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The Great Scientist, Albert Einstein

You may know him as Albert Einstein, one of the smartest scientists who’s ever lived.  But did you know that he failed his entrance exam to the Polytechnic school?  Or that he founded the theory of relativity?  Or that he wasn’t afraid of death?  There’s much more to him than one of the smartest scientists in the world.

This future genius was born on March 14, 1879; and didn’t start talking until he was four.  Before that, his parents took him to many doctors, but they found nothing wrong with him.  It was just his nature.  At ages 5, he encountered the compass and was fascinated by the invisible forces, which pulled the needle.  At age 12, he came across a geometry book, which he read it over and over again.  These two events marked the beginning of his still undiscovered genius.

As Albert grew up, he found life more difficult. After dropping out of Luitpold Gymnasium and failing much of his entrance exam to Swiss Federal Polytechnic School, he was finally admitted into the same school because of his exceptional marks in mathematics and physics.  He liked to study alone and cut classes and earned the hatred of some of his teachers.  He soon learned that he was a major target for the Nazis.  His pictures were posted on magazine covers with the words, “Not Yet Hanged” written beneath.

Life brightened for him as he reached 1905, the “miracle year.”   He published four papers in one of the best known physics journals, Annalen der Physik, and discovered the formula, E=mc2.  This suggested that tiny particles of matter could be transformed into large amounts of energy.  With the help of (possibly the most significant physicist of this generation and the founder of quantum theory) Max Planck, Einstein was became known to the world for his unusually smart brain.

He was offered countless positions in the best schools including the University of Zurich, the University of Prague, the University of Berlin, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.  As more people started noticing him, his bond with Mileva Maric, his wife, got weaker.  It was not surprised that Einstein and Maric soon got a divorce.  Time passed, and the popular scientist started to fall in love with his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal.  

In November 1915, Einstein finished the theory of relativity. This was confirmed by the Astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington during the solar eclipse of 1919.  Two years later, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics.  The theory of relativity is a complicated explanation, but very simply put, time is relative. For example, a man places two poles near a train track and uses a double-sided mirror to see both poles. When lightning strikes the poles, he sees it striking on both poles at the same time. On the other hand, a woman sitting on a train in this same scenario won’t see the lightning striking the poles simultaneously. Instead, she sees lightning striking one pole first followed by the other.

In his last years, Albert Einstein is known as an accomplished man.  Before his death, he was taken to the University Medical Center at Princeton for cures, but refused to have surgery.  He confidently spoke these words the day before his death, “I want to go when I want.  It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.  I have done my share, it is time to go.  I will do it elegantly.”  The next morning, on April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein left planet Earth peacefully at the age of 76.