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Essay Name       : 505.txt 
Uploader         : Graem Nelson
Email Address    : 
Language         : English
Subject          : Social Studies
Title            : Albert Einstein
Grade            : 84%
School System    : High School(grade 12)
Country          : Canada
Author Comments  : Put together very well.
Teacher Comments : None(I don't think)
Date             : Nov.2/95
Site found at    : Search
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	Albert Einstein, was a German-born American physicist and Nobel prize winner,
best known as the creator of the special and general theories of relativity. He is perhaps the
most well-known scientist of the 20th century.  Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14,
1879, and spent his youth in Munich, where his family owned a small shop that
manufactured electric machinery. He did not talk until the age of three, but even as a youth
he showed about nature and an ability to understand difficult mathematical concepts.
Einstein hated the dull and unimaginative spirit of school in Munich. When repeated
business failure led the family to leave Germany for Milan, Italy, Einstein, who was then
15 years old, used the opportunity to withdraw from the school. He spent a year with his
parents in Milan, and when it became clear that he would have to make his own way in the
world, he finished secondary school in Arrau, Switzerland, and entered the Swiss National
Polytechnic in Zürich. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction there. He often cut
classes and used the time to study physics on his own or to play his violin. He passed his
examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying the notes of a classmate. His professors
did not think highly of him and would not recommend him for a university position.
For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902 he secured a
position as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. In 1903 he married Mileva
Mariç, who had been his classmate at the polytechnic. They had two sons but eventually
divorced. Einstein later remarried.

                              	The theory of relativity was developed in the early 20th century,
which originally attempted to account for certain differences in the concept of relative
motion, but which in its alterations has developed into one of the most important basic
concepts in physical science. The theory of relativity, developed mainly by Albert
Einstein.

	The difficulty that others had with Einstein's work was not because it was too
mathematically complex or technically obscure; the problem resulted, rather, from
Einstein's beliefs about the nature of good theories and the relationship between experiment
and theory. Although he maintained that the only source of knowledge is experience, he
also believed that scientific theories are the free creations of a finely tuned physical
intuition and that the foundation on which theories are based cannot be connected logically
to experiment.  Few of his colleges though could not even understand the theories that
Einstein had come up with, and therefore could not support them.  Einstein did have some
important supporters, however. His first early patron was the German physicist Max
Planck. Einstein remained at the patent office for four years after his name began to rise
within the physics community.

	In 1939 after realizing the possible dangers in the newly developed theory of
relativity, Einstein collaborated with several other physicists in writing a letter to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out the possibility of making an atomic bomb and
the likelihood that the German government was embarking on such a course. The letter,
which bore only Einstein's signature, helped lend urgency to efforts in the U.S. to build the
atomic bomb, but Einstein himself played no role in the work and knew nothing about it at
the time.  After the war, Einstein was active in the cause of international disarmament and
world government. He continued his active support of Zionism but declined the offer made
by leaders of the state of Israel to become president of that country. In the U.S. during the
late 1940s and early '50s he spoke out on the need for the nation's intellectuals to make any
sacrifice necessary to preserve political freedom. Einstein died in Princeton on April 18,
1955.

	Although Einstein gave much of himself to political and social causes, science
always came first, because, he often said, only the discovery of the nature of the universe
would have lasting meaning. 

 
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