Essay/Term paper: Albert einstein

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Biography Term Papers

ALBERT EINSTEIN


Albert Einstein was born in Germany on March 14, 1879.As
a kid he had trouble learning to speak. His parents thought that
he might be mentally retarded. He was not smart in school. He
suffered under the learning methods that they used in the
schools of Germany at that time so he was never able to finish
his studies. In 1894 his father's business had failed and the
family moved to Milan, Italy. Einstein who had grown interested
in science, went to Zurich, Switzerland, to enter a famous
technical school. There his ability in mathematics and physics
began to show.
When Einstein was graduated in 1900 he was unable to get a
teaching appointment at a university. Instead he got a clerical
job in the patent office at Bern, Switzerland. It was not what
he wanted but it would give him leisure for studying and
thinking. While over there he wrote scientific papers. Einstein
submitted one of his scientific papers to the University of Zurich
to obtain a Ph.D. degree in 1905. In 1908 he sent a second
paper to the University of Bern and became lecturer there. The
next year Einstein received a regular appointment as associate
professor of physics at the University of Zurich. By 1909,
Einstein was recognized throughout Europe as a leading
scientific thinker. In 1909 the fame that resulted from his
theories got Einstein a job at the University of Prague, and in
1913 he was appointed director of a new research institution
opened in Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm Physics Institute.
In 1915, during World War 1, Einstein published a paper
that extended his theories. He put forth new views on the
nature of gravitation. Newton's theories he said were not
accurate enough. Einstein's theories seemed to explain the slow
rotation of the entire orbit of the planet Mercury, which
Newton's theories did not explain. Einstein's theories also
predicted that light rays passing near the sun would be bent out
of a straight line. When this was verified at the eclipse of 1919,
Einstein was instantly accepted as the great scientific thinker
since Newton.
By now Germany had fallen in the hands of Adolf Hitler and
his Nazis. Albert Einstein was Jewish. In 1933 when the Nazis
came to power, Einstein happened to be in California. He did
not return to Germany. He went to Belgium instead. The Nazis
confiscated his possessions, publicly burned his writings, and
expelled him from all German scientific societies. Einstein came
back to the United States and became a citizen.
The atomic bomb is an explosive device that depends upon
the release of energy in a nuclear reaction known as FISSION,
which is the splitting of atomic nuclei. Einstein sent a letter to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out that atomic bombs
are possible and that enemy nations must be allowed to make
them first.
Roosevelt agreed with Einstein and funded the Manhattan
Project.
On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died. To his dying day,
he urged the world to come to some agreement that would
make nuclear wars forever impossible.