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Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Württemberg,
Germany, on March 14, 1879. During his early years, his mother was actually
quite concerned about the amount of time that it took Albert to learn to
talk. His elementary school teachers were not much more impressed with him,
considering him a dreamer. Albert hated sports, but loved music. He could
play Mozart on his violin. As he grew, he began to love the academic
subjects of math and science. He actually taught himself calculus at the
age of 12, however he hated school and dropped out in high school.
In order to get into college he took
special exams. After graduation, he struggled to get a job and
couldn’t even join the army because he had flat feet. His first job was at
a Swiss patent office, where he earned enough money to support his wife and
first child. During this time, he worked in private on subjects that had
intrigued him as a child.
In 1905, he developed the Special Theory of
Relativity. This came from his wonderings as a child of what a beam of light
would look like if you caught up with it.
In 1907, Albert formed the General Theory
of Relativity, which was published in 1916. This was the second of four
papers Albert would write. These four papers were important to physics.
The first showed that light could be conceived as particles as well as
waves. The second proved the existence of atoms and molecules. The third,
the special theory of relativity, said that there was no such thing as
absolute time or space. And the fourth noted an equivalence between energy
and mass described by the most famous equation in all of physics, E=mc2.
For years his papers were unproven, and
often questioned. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize initially in 1910,
however did not actually win the award until 1921, for his services in
theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of 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.
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