his secretary later revealed). In 1905, though working full-time as Technical Expert (Third Class) at the Swiss Patent Office in Berne, he published a series of remarkable scientific papers. They won him a Ph D - and also radically changed human understanding of the universe. He was only 26 years old. Albert Einstein brought a new perspective to the relationships between light, time, space, matter and gravity. 1905 was also the year of his famous equation: E=mc2. This was a way of expressing his theory that matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy. It was Einstein who proved, through his 'thought experiments', that atoms really exist.

His work helped to make quantum physics possible - without which much modern technology (including computers) might still be a closed book. It was for this work, not for his more famous theory of relativity, that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. The years of his greatest discoveries were, he said, the happiest years of his life. He was not yet famous, so 'nobody expected me to lay golden eggs' of yet more new and surprising scientific insights; and the First World War had not yet begun. Einstein and the First World War Albert Einstein was born a German, took Swiss nationality in 1900 and German-Swiss nationality after the war, renounced German citizenship in 1933, and became an American citizen in 1940. Such real and symbolic frontier-crossing was appropriate in a man who hoped for a world in which there were no binding or fanatical nationalist allegiances to cause distrust, hostility and war. In 1914 Einstein had just taken up a high-ranking science post in Berlin.

When the war began, international criticism of Germany for attacking a neutral country (Belgium) was so great that a government-sponsored 'Manifesto to the Civilised World' was published. It defended German militarism and was signed by nearly 100 famous German intellectuals. A prominent German pacifist responded with a 'Manifesto to Europeans', which challenged militarism and 'this barbarous war' and called for peaceful European unity against it. 'Educated people in all countries should use their influence to bring about a peace treaty that will not carry the seeds of future wars.' Only three other people were brave enough to sign this peace manifesto; one of them was Einstein. It was the first of many public actions he took to promote pacifist ideals over the next 40 years. Throughout the First World War Einstein supported anti-war movements in whatever ways he could, quietly campaigned for democratic government in Germany, wrote letters, asked awkward questions. When the war was over he was able to speak in public in favour of democracy; but nearly 25 years later he wrote to a friend: 'Do you remember when we took a trolley-car to the Reichstag, convinced we could turn those fellows into honest democrats?

How naïve we were, even at the age of 40! It makes me laugh to think of it.' In 1919 observations made of an eclipse of the sun confirmed Einstein's theory about the relation of time and space and the nature of gravity. It made headline news, and Einstein became an international celebrity. But this didn't stop him from being thoroughly unpopular in Germany, where he had found that 'even men of high culture cannot rid themselves of narrow nationalism'. As well as enduring anti-Semitism and attacked, together with other scientists, for 'world-bluffing Jewish physics', Einstein faced contempt for his opinions. 'There's no doubt that people are very irritated by my pacifist orientation'. Communists disliked his unshakeable independence of mind; religious leaders feared that his new science would empty the churches. And as Nazism took hold, brown-shirted students hissed him at lectures; one openly threatened to 'cut that Jew's throat'. Einstein's view was straightforward, non-political and non-sectarian: what intellectuals could and should do was promote international reconciliation through their scientific work and artistic achievements: 'creative work lifts people above personal and selfish national aims'.

One among many of his sometimes unexpected practical suggestions was that students would do well to study in the countries their own country had been fighting. 'First-hand experience of this kind provides the most powerful antidote to the catastrophic ideologies created by the World War.' It wasn't until 1922, when he was travelling through northern France, that Einstein saw for himself the still-ravaged battlefields of the First World War. He was horrified. 'War is a terrible thing, and must be abolished at all costs,' he said again and again. That summer, the German minister of foreign affairs (who, like Einstein, was a Jew who preached internationalism) was assassinated. Einstein ignored warnings from worried friends to keep his own head down, and appeared publicly at the annual rally of the 'No More War' movement in Berlin. In the same year a German pacifist handbook was published. It contained an article by Einstein. 'Whoever cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist....The natural scientist responds to pacifist aims because of the universal nature of his subject and his dependence on international co-operation.

The development of technology has made the economies of the world interdependent, so every war has world-wide effects.' In the spring of 1923 Einstein visited Japan, and fell in love with it. 'The Japanese are a wonderful people in a beautiful land.' But in Europe the news was bad. Nazism and its racist creeds were spreading. Mussolini was entrenching his fascist dictatorship in Italy. France had invaded part of Germany (the industrial area of the Ruhr valley) demanding reparation money for war damage. Einstein, asked by someone for his autograph, wrote: 'Children do not listen to the wisdom of their elders. Nations do not listen to history. The bitter lessons of the past must ever be learned anew.' How Albert Einstein Helped Blackmail President Roosevelt Over Manhattan Project Funding How Albert Einstein Helped Blackmail President Roosevelt Over Manhattan Project Funding By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | April 30, 2014 12:17pm ET MORE The Trinity fireball, 15 seconds after detonation of the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945, rises into the air above the desert near the town of San Antonio, New Mexico.

Credit: Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office Seventy-five years ago, Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard wrote a letter to United States President Franklin Roosevelt expressing concern that German scientists would soon unlock the secrets to developing the first atomic bomb. Concerned that his relative anonymity would cause the warning to go unheeded, Szilard persuaded his friend and colleague Albert Einstein to sign the letter. The Einstein-Szilard letter resulted in the establishment of the Manhattan Project, and the United States' subsequent creation of the world's first nuclear weapon. But that wasn't the only letter penned by the pair. Szilard and Einstein actually drafted four missives to the president. [ The 10 Biggest Explosions Ever ] Physicist Leo Szilard wrote a letter to President Roosevelt warning of the danger inherent in allowing German scientists to be the first to develop the atomic bomb—as well as a followup "scientific and politcial blackmail" letter. Credit: U.S. Department of Energy "The third is probably the most interesting, because it involves a bit of scientific and political blackmail," author William Lanouette said at a press conference on April 7 during a meeting of the American Physical Society in Savannah, Georgia.

Lanouette is the author of "Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb" (University of Chicago Press, 1994). Government blackmail Szilard studied in Berlin with Einstein and Max Planck, among other notable scientists. According to Lanouette, he fled Germany with Einstein to avoid Nazi persecution. While in London in 1933, Szilard conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction, filing a patent for the process a year later. In 1936, he assigned the patent to the British Admiralty to keep it secret, in an effort to keep Germany from being the first to develop an atomic bomb . But by 1939, when Szilard had moved to the United States, Germany had made significant progress. German scientists had split the uranium atom less than a year before the nation's army invaded Poland. At that point, Szilard met with Einstein to write the first and most famous of the Einstein-Szilard letters, warning President Roosevelt about the German efforts to formulate the atomic bomb, and the possible disastrous outcomes should this come to pass.

The result was a promise to fund research into nuclear fission , which occasioned the second Einstein-Szilard letter thanking the president. Szilard had written an article for the Physics Review detailing how a chain reaction would work, but asked the journal to hold up publication so that Germany and other countries would not be alerted. Time passed, but the scientists did not receive the money promised by President Roosevelt . So Szilard approached Einstein and suggested that if the government didn't follow through with the funding, he would allow the article to be published. "For people of such high ideals to, in effect, blackmail the government with information about how to make a nuclear weapon was quite surprising," Lanouette said. The government apparently took the threat to heart, coughing up the funds for research that ultimately led to the creation of the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s. Albert Einstein signed a letter initially authored by physicist Leo Szilard that warned President Roosevelt of the German studies of the atomic bomb and ultimately led to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Credit: Department of Energy Second thoughts As work progressed, Szilard began to have second thoughts about the creation of the bomb.

Originally, he had been focused on the concept of self-defense, hoping to ensure that Germany wasn't the first and only country to build such a powerful weapon. With the German surrender looming in the spring of 1945, he questioned the need for the weapon. In the fourth and final Einstein-Szilard letter, the pair attempted to set up an appointment with the president to discuss their concerns. However, Roosevelt died before the meeting could be kept, and his successor, President Harry Truman, set Szilard up with James Byrnes, the soon-to-be Secretary of State. "The clash of the scientist who wanted to make the bomb and then wanted to stop versus the politician who couldn't wait to use it is really quite a dramatic event in itself," Lanouette said. In June 1945, Szilard helped to author the Franck Report, warning that even if the atomic bomb helped to save lives during the present war, it could ultimately lead to a nuclear arms race and perhaps even a nuclear war with far more devastating results. "He was shy, a bit eccentric, and always thinking five to 10 years ahead of time," Lanouette said.

[ Doomsday: 9 Real Ways the Earth Could End ] The United States, of course, decided to go ahead and use the weapon during the final stages of World War II, dropping one atomic bomb each on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. According to Lanouette, Albert Einstein, who had no direct involvement with the Manhattan Project, said, "My only activity in creating this weapon was to be Leo Szilard's mailbox." When the war was won After the war, Szilard continued his efforts to stem the rising tide of nuclear weapons. He often spoke in public, and authored a number of satires, including one in 1947 titled "My Trial As a War Criminal." That short story describes how, after the Russians won World War III, they rounded up all of the people who worked on the atomic bomb, including Szilard, and put them on trial as war criminals. "It was his way of pointing out that scientists do have responsibilities for their effects," Lanouette said. Szilard also founded the Council for a Livable World, which today continues to work for peace.

Famous Physicists - The Greatest Physicists of All Time Famous Physicists The field of physics deals with the immutable laws that govern the entire universe. Some of the greatest names in this discipline include Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Niels Bohr, just to name a few. Their contributions along with the important discoveries of others have given us a better understanding of our world. Here is a list that includes some of the most famous physicists throughout history in order of the notoriety of their work. Albert Einstein (1885-1962) Famous For: Advancing the Theory of Relativity At the age of seventeeen, Albert Einstein enrolled to complete and receive his teaching diploma in the field of physics and mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He debated with Niels Bohr, the other founder of quantum mechanics. In 1905, Einstein published On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, this contained his theory on relativity. In 1921, Albert Einstein was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in the field of Physics.

Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Famous For: Contributions to quantum theory, nuclear reactions and nuclear fission Niels Henrik David Bohr, a native of Copenhagen, Denmark and his contribution to the world of physics rests on his study and explanation of the atomic structure. In addition, he helped in the understanding of quantum mechanics and in so doing founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics located at the University of Copenhagen, the institute has been renamed to the Niels Bohr Institute. Stephen Hawking (1942) Famous For: Explaining Black holes and Advances on the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum mechanics He is known for his scientific works with Roger Penrose, for which they provided a theory for the basis of general relativity, this is known as the gravitational singularities theorem. In 1978, Hawking received the Albert Einstein Award, given to those who excelled in natural sciences, more specifically, theoretical physics. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Famous For: Explaining the theories of gravity and mechanics Isaac Newton is known for his contribution to world of science. It was Newton who identified the concept of gravity and the theory of mechanics.

He excelled in the fields of alchemy, astronomy, Christian theology, economics, mathematics, and of course, physics. Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) Famous For: Created the first Alternating Current system Nikola Tesla is known for his contribution in the development and use of alternating current (AC) system. He worked briefly with Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. His experiments on high voltage electricity gained him further notoriety. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Famous For: Providing a mathematical analysis of the relationship between astronomy and physics Galileo is known for his experiments and theories in the field of bodies in motion. His work in astronomy, mathematics and physics and the combination of these sciences became instrumental in the study and understanding of the universe beyond us. Marie Curie (1867-1934) Famous For: Discovered radioactivity nature of thorium and the discovery of polonium and radium She is known for introducing techniques in the field of radioactivity for isolating isotopes. Marie was instrumental in the discovery of the elements known as polonium and radium.

(Lord) Kelvin (1824-1907) Famous For: Advancement of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. Developed absolute thermometric scale He is known for formulating the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. The measure of absolute temperatures has been named after him. It was he who coined the term “kinetic energy”. Robert Hooke (1635-1703) Famous For: Explaining Hooke’s Law of Elasticity Robert Hooke is known for the physics principle that is the law of elasticity, which is better known as Hooke’s Law. He constructed one of the earliest reflecting telescopes. Richard Feynman (1918-1988) Famous For: Work on Path integral formulation on quantum mechanics, particle physics, theory of quantum electrodynamics and, superfluidity Richard Feynman is known for his efforts in the integral formulation’s path in quantum mechanics along with advancing the theory of quantum electrodynamics and superfluidity. He is also remembered for his involvement with the Manhattan project.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Famous For: Discovery of electromagnetic induction and came up with the idea for first electrical transformer Michael Faraday is known for his work on chemistry and physics, specifically In physics, he worked heavily in the field of magnetism and electricity. Many scientific concepts have been named after him; Faraday’s law of induction, Faraday’s law of electrolysis, and so on. He was successful in converting gases into liquid form. Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) Famous For: Supporting the Theory on the existence of an atomic nucleus Ernest Rutherford is known for his work in the field of nuclear physics. He worked with J.J. Thomson that led to the eventual discovery of the electron. He also explained the nature of radioactivity, in which he discovered two types of x-rays, alpha and beta rays. Marconi (1874-1937) Famous For: His work on the Wireless Telegraphy Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi is known for his pioneering work on the radio telegraph system, which eventually led to him being recognized as the inventor of the radio.

He received the Nobel Prize in 1909 along with Karl Braun for their contribution to the world of wireless innovations. Max Planck (1858-1947) Famous For: The formulation of the quantum theory German national Max Planck is known for bringing to the world the concept or theory of quantum physics. His work in the field of physics expanded the understanding of time and space. Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Famous For: Inventing the first electric battery Alessandro Volta is known for and credited for the discovery of methane and making the earliest known form of the battery in the 18th century. The “battery” was made of copper and zinc, with sulfuric acid used to complete the circuit. J.J. Thomson (1856-1940) Famous For: Showing the existence of the electron Joseph John (J.J.) Thomson is known for the identification of the electron and isotopes. During one of his experiments, Thomson was able to identify a negative charged particle which became known as the electron.

Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) Famous For: Extensive Advancements on Quantum mechanics and the Schrodinger equation. Erwin Schrodinger is known for his contribution to the world of physics in which he explains what is known as wave mechanics, it became known as the Schrodinger equation. He also provided answers for the diatomic molecule, the quantum harmonic oscillator, and the rigid rotor. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Famous For: Work on the Theory of Electromagnetism and the Kinetic theory of gases James Clerk Maxwell is known for his Theory of Electromagnetism which was published in a paper he wrote, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in 1865. He demonstrated that the electromagnetic field is occurs in electricity, light, and magnetism. In collaboration with another scientist Ludwig Boltzmann, Maxwell explained the theory of kinetic gases, also known as the “Maxwell distribution”. Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) Famous For: Work on Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle Werner Karl Heisenberg is known for the matrix formulation applied in quantum mechanics.

The Heisenberg principle, or the “uncertainty principle” in quantum mechanics, became important to the field of physics in explaining inequalities of results from physical properties.

Question: What was the first name of famous German scientist Einstein?
Answer: Albert