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- Albert Einstein was born in Germany, but lived in Italy, Switzerland and Czechia (which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), until he eventually moved to the United States in 1933.
- When Albert was a boy, he fell in love with physics when his father gifted him a compass. He was fascinated by the way the magnets moved inside of the compass, and thought about this when he was older and coming up with his theories around relativity.
- Albert hated the strict discipline of the grammar school he attended as a teenager, and left aged 15… While at school, he excelled at maths, physics, and philosophy, but struggled with other subjects like languages.
- but he still managed to write his first scholarly paper at just 16 years old! The paper was inspired by his compass, and discussed the force of magnetism.
- Overview
- Childhood and education
Albert Einstein was a famous physicist. His research spanned from quantum mechanics to theories about gravity and motion. After publishing some groundbreaking papers, Einstein toured the world and gave speeches about his discoveries. In 1921 he won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the photoelectric effect.
Read more below: From graduation to the “miracle year” of scientific theories
What is Albert Einstein known for?
Albert Einstein is best known for his equation E = mc2, which states that energy and mass (matter) are the same thing, just in different forms. He is also known for his discovery of the photoelectric effect, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. Einstein developed a theory of special and general relativity, which helped to complicate and expand upon theories that had been put forth by Isaac Newton over 200 years prior.
How Albert Einstein Developed the Theory of General Relativity
Learn more about why it took Albert Einstein years to express his ideas mathematically.
Einstein’s parents were secular, middle-class Jews. His father, Hermann Einstein, was originally a featherbed salesman and later ran an electrochemical factory with moderate success. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. He had one sister, Maria (who went by the name Maja), born two years after Albert.
Einstein would write that two “wonders” deeply affected his early years. The first was his encounter with a compass at age five. He was mystified that invisible forces could deflect the needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. The second wonder came at age 12 when he discovered a book of geometry, which he devoured, calling it his “sacred little geometry book.”
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All About Einstein
Einstein became deeply religious at age 12, even composing several songs in praise of God and chanting religious songs on the way to school. This began to change, however, after he read science books that contradicted his religious beliefs. This challenge to established authority left a deep and lasting impression. At the Luitpold Gymnasium, Einstein often felt out of place and victimized by a Prussian-style educational system that seemed to stifle originality and creativity. One teacher even told him that he would never amount to anything.
Yet another important influence on Einstein was a young medical student, Max Talmud (later Max Talmey), who often had dinner at the Einstein home. Talmud became an informal tutor, introducing Einstein to higher mathematics and philosophy. A pivotal turning point occurred when Einstein was 16 years old. Talmud had earlier introduced him to a children’s science series by Aaron Bernstein, Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher (1867–68; Popular Books on Physical Science), in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein then asked himself the question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years: What would a light beam look like if you could run alongside it? If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Even as a child, though, he knew that stationary light waves had never been seen, so there was a paradox. Einstein also wrote his first “scientific paper” at that time (“The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields”).
Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the twentieth century.
- Alfred Kleiner
- Virtually all modern physicists
- Physics, philosophy
- Heinrich Friedrich Weber
- Born: Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany to parents Hermann Einstein and Pauline Einstein. At age 29, his father married Pauline Koch. She was eleven years his junior.
- Fathead at birth: Albert had a fat head at the time he was born. This startled his mother and grandmother when they saw him for the first time. However, the fat head slowly receded and turned into a normal size.
- Speech difficulty during childhood: Einstein did not speak until the age of three. He revealed this fact about the delay of his speech abilities to his biographer.
- Early years: he spent his teenage years in Munich. His family operated an electrical equipment business in the city. Einstein at a young age liked to work on puzzles, erect complex structures with his toy building sets.
- Lucas Reilly
- When Albert Einstein was born, his misshapen head terrified the room. On March 14, 1879, baby Einstein emerged with a “swollen, misshapen head and a grossly overweight body,” according to Denis Brian’s book, Einstein: A Life.
- As a child, he was the king of throwing temper tantrums. The young genius had a habit of throwing objects whenever he was displeased; once, a frustrated Einstein even threw a chair at his teacher.
- Einstein did not struggle in school. The idea that Einstein had trouble in school is a myth. During summers, a pre-teen Einstein would study mathematics and physics for fun, eventually mastering differential and integral calculus by age 15.
- Nobody knows Einstein’s IQ. Einstein’s IQ was never tested, though that hasn’t stopped people from guessing. Lots of websites claim the physicist’s IQ was 160, but there’s simply no way of verifying that claim.
Oct 27, 2009 · Learn about the life and achievements of Albert Einstein, the German-born physicist who developed the theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize. Explore his early years, his scientific breakthroughs, his political activism and his legacy.
Jul 20, 2023 · Learn about the life and achievements of Albert Einstein, one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century. Find out his IQ, patent clerk, inventions, discoveries, Nobel Prize in Physics, wives, children, travel, and more.
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