Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Wόrttemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST 'THE JEW'
1920
Einstein's lecture in Berlin was disrupted by demonstrations, which although officially denied, were almost certainly anti-Jewish.
RENOWNED SCIENTIST
1909
He was recognized as a leading scientific thinker and he resigned from the patent office.
1911
He was appointed as a full time professor at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. It was a very significant year for Einstein. This was for the first experimental evidence in favor of Einstein's theory.
1912
Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossman. He called his new work the general theory of relativity.
He moved from Prague to Zurich to take up a chair at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich.
Nova's multimedia presentation on the life of Albert Einstein
The Biography of Albert Einstein
Learn about the life and times of Albert Einstein. Chapters: Formative Years, The Great Works, E=mc², World Fame, Public Concerns, Quantum and Cosmos, The Nuclear Age, Science and Philosophy, An Essay: Albert Einstein - The World As I See It.
Albert Einstein in Princeton
"Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) first gained worldwide prominence in 1919, when British astronomers verified predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity through measurements taken during a total eclipse. Einstein's theories expanded upon, and in some cases refuted, universal laws formulated by Newton in the late seventeenth century."
QUOTATIONS
Peace can't be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
If the facts don't fit the theory, then change the facts.
Unquestioning respect for authority, is the greatest enemy of truth.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
True religion is real living; living with all ones soul, all ones goodness and righteousness.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
I do not contemplate heaven and hell, you see I have friends in both places.
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
This world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who stand by and let them.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
I want to know the thoughts of God, the rest are details.
I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not certain about the universe.
An education is what you remember, after you have forgotten everything that you've learned.
Dancers are the athletes of God
If success is equal to A, then A=x+y+z. X=play, Y=work, Z= to keeping your mouth shut.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
We want peace and we realize that our future development depends on peace.
The search and striving for truth and knowledge is one of the highest of man's qualities.
Circumstances are stronger than men.
Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has proved itself creative.
The time is terribly short. We must act now if we are to act at all.
The state considers it necessary to educate its citizens for the possibilities of war, an "education" not only corrupting to the soul and spirit of the young, but also affecting the mentality of adults.
By painful experience we have learnt that rational thinking does not suffice to solve the problems of our social life.
What task could possibly be more important for us? What social aim could be closer to our hearts? We must build spiritual and scientific bridges linking the nations of the world. We must overcome the horrible obstacles of national frontiers.
If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must keep clearly before us what is at stake, and what we owe to that freedom which ancestors have won for us after hard struggles.
Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister. There would be no comfortable houses for the mass of people, no railways, no wireless, no protection against epidemics, no cheap books, no culture and no enjoyment of art for all.
Distress and evil produce new distress and new evil.
I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory, and obscure, and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulae.
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life.
Only the existence of these varied frequently conflicting striving accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well being of society.
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. Science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism, but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.
The spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path of genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.
In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent, in accord with their personal characteristics and abilities.
If the second goal, that is the possibility of the spiritual development of all individuals; is to be secured, a second kind of outward freedom is necessary. Man should not have to work for the achievement of the necessities of life to such an extent that he has neither time nor strength for personal activities.
It is this freedom of the spirit, which consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and prejudices as well as from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy objective for the individual.
Schools may interfere with the development of inward freedom through authoritarian influences and through imposing on young people excessive spiritual burdens; on the other hand schools may favor thought. Only if outward and inner freedom are constantly and consciously persuaded is there a possibility of spiritual development and perfection, and thus of improving man's outward and inner life.
We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant. We all are ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self-preservation and that of the race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces, which rule the individual's instinct for self-preservation.
Thought is the organization factor in man, interested between the casual primary instincts and the resulting actions. In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
By spiritualizing of the emotions and of thought man owes the most subtle and refined pleasures of which he is capable.
In comparison with the other elementary instincts and impulses, the emotions of love, of pity and of friendship are too weak and too exempted to lead to a tolerable state of human society.
For all men, may have had much to do with the development of mankind's religious culture from polytheism to monotheism.
For, looked at from a simple human point of view, moral conduct does not mean merely a stern demand to renounce some of the desired joys of life, but rather a sociable interest in a happier lot for all men.
The sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.
If the longing for the achievement of the goal is powerfully alive within us, then shall we not lack the strength to find the means for reaching the goal and for translating it into deeds.
A person who is religiously enlightened, appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he brings because of their super-personal value.
School should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the common wealth.
Personalities are not formed by what is heard and said, but by labor and activity.
Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive; but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community. Therefore the school and the teacher must guard against employing the easy method of creating individual ambition, in order to induce the pupils to diligent work.
The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
The most important motive for work in the school and in life is the pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play, the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society; it is that education which in the main is founded upon the desire for successful activity and acknowledgement.
For this reason I am not at all anxious to take sides in the struggle between the followers of the classical philological historical education and the education more devoted to natural science.
If a person masters the fundamentals of his subject, and has learned to think and work independently, he will surely find his way, and beside will better be able to adopt himself to progress and changes than the person whose training principally consists in the acquiring of detailed knowledge.
In contrast to psychology, physics treats directly only of sense experiences and of the "understanding" of their connection. But even the concept of the "real external world" of everyday thinking rests exclusively on sense impressions.
The connection of the elementary concepts of everyday thinking with complexes of sense experiences, can only be comprehended intuitively, and it is unadaptable to scientifically logical fixation.
We now realize; with special clarity, how much in error are those theorists who believe that theory comes inductively from experiences. Even the great Newton could not free himself from this error ('Hypothesis non fingo').
Logical thinking is necessarily deductive, it is based upon hypothetical concepts and axioms.
It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving, and also every man may draw comfort from Lessing's fine saying, that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.
When language becomes thus partially independent from the background of impressions, a greater inner coherence is gained.
Thus, we may conclude that the mental development of the individual and his way of forming concepts depend to a high degree upon language. This makes us realize what extent the same language means the same mentality. In this sense thinking and language are linked together.
The scientific way of thinking has a further characteristic. The concepts, which it uses to build up its coherent systems, are not expressing emotions.
For the scientist, there is only "being" but no wishing, no valuing, no good, no evil, no goal. As long as we remain within the realm of science proper, we can never meet with a sentence of the type : "Thou shalt not lie.
Ethical directives can be made rational and coherent by logical thinking and empirical knowledge.
The rule "Thou shalt not lie" has been traced back to the demands. "Human life shall be preserved" and Pain and Sorrow shall be lessened as much as possible.
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
A man who has striven in vain to attain equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding, it is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days.
The social pattern and inter-relationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human beings which are not dictated by biological necessities.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say, that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.
Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment, an "army of unemployed" almost always exists.
Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals.
An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
There is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system, which would be oriented toward social goals.
The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellowmen in place of the glorification of power of, and success in, our present society.
We, but rarely reflect how relatively small as compared with the powerful influence of tradition is the influence of our conscious thought upon our conduct and convictions.
It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity and shape our lives accordingly.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Scientific research can register at least one great and important gain: confidence that human thought is dependable and natural law universal.
It showed me that a sense of responsibility and initiative is at work in the young generation of this country. These students are aware of the fact that the destiny of the new generation will be decided in these few years. They are determined to influence the pace of events within the framework of their possibilities.
A permanent peace cannot be prepared by threats but only by the honest attempt to create mutual trust.
Moral authority alone is an inadequate means of searching the cease.
I have tried; however, to present the problem with a view to a sufficiently swift realization that will allow us to avoid difficulties greater than those already inherent in the nature of such a task.
The work of statesmen can succeed only if they are backed by the serious and determined will of the people.
I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
I experienced that phase- when a young man thinks only about the trivialities of personal existence, and talks like his fellows and behaves like them. Only with difficulty can one see what is really behind such a conventional mask. For owing to habit and speech his real personality is, as it were wrapped in cotton wool.
We must revolutionize our thinking, revolutionize our actions and must have the courage to revolutionize relations among the nations of the world.
We feel it our duty to draw attention to this, in order to clarify so important a question as to how most effectively to work for peace. It is from this point of view that the idea of a "world government" which Dr. Einstein has, of late, been sponsoring must be considered.
Further, the rapid spread of the movement for national independence in the colonies and dependencies has awakened the national consciousness of hundreds of millions of people who do not desire to remain in the status of slaves any longer.
To act intelligently in human affairs is only possible if an attempt is made to understand the thoughts, motives, and apprehensions of one's opponent so fully that one can see the world through his eyes.
RETURN TO GERMANY
1914
He returned to Germany. He had an impressive offer, which was a research position in the Prussian Academy of Sciences together with a chair at the University of Berlin. He was also offered the directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin, which was to be established.
1915
Published the definitive version of general theory. Before this publication he lectured on general relativity at Gottingen and he wrote - "To my great joy, I completely succeeded in convincing Hilbert and Klein."
1919
British eclipse expeditions confirmed his predictions, Einstein was idolized by the popular press. The London Times ran the headline on 7th November 1919 : Revolution in science - New theory of the universe : Newtonian ideas overthrown, and so on.
