by Anne Schraff
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straight up. But to an observer on shore, the flag moves forward and up at the same time. Time and space are relative.
They depend on the observer’s frame of reference.
Einstein published his article on special relativity in the Annals of Physics.
When other scientists read it, some were upset. They thought this twenty-six-year-old upstart was tampering with Isaac Newton’s fixed laws. Others, however, knew Einstein’s insights were important. They increased our
understanding of the universe.
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Albert Einstein then began to think about energy and matter. Einstein said they are different forms of the same thing. His idea was that if matter moved fast enough, it became energy. If energy was slowed down, it became matter. He introduced a mathematical equation to prove this theory: E = mc2. “E” stands for energy, “m” stands for mass, and “c2”
stands for the speed of light multiplied by itself. The equation says that there is a huge amount of energy tied up in even 29
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a small amount of matter. For the first time, someone explained how the sun could go on giving off light for billions of years without cooling off.
Albert Einstein came up with these amazing ideas when he was still a clerk at the patent office. His friends told him that with his knowledge, he should be a university professor. But Einstein feared having teaching responsibilities. He thought teaching would take too much time from his research.
Einstein was receiving invitations to lecture at universities. Mileva Einstein was hoping for a better career for her husband. Einstein enjoyed work at the patent office. But he wondered if he would always be happy looking at new inventions.
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In 1909 Albert Einstein became a professor of physics at the University of Zurich. Albert and Mileva Einstein fell in love with Zurich. It was a happy time for the family. Albert Einstein enjoyed playing games and telling stories to his five-year-old son. Albert and Mileva often attended the opera and the theatre. On July 28, 1910, the Einstein’s second son was born. Eduard was given the pet nickname of “Tete.” Unlike the robust Hans, Eduard was a frail child.
With the birth of a second child, Mileva Einstein believed the family needed more money. Einstein added more lectures. He began thinking about the problems of gravity. In 1911
Einstein was offered a higher salary to teach at the University of Prague. Soon, Albert Einstein’s fame spread. He was 31
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invited to meetings with world famous scientists. Then Einstein was offered three jobs, director of physics at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, membership in the Prussian Academy of Science, and professor at the University of Berlin.
News that the family might be moving to Germany made Mileva Einstein very unhappy. Einstein accepted the new jobs. Mileva Einstein and her two sons continued to live in Switzerland. The marriage was over. She had been unhappy for a long time because her own career as a physicist never developed. She was frustrated with her husband’s personality.
Mileva Einstein began a new life as a divorcée and single mother with two young boys. Albert Einstein supported his family financially. He made regular 32
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trips to Switzerland to see his sons. But he was very lonely living alone in Berlin.
To relieve his loneliness, Einstein often visited his Uncle Rudolf who lived in Berlin. Rudolf Einstein’s daughter, Elsa, lived there as well with her two daughters, Margot and Ilse. Albert Einstein and Elsa Einstein were cousins.
They had often played together as children. He felt very comfortable with her. He liked the two girls, too. When Albert played the violin and Elsa played the piano, the girls were charmed.
Einstein found he liked living in Berlin. The people were friendlier than he expected. He spent much of his time studying gravity. He also spent pleasant hours with Elsa and her daughters. Like Einstein, Elsa was also divorced. She scolded Albert for not taking better care of himself. He seemed much too thin.
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Unlike Mileva, Elsa was not a brilliant woman. She was simple, kind, and down to earth. Little by little, she became an important part of Albert Einstein’s life.
But another dark cloud was looming over the life of Einstein and all of Europe. In 1914 it appeared that the world would soon be going to war.
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Albert Einstein hated war. He was a pacifist. He joined with other scientists in pleading with Europeans to start a league dedicated to peace. Einstein began to promote peace, tolerance, and justice. He was horrified by the thought of Europe being torn apart by war. But by the end of the summer of 1914, full-scale war raged. Injuries and death mounted on both sides. Einstein saw it as senseless evil.
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Einstein still worked on his new ideas about space, matter, and time. He wanted to show how gravity fit with his ideas. After eight years of work, he concluded that gravity was the product of space distorted by the presence of matter. In 1916 Einstein published his ideas as the “General Theory of Relativity.” This has been called his most important achievement.
Einstein said that a beam of light would be bent by gravity as it passed a star. The gravity of the star would cause the light beam to curve. In 1919
Einstein”s theory was tested. British astronomers photographed stars during a total eclipse of the sun. The photographs were compared with pictures of the same stars when the sun was far off. The different positions of the stars on the two different photographs proved that the sun deflects starlight.
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Einstein’s general theory of relativity helped explain such things as the curved shape of the universe. It also explained why the universe is expanding, what black holes are, and the “big bang”
theory of how the universe began.
In 1919 five months after his divorce to Mileva Einstein was final, Albert Einstein married Elsa Einstein Lowenthal. Einstein legally adopted Elsa’s two daughters. He enjoyed them immensely. Once again, Albert Einstein had a happy home. But he continued to work hard. Elsa tenderly cared for him when he was sick.
Einstein spent a lot of time reading philosophy and listening to music. He worked to discover what is called a unified field theory. Einstein sought to discover a single law that explains how all natural forces work.
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Einstein continued to see his sons. In 1920 he met fifteen-year-old Hans in Italy. They hiked for several days and Einstein shared fatherly advice.
In 1920 Albert Einstein was the subject of much publicity and
admiration. But in Germany, his work was sometimes criticized. Anti-semitism was a terrible problem in Germany.
After the end of World War I, it flared with increased energy. Some Germans, embittered by the fact that they lost World War I, blamed the Jews. They also blamed the Jews for terrible unemployment and inflation in
Germany. Einstein’s theories were ridiculed as “Jewish physics.”
In Germany, there was a small group of angry Germans promoting the idea that only pure “Aryan” Germans were worthy human beings. All non-Aryans, 38
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especially Jews, were belittled. The leader of this violent movement was a former house painter named Adolf Hitler. At that time, hardly anyone suspected the role Hitler would play in the future. But Einstein and other thoughtful men were disgusted and alarmed.
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In 1921 Chaim Weizmann, a
chemistry professor and leader of the Zionist movement asked for Einstein’s help in establishing Hebrew University in Palestine. The Zionists wanted to create a homeland for Jewish people.
Einstein accompanied Weizmann on a trip to the United States. The Einsteins arrived in New York in April. Reporters crowded about to interview him.
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Albert Einstein was invited to the White House to meet President Franklin Roosevelt. The family was greeted wherever they went with warmth and good will.
Columbia University gave him a medal and offered him a job. Einstein raised millions of dollars for Hebrew University.
Einstein gave a series of lectures at Princeton University. His lectures on the theory of relativity were delivered in German. An American professor then gave the same lecture in English. The lectures were published in a book, The Meaning of Relativity. Princeton gave him an honorary degree.
After the U.S. trip, Einstein traveled the world. He met with scientists and gave lectures. During a trip to Japan, he learned that he won the Nobel Prize in physics.
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Einstein demonstrates his formulas on a blackboard during a lecture.
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He was also awarded membership into all of the leading scientific academies.
Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in Germany. The Nazi Party was gaining in popularity. Even as his fame was growing around the world, Einstein’s belief in peace and a unified Europe was not popular at home. Prejudice against Jews made Germany a dangerous place for the Einstein family. Friends begged them to leave the troubled country.
In 1933 the Einsteins moved
permanently to the United States.
Einstein was invited to become a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. Einstein’s sister, Maja, also came to the United States. Hans Einstein, his son, found work in the United States as an engineer.
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The magnificent campus of Princeton University awed Albert Einstein. When he was asked how he wanted his office furnished, he asked for a desk, a chair, and a wastebasket where he could throw his mistakes.
The Einsteins were touched by the kindness of ordinary people. Children approached him everywhere he went.
They knew who he was. On Christmas Eve, groups of boys and girls sang carols for the Einsteins. Albert Einstein rushed outside and asked the children if he could get his violin and join them as they made the rounds of the
neighborhood. Wearing a leather jacket and stocking cap and playing his violin, Einstein became a caroler that night.
Albert Einstein decided to become a citizen of the United States.
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Albert Einstein taking part in a ceremony, making him a citizen of the United States.
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Albert Einstein continued to believe in pacifism, but the actions of Adolf Hitler were changing his mind. He was beginning to fear that nothing but military force would stop Hitler.
In the mid-1930s, the Einsteins lived a simple life. They had no car and few luxuries. Einstein gained all the joy he needed listening to music and walking in the woods. In 1936 Elsa Einstein became pale and tired. She refused to go 46
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to the hospital and nurses cared for her at home. Finally, she grew so ill that Albert Einstein had to hospitalize her. In December 1936 Elsa Einstein died.
Einstein was devastated by the loss of his wife. His loneliness was eased when his stepdaughter, Margot, came to live with him. Einstein and a colleague wrote a book, Evolution of Physics, which was published in 1937.
Late in 1939 some Hungarian
physicists with alarming news visited Albert Einstein. They believed Adolf Hitler’s scientists were close to producing an atomic bomb. They urged Einstein to use his great prestige to convince President Roosevelt to immediately begin work on an
American atomic bomb.
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Einstein was horrified about urging the development of such a terrible weapon. But he feared that if Hitler developed the bomb first, humanity would be in peril. So he wrote the letter to President Roosevelt describing how an atomic bomb could be produced.
President Roosevelt set American scientists to work on the project.
In October 1940 Albert Einstein took the oath of American citizenship. In December 1941 the United States was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, and Einstein’s adopted country was fighting for its life. Einstein did everything he could for the war effort. He urged Americans to buy war bonds, and he gave advice to the scientists working on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
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As the war raged on with mounting casualties, Einstein mourned. Germany surrendered in May 1945, but the United States was still fighting Japan.
Then, in the summer of 1945, Albert Einstein learned of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. He was told that over sixty thousand people had died in an atomic blast. Many more would die of radiation sickness.
Days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. About forty thousand lives were lost. Japan surrendered quickly, ending World War II, but Albert Einstein was heartsick. He said if he had known the atomic bomb would be used in this way by the United States he never would have written to President Roosevelt urging atomic research. Einstein tried to believe that he was not directly responsible for the bomb. But for Einstein, the devoted 49
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pacifist, the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki haunted him. He had always hated war. This was war at its absolute worst.
Einstein looked for a way to turn the pain he was feeling into something useful. He resolved to work diligently for peace so never again would atomic bombs be dropped on a city. He joined with other physicists to ask for a world government with a military force that would make sure World War III would never happen.
After World War II, the Cold War began between the non-communist world of the United States and her allies and the communist world of Russia and her allies. There was great fear of communism throughout the United 50
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States. Einstein’s campaign for peace led some to believe he was leaning toward communism.
Einstein was sorry that he was misunderstood. But he felt compelled to work for peace while he was still working on scientific problems.
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Albert Einstein had received degrees from universities all over the world. He had so many medals and honors that he lost count. The Einstein Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was named for him. Albert Einstein was thought to be one of the most important men in the world.
Einstein continued to think and kept his pad and pencil near for
mathematical equations. Einstein 52
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always refused to believe that anything in the universe happens purely by chance. He believed that laws govern everything, and he continued to struggle to find those laws.
Einstein campaigned on for world government and for a ban on atomic weapons. He felt sure that atomic weapons posed a threat to the human race.
In 1952 Einstein’s old friend and fellow scientist, Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, died. To his astonishment, Einstei
n was offered Weizmann’s job as president of Israel.
Some Israelis believed that having Einstein as their president would increase the influence of the new nation.
Einstein refused. He could not imagine himself as a politician.
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Now seventy-three, Einstein was often caught up in sadness. Many of his old friends had died. He still missed Elsa, his wife. He worried about the health of his beloved stepdaughter, Margot.
Albert Einstein worried about what he saw as moral decay in society. He loved science, but he believed that the struggle for justice and truth was more important than anything else. He said that people can find meaning in life only by promoting good in society.
In his old age, Einstein enjoyed the company of his wire-haired terrier, Chico, and young people. Children often joined him on walks, peppering him with questions. Like the children, Einstein continued to be delighted by the wonders of nature.
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Einstein greatly admired the spiritual leader of India, Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi, a tireless advocate of non-violence, had done so much for humanity. Gandhi, like Einstein, was a pacifist.
March 14, 1954 was Albert Einstein’s seventy-fifth birthday. Tributes poured in from around the world. When he heard the voices of praise, Einstein asked what he had done to deserve this.
A young student asked Einstein what he believed in, and he answered the brotherhood of man. Einstein described science without religion as lame, and religion without science as blind.
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Half a dozen years earlier, Albert Einstein found out he had a serious medical condition—a weak spot in one of his arteries. Einstein ignored this, and in April 1955 he became seriously ill with stomach pain, often a symptom of heart trouble. The family doctor sent for specialists who suggested surgery might be necessary. Einstein refused an operation saying he was too old. But he did agree to enter Princeton Hospital for a few days.