Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein in 1921
Born	14 March 1879 Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire
Died	18 April 1955 (aged 76) Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Residence	Germany, Italy, Switzerland, United States
Citizenship	·         Württemberg/Germany (until 1896) ·         Stateless (1896–1901) ·         Switzerland (from 1901) ·         Austria (1911–12) ·         Germany (1914–33) ·         United States (from 1940)
Alma mater	·         ETH Zurich ·         University of Zurich
Known for	·         General relativity and special relativity ·         Photoelectric effect ·         Mass-energy equivalence ·         Quantification of the Brownian motion ·         Einstein field equations ·         Bose–Einstein statistics ·         Unified Field Theory
Spouse	·         Mileva Marić (1903–1919) ·         Elsa Löwenthal, née Einstein, (1919–1936)
Awards	·         Nobel Prize in Physics (1921) ·         Copley Medal (1925) ·         Max Planck Medal (1929) ·         Time Person of the Century
Signature

Albert Einstein  14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.

He was visiting the United States when Hitler came to power in 1933, and did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he helped alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon, and recommended that the U.S. begin similar research. Later, together with Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955