Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
(Courtesy of the
Routledge Online)
One of the greatest physicists of all
time, in 1905 he published four brilliant
papers in the Annalen der Physik
which were to transform
twentieth-century scientific thought.
He established the special theory of
relativity, predicted the equivalence
of mass (m) and energy (e)
according to the equation e = mc2,
where (c) represents the velocity of
light; he created the theory of
Brownian motion and founded the
photon theory of light (photoelectric
effect) for which he received the
Nobel Prize in 1921.
**In 1916 Einstein published "Relativity, the
Special and the General Theory: A
Popular Exposition", which
profoundly modified the simple
concepts of space and time on which
Newtonian mechanics had been
based. His prediction of the
deflection of light by the gravitational
field of the sun was borne out by a
British team of scientists at the time
of the solar eclipse in 1919, making
Einstein a household name.
** Throughout the Weimar years he
was lionized, especially abroad,
though in Germany not only his work
but also his pacifist politics aroused
violent animosity in extreme
right-wing circles.
Alarmed at the prospect that
Hitler's Germany might acquire an
atomic bomb after two German
physicists had discovered the fusion
of uranium, Einstein signed a letter to
President Roosevelt in August 1939
which sparked off the Manhattan
project. It was one of the great
ironies of his career that the pacifist
Einstein, through this action, should
have helped initiate the era of nuclear
weapons to whose use he was
completely opposed.
** The best-known refugee from
Nazism and one of its most adamant
critics, Einstein died in Princeton on
18 April 1955.
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