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85-678: In 1891, at the meeting of the Permanent Commission of the International Geodetic Association in Florence, Wilhelm Foerster referred to the discovery by Seth Carlo Chandler of the polar motion predicted by Leonhard Euler in 1765 and his impact on the determination latitudes . He proposed that the International Geodetic Association implement a systematic study of this important phenomenon. In 1895,

170-600: A Hanukkah celebration. Einstein next traveled to California, where he met Caltech president and Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan . His friendship with Millikan was "awkward", as Millikan "had a penchant for patriotic militarism", where Einstein was a pronounced pacifist . During an address to Caltech's students, Einstein noted that science was often inclined to do more harm than good. This aversion to war also led Einstein to befriend author Upton Sinclair and film star Charlie Chaplin , both noted for their pacifism. Carl Laemmle , head of Universal Studios , gave Einstein

255-536: A compass . This sparked his lifelong fascination with electromagnetism . He realized that "Something deeply hidden had to be behind things." Albert attended St. Peter's Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of five. When he was eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium , where he received advanced primary and then secondary school education. In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's company tendered for

340-399: A general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation . A cosmological paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole. In 1917, he wrote a paper which laid the foundations for the concepts of both laser and maser , and contained

425-512: A bill to parliament to extend British citizenship to Einstein, during which period Einstein made a number of public appearances describing the crisis brewing in Europe. In one of his speeches he denounced Germany's treatment of Jews, while at the same time he introduced a bill promoting Jewish citizenship in Palestine, as they were being denied citizenship elsewhere. In his speech he described Einstein as

510-679: A contract to install electric lighting in Munich, but without success—they lacked the capital that would have been required to update their technology from direct current to the more efficient, alternating current alternative. The failure of their bid forced them to sell their Munich factory and search for new opportunities elsewhere. The Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia , where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani . Einstein, then fifteen, stayed behind in Munich in order to finish his schooling. His father wanted him to study electrical engineering , but he

595-655: A diploma handed to him by King Alfonso XIII . (His Spanish trip also gave him a chance to meet a fellow Nobel laureate, the neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal .) From 1922 until 1932, with the exception of a few months in 1923 and 1924, Einstein was a member of the Geneva-based International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations , a group set up by the League to encourage scientists, artists, scholars, teachers and other people engaged in

680-463: A gravel sorter and an electric typewriter. His employers were pleased enough with his work to make his position permanent in 1903, although they did not think that he should be promoted until he had "fully mastered machine technology". It is conceivable that his labors at the patent office had a bearing on his development of his special theory of relativity. He arrived at his revolutionary ideas about space, time and light through thought experiments about

765-509: A man can be." In 1912, Einstein entered into a relationship with Elsa Löwenthal , who was both his first cousin on his mother's side and his second cousin on his father's. When Marić learned of his infidelity soon after moving to Berlin with him in April 1914, she returned to Zürich, taking Hans Albert and Eduard with her. Einstein and Marić were granted a divorce on 14 February 1919 on the grounds of having lived apart for five years. As part of

850-646: A platform from which to promote traditional Catholic doctrine. Einstein's former physics professor Hendrik Lorentz and the Polish chemist Marie Curie were also members of the committee. In March and April 1925, Einstein and his wife visited South America, where they spent about a week in Brazil, a week in Uruguay and a month in Argentina. Their tour was suggested by Jorge Duclout (1856–1927) and Mauricio Nirenstein (1877–1935) with

935-468: A preset schedule and later compared the data against the measurements taken by the sister stations. Economic difficulties and war caused the closings of some of the original stations, though a newer station was created in Uzbekistan after World War I . The data collected by the observatories over the years still has use to scientists, and has been applied to studies of polar motion, the physical properties of

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1020-515: A professorial salary but with no teaching duties to burden him. Their invitation was all the more appealing to him because Berlin happened to be the home of his latest girlfriend, Elsa Löwenthal. He duly joined the Academy on 24 July 1913, and moved into an apartment in the Berlin district of Dahlem on 1 April 1914. He was installed in his Humboldt University position shortly thereafter. The outbreak of

1105-635: A result of Germany having driven the Jews out, they had lowered their "technical standards" and put the Allies ' technology ahead of theirs. Einstein later contacted leaders of other nations, including Turkey's Prime Minister, İsmet İnönü , to whom he wrote in September 1933, requesting placement of unemployed German-Jewish scientists. As a result of Einstein's letter, Jewish invitees to Turkey eventually totaled over "1,000 saved individuals". Locker-Lampson also submitted

1190-609: A result, he became increasingly isolated from the mainstream modern physics . His intellectual achievements and originality made Einstein broadly synonymous with genius . In 1999, he was named Time 's Person of the Century . Albert Einstein was born in Ulm , in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879. His parents, secular Ashkenazi Jews , were Hermann Einstein ,

1275-406: A salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch . In 1880, the family moved to Munich 's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt , where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current . He often related a formative event from his youth, when he was sick in bed and his father brought him

1360-403: A short time after he had given the twelve year old Einstein a geometry textbook, the boy "had worked through the whole book. He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics ... Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow." Einstein recorded that he had "mastered integral and differential calculus " while still just fourteen. His love of algebra and geometry

1445-444: A subsequent letter to physicist and friend Max Born , who had already emigrated from Germany to England, Einstein wrote, "... I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise." After moving to the US, he described the book burnings as a "spontaneous emotional outburst" by those who "shun popular enlightenment", and "more than anything else in

1530-406: A system of six observatories located near the parallel of 39° 08' north latitude. The alignment of all six stations along the parallel helped the observatories to perform uniform data analysis. The original six observatories were located in: Twelve groups of stars were studied in the program, each group containing six pairs of stars. Each night, each station observed two of the star groups along

1615-596: A tour of his studio and introduced him to Chaplin. They had an instant rapport, with Chaplin inviting Einstein and his wife, Elsa, to his home for dinner. Chaplin said Einstein's outward persona, calm and gentle, seemed to conceal a "highly emotional temperament", from which came his "extraordinary intellectual energy". Chaplin's film City Lights was to premiere a few days later in Hollywood, and Chaplin invited Einstein and Elsa to join him as his special guests. Walter Isaacson , Einstein's biographer, described this as "one of

1700-452: A trove of information that would be beneficial to developments in physics later on. In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation , in which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons . With the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose , he laid

1785-478: A twenty year old Serbian , Mileva Marić . Over the next few years, the pair spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning about topics in physics that the polytechnic school's lectures did not cover. In his letters to Marić, Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more enjoyable than reading a textbook in solitude. Eventually the two students became not only friends but also lovers. Historians of physics are divided on

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1870-503: A visitor is the joyous, positive attitude to life ... The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic, and without envy." In 1922, Einstein's travels were to the old world rather than the new. He devoted six months to a tour of Asia that saw him speaking in Japan, Singapore and Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon ). After his first public lecture in Tokyo, he met Emperor Yoshihito and his wife at

1955-549: Is named after him, and so is the Wilhelm-Foerster-Sternwarte (Wilhelm Foerster Observatory; IAU code 544). Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( / ˈ aɪ n s t aɪ n / , EYEN -styne ; German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn] ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held as one of the most influential scientists . Best known for developing

2040-479: The ETH Zurich , to take up a chair in theoretical physics. His teaching activities there centred on thermodynamics and analytical mechanics, and his research interests included the molecular theory of heat, continuum mechanics and the development of a relativistic theory of gravitation. In his work on the latter topic, he was assisted by his friend, Marcel Grossmann, whose knowledge of the kind of mathematics required

2125-623: The First World War in July 1914 marked the beginning of Einstein's gradual estrangement from the nation of his birth. When the " Manifesto of the Ninety-Three " was published in October 1914—a document signed by a host of prominent German thinkers that justified Germany's belligerence—Einstein was one of the few German intellectuals to distance himself from it and sign the alternative, eirenic " Manifesto to

2210-614: The German Empire , for the determination of standards of measurement. In this capacity, he superintended the reorganization of the German system of weights and measures on the metric basis. He was elected president of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1891. In 1888–89, Foerster co-founded the Urania in Berlin, an institution for astronomical education that reached out to

2295-620: The Imperial Palace , with thousands of spectators thronging the streets in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. (In a letter to his sons, he wrote that Japanese people seemed to him to be generally modest, intelligent and considerate, and to have a true appreciation of art. But his picture of them in his diary was less flattering: "[the] intellectual needs of this nation seem to be weaker than their artistic ones – natural disposition?" His journal also contains views of China and India which were uncomplimentary. Of Chinese people, he wrote that "even

2380-455: The theory of relativity , Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics . His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc , which arises from special relativity , has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics . Born in the German Empire , Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, and at the age of seventeen he enrolled in

2465-474: The British High Commissioner, welcomed him with a degree of ceremony normally only accorded to a visiting head of state, including a cannon salute. One reception held in his honor was stormed by people determined to hear him speak: he told them that he was happy that Jews were beginning to be recognized as a force in the world. Einstein's decision to tour the eastern hemisphere in 1922 meant that he

2550-633: The British capital to meet several people prominent in British scientific, political or intellectual life, and to deliver a lecture at King's College . In July 1921, he published an essay, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", in which he sought to sketch the American character, much as had Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835). He wrote of his transatlantic hosts in highly approving terms: "What strikes

2635-542: The Earth, climatology and satellite tracking and navigation . The final six observatories were located, in order of Longitude (E to W), in: The ILS was renamed International Polar Motion Service (IPMS) in 1962. It was replaced when the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS) was established in 1987. Wilhelm Julius Foerster Wilhelm Julius Foerster (16 December 1832 – 18 January 1921)

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2720-602: The Europeans " instead. However, this expression of his doubts about German policy did not prevent him from being elected to a two-year term as president of the German Physical Society in 1916. When the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics opened its doors the following year—its foundation delayed because of the war—Einstein was appointed its first director, just as Planck and Nernst had promised. Einstein

2805-588: The German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship. The Nazis later sold his boat and converted his cottage into a Hitler Youth camp. In April 1933, Einstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions , including teaching at universities. Historian Gerald Holton describes how, with "virtually no audible protest being raised by their colleagues", thousands of Jewish scientists were suddenly forced to give up their university positions and their names were removed from

2890-704: The Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field". Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age, and soon acquired the mathematical expertise normally only found in a child several years his senior. He began teaching himself algebra, calculus and Euclidean geometry when he was twelve; he made such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday. A family tutor, Max Talmud , said that only

2975-743: The Nobel award, the Royal Society 's Copley Medal , was not hung around Einstein's neck until 1925. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1930. Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy in March 1933. His accomplishments in Berlin had included the completion of the general theory of relativity, proving the Einstein–de Haas effect , contributing to

3060-549: The Nobel citation displayed a degree of doubt even about the work on photoelectricity that it acknowledged: it did not assent to Einstein's notion of the particulate nature of light, which only won over the entire scientific community when S. N. Bose derived the Planck spectrum in 1924. That same year, Einstein was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Britain's closest equivalent of

3145-832: The Parish of Roughton, Norfolk . To protect Einstein, Locker-Lampson had two bodyguards watch over him; a photo of them carrying shotguns and guarding Einstein was published in the Daily Herald on 24 July 1933. Locker-Lampson took Einstein to meet Winston Churchill at his home, and later, Austen Chamberlain and former Prime Minister Lloyd George . Einstein asked them to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. British historian Martin Gilbert notes that Churchill responded immediately, and sent his friend, physicist Frederick Lindemann , to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities. Churchill later observed that as

3230-565: The Sun that took place on 29 May 1919 provided an opportunity to put his theory of gravitational lensing to the test, and observations performed by Sir Arthur Eddington yielded results that were consistent with his calculations. Eddington's work was reported at length in newspapers around the world. On 7 November 1919, for example, the leading British newspaper, The Times , printed a banner headline that read: "Revolution in Science ;– New Theory of

3315-655: The Swiss authorities deemed him medically unfit for military service. He found that Swiss schools too appeared to have no use for him, failing to offer him a teaching position despite the almost two years that he spent applying for one. Eventually it was with the help of Marcel Grossmann 's father that he secured a post in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office , as an assistant examiner – level III . Patent applications that landed on Einstein's desk for his evaluation included ideas for

3400-707: The United States in 1933. In 1935, she was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems. She died in December 1936. A volume of Einstein's letters released by Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006 added further names to the catalog of women with whom he was romantically involved. They included Margarete Lebach (a married Austrian), Estella Katzenellenbogen (the rich owner of a florist business), Toni Mendel (a wealthy Jewish widow) and Ethel Michanowski (a Berlin socialite), with whom he spent time and from whom he accepted gifts while married to Löwenthal. After being widowed, Einstein

3485-532: The United States, drawn back to the US by the offer of a two month research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology . Caltech supported him in his wish that he should not be exposed to quite as much attention from the media as he had experienced when visiting the US in 1921, and he therefore declined all the invitations to receive prizes or make speeches that his admirers poured down upon him. But he remained willing to allow his fans at least some of

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3570-528: The Universe ;– Newtonian Ideas Overthrown". With Eddington's eclipse observations widely reported not just in academic journals but by the popular press as well, Einstein became "perhaps the world's first celebrity scientist", a genius who had shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the seventeenth century. Einstein began his new life as an intellectual icon in America, where he arrived on 2 April 1921. He

3655-735: The University of Zurich, much admired by Alfred Kleiner, led to Zürich's luring him away from Bern with a newly created associate professorship. Promotion to a full professorship followed in April 1911, when he accepted a chair at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, a move which required him to become an Austrian citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . His time in Prague saw him producing eleven research papers. In July 1912, he returned to his alma mater ,

3740-789: The age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examination for the federal polytechnic school (later the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the test, but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics. On the advice of the polytechnic's principal, he completed his secondary education at the Argovian cantonal school (a gymnasium ) in Aarau , Switzerland, graduating in 1896. While lodging in Aarau with

3825-551: The care of his mother or in temporary confinement in an asylum. After her death, he was committed permanently to Burghölzli , the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zürich. Einstein graduated from the federal polytechnic school in 1900, duly certified as competent to teach mathematics and physics. His successful acquisition of Swiss citizenship in February 1901 was not followed by the usual sequel of conscription ;

3910-542: The children are spiritless and look obtuse... It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary". ) He was greeted with even greater enthusiasm on the last leg of his tour, in which he spent twelve days in Mandatory Palestine , newly entrusted to British rule by the League of Nations in the aftermath of the First World War. Sir Herbert Samuel ,

3995-836: The creation of the International Latitude Service was decided by the International Geodesic Association. Its central office was based in Potsdam and headed by Friedrich Robert Helmert . Regular observations began in 1899. After 1916, the operations of the International Latitudes Service continued under the aegis of the Reduced Geodetic Association among Neutral States presided by Raoul Gautier director of Geneva Observatory . The original International Latitude Observatories were

4080-491: The curriculum, allotting him a top grade of 6 for history, physics, algebra, geometry, and descriptive geometry. At seventeen, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the federal polytechnic school. Marie Winteler, a year older than him, took up a teaching post in Olsberg , Switzerland. The five other polytechnic school freshmen following the same course as Einstein included just one woman,

4165-405: The divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if he were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give the money that he received to Marić; he won the prize two years later. Einstein married Löwenthal in 1919. In 1923, he began a relationship with a secretary named Betty Neumann, the niece of his close friend Hans Mühsam. Löwenthal nevertheless remained loyal to him, accompanying him when he emigrated to

4250-469: The fall of 1915, his reimagining of the mathematics of gravitation in terms of Riemannian geometry was complete, and he applied his new theory not just to the behavior of the Sun as a gravitational lens but also to another astronomical phenomenon, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury (a slow drift in the point in Mercury's elliptical orbit at which it approaches the Sun most closely). A total eclipse of

4335-550: The family of Jost Winteler , he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. (His sister, Maja , later married Winteler's son Paul. ) In January 1896, with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order to avoid conscription into military service . The Matura (graduation for the successful completion of higher secondary schooling), awarded to him in September 1896, acknowledged him to have performed well across most of

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4420-422: The field exists. In 1911, he used the principle to estimate the amount by which a ray of light from a distant star would be bent by the gravitational pull of the Sun as it passed close to the Sun's photosphere (that is, the Sun's apparent surface). He reworked his calculation in 1913, having now found a way to model gravitation with the Riemann curvature tensor of a non-Euclidean four-dimensional spacetime . By

4505-421: The first co-discovery on record. He became professor of astronomy at the University of Berlin in 1863. After Encke's death in 1865, he became director of the Berlin Observatory and served in this position until 1904. Foerster also taught the popular geologist Alfred Wegener astronomy. In 1868 he was appointed director of the commission established by the North German Confederation , and continued from 1871 by

4590-470: The groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics . For much of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that proved ultimately unsuccessful. First, he advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's picture of the world, objecting that "God does not play dice". Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism . As

4675-424: The idea of nuclear weapons with great dismay. In 1905, he published four groundbreaking papers , sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year). These papers outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion , introduced his special theory of relativity, and demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass and energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he proposed

4760-481: The life of the mind to work more closely with their counterparts in other countries. He was appointed as a German delegate rather than as a representative of Switzerland because of the machinations of two Catholic activists, Oskar Halecki and Giuseppe Motta . By persuading Secretary General Eric Drummond to deny Einstein the place on the committee reserved for a Swiss thinker, they created an opening for Gonzague de Reynold , who used his League of Nations position as

4845-460: The mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school . In 1903, he secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office . In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich . In 1914, he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin , becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1917. In 1933, while Einstein

4930-401: The most memorable scenes in the new era of celebrity". Chaplin visited Einstein at his home on a later trip to Berlin and recalled his "modest little flat" and the piano at which he had begun writing his theory. Chaplin speculated that it was "possibly used as kindling wood by the Nazis". In February 1933, while on a visit to the United States, Einstein knew he could not return to Germany with

5015-407: The outbreak of World War I . While he was among the 93 German intellectuals in signing the Aufruf an die Kulturwelt manifesto in support of the war, Foerster was one of only four intellectuals to sign the Aufruf an die Europäer counter-manifesto (the others were Albert Einstein , the philosopher Otto Buek , and its author, the physiologist Georg Friedrich Nicolai ). The asteroid 6771 Foerster

5100-424: The phenomena of capillarity"), in which he proposed a model of intermolecular attraction that he afterwards disavowed as worthless, was published in the journal Annalen der Physik in 1901. His 24-page doctoral dissertation also addressed a topic in molecular physics. Titled "Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen" ("A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions") and dedicated to his friend Marcel Grossman, it

5185-399: The president of Columbia University , who described Einstein as "the ruling monarch of the mind". Harry Emerson Fosdick , pastor at New York's Riverside Church , gave Einstein a tour of the church and showed him a full-size statue that the church made of Einstein, standing at the entrance. Also during his stay in New York, he joined a crowd of 15,000 people at Madison Square Garden during

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5270-409: The quantum theory of radiation, and the development of Bose–Einstein statistics . In 1907, Einstein reached a milestone on his long journey from his special theory of relativity to a new idea of gravitation with the formulation of his equivalence principle , which asserts that an observer in an infinitesimally small box falling freely in a gravitational field would be unable to find any evidence that

5355-427: The question of the extent to which Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications. There is at least some evidence that he was influenced by her scientific ideas, but there are scholars who doubt whether her impact on his thought was of any great significance at all. Correspondence between Einstein and Marić, discovered and published in 1987, revealed that in early 1902, while Marić

5440-399: The rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler . While at American universities in early 1933, he undertook his third two-month visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In February and March 1933, the Gestapo repeatedly raided his family's apartment in Berlin. He and his wife Elsa returned to Europe in March, and during

5525-420: The rolls of institutions where they were employed. A month later, Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burnings , with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming, "Jewish intellectualism is dead." One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged", offering a $ 5,000 bounty on his head. In

5610-405: The support of several Argentine scholars, including Julio Rey Pastor , Jakob Laub , and Leopoldo Lugones . and was financed primarily by the Council of the University of Buenos Aires and the Asociación Hebraica Argentina (Argentine Hebraic Association) with a smaller contribution from the Argentine-Germanic Cultural Institution. In December 1930, Einstein began another significant sojourn in

5695-427: The time with him that they requested. After arriving in New York City, Einstein was taken to various places and events, including Chinatown , a lunch with the editors of The New York Times , and a performance of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera , where he was cheered by the audience on his arrival. During the days following, he was given the keys to the city by Mayor Jimmy Walker and met Nicholas Murray Butler ,

5780-805: The transmission of signals and the synchronization of clocks, matters which also figured in some of the inventions submitted to him for assessment. In 1902, Einstein and some friends whom he had met in Bern formed a group that held regular meetings to discuss science and philosophy. Their choice of a name for their club, the Olympia Academy , was an ironic comment upon its far from Olympian status. Sometimes they were joined by Marić, who limited her participation in their proceedings to careful listening. The thinkers whose works they reflected upon included Henri Poincaré , Ernst Mach and David Hume , all of whom significantly influenced Einstein's own subsequent ideas and beliefs. Einstein's first paper, "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen" ("Conclusions drawn from

5865-408: The trip, they learned that the German Reichstag had passed the Enabling Act on 23 March, transforming Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship, and that they would not be able to proceed to Berlin. Later on, they heard that their cottage had been raided by the Nazis and Einstein's personal sailboat confiscated. Upon landing in Antwerp , Belgium on 28 March, Einstein immediately went to

5950-439: The wider public. Foerster continued to be interested in popularizing the natural sciences. In 1892, he assisted in the founding of the German Society for Ethical Culture (GSEC; German : Deutsche Gesellschaft für ethische Kultur ), in which Albert Einstein also participated. He was also a member of the German Peace Society ( German : Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft ), and resisted the rise in nationalism brought about by

6035-401: The world, fear the influence of men of intellectual independence". Einstein was now without a permanent home, unsure where he would live and work, and equally worried about the fate of countless other scientists still in Germany. Aided by the Academic Assistance Council , founded in April 1933 by British Liberal politician William Beveridge to help academics escape Nazi persecution, Einstein

6120-472: The year being celebrated as an annus mirabilis for physics akin to 1666 (the year in which Isaac Newton experienced his greatest epiphanies). The publications deeply impressed Einstein's contemporaries. Einstein's sabbatical as a civil servant approached its end in 1908, when he secured a junior teaching position at the University of Bern . In 1909, a lecture on relativistic electrodynamics that he gave at

6205-419: Was a German astronomer . His name can also be written Förster , but is usually written "Foerster" even in most German sources where 'ö' is otherwise used in the text. A native of Grünberg , Silesia , he studied at the University of Berlin and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , and worked as Johann Franz Encke 's assistant. In 1860, he co-discovered asteroid 62 Erato with Oskar Lesser ,

6290-604: Was a fractious pupil who found the Gymnasium's regimen and teaching methods far from congenial. He later wrote that the school's policy of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity. At the end of December 1894, a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, and he joined his family in Pavia. While in Italy as a teenager, he wrote an essay entitled "On

6375-516: Was able to leave Germany. He rented a house in De Haan, Belgium, where he lived for a few months. In late July 1933, he visited England for about six weeks at the invitation of the British Member of Parliament Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson , who had become friends with him in the preceding years. Locker-Lampson invited him to stay near his Cromer home in a secluded wooden cabin on Roughton Heath in

6460-406: Was born in Bern , Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born in Zürich in July 1910. In letters that Einstein wrote to Marie Winteler in the months before Eduard's arrival, he described his love for his wife as "misguided" and mourned the "missed life" that he imagined he would have enjoyed if he had married Winteler instead: "I think of you in heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy as only

6545-515: Was briefly in a relationship with Margarita Konenkova, thought by some to be a Russian spy; her husband, the Russian sculptor Sergei Konenkov , created the bronze bust of Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Following an episode of acute mental illness at about the age of twenty, Einstein's son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia . He spent the remainder of his life either in

6630-401: Was completed on 30 April 1905 and approved by Professor Alfred Kleiner of the University of Zurich three months later. (Einstein was formally awarded his PhD on 15 January 1906.) Four other pieces of work that Einstein completed in 1905— his famous papers on the photoelectric effect , Brownian motion , his special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy —have led to

6715-540: Was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1920, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1921 . In 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". At this point some physicists still regarded the general theory of relativity skeptically, and

6800-557: Was greater than his own. In the spring of 1913, two German visitors, Max Planck and Walther Nernst , called upon Einstein in Zürich in the hope of persuading him to relocate to Berlin. They offered him membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , the directorship of the planned Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and a chair at the Humboldt University of Berlin that would allow him to pursue his research supported by

6885-496: Was so great that at twelve, he was already confident that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure". At thirteen, when his range of enthusiasms had broadened to include music and philosophy, Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant 's Critique of Pure Reason . Kant became his favorite philosopher; according to Talmud, "At the time he was still a child, only thirteen years old, yet Kant's works, incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, seemed to be clear to him." In 1895, at

6970-476: Was unable to go to Stockholm in the December of that year to participate in the Nobel prize ceremony. His place at the traditional Nobel banquet was taken by a German diplomat, who gave a speech praising him not only as a physicist but also as a campaigner for peace. A two-week visit to Spain that he undertook in 1923 saw him collecting another award, a membership of the Spanish Academy of Sciences signified by

7055-500: Was visiting her parents in Novi Sad , she gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl . When Marić returned to Switzerland it was without the child, whose fate is uncertain. A letter of Einstein's that he wrote in September 1903 suggests that the girl was either given up for adoption or died of scarlet fever in infancy. Einstein and Marić married in January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert

7140-498: Was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews, Einstein decided to remain in the US. On the eve of World War II , he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommended that the US begin similar research , though he generally viewed

7225-597: Was welcomed to New York City by Mayor John Francis Hylan , and then spent three weeks giving lectures and attending receptions. He spoke several times at Columbia University and Princeton , and in Washington, he visited the White House with representatives of the National Academy of Sciences . He returned to Europe via London, where he was the guest of the philosopher and statesman Viscount Haldane . He used his time in

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