Albert Einstein

This man had 1,427 pages on the FBI record, had his brain removed, received a Nobel Prize, proved Newton wrong, had six nationalities and had major bed head. Shocking, isn’t it? Well, this man—believe it or not—is Albert Einstein.

Born March 14, 1879, in Swabia, Germany, Albert Einstein was no model child; he began to talk only when he was three. His parents, Hermann and Pauline, told him a new toy was coming, so when he saw his sister Maja, he said, “Where are the wheels?” Two years later, when his dad gave him a compass, he experienced science for the first time. He was captivated by the sense that no matter what, the compass always pointed North. Still enchanted by the compass, he first went to St. Peter’s School, where his teachers were militaristic and strict. He hated it. The problem was no different when he went to his high school, the Luitpold Gymnasium. He dropped out at the age of 15 and went to Switzerland to the Swiss Polytechnic but failed the entrance exam. For the next three years, he attended a high school named Aarau in the Alps. When he graduated, he entered the Swiss Polytechnic. There, he met Mileva Maric, his future wife. Soon, he married her. Only three people attended the wedding.

Albert tried everywhere for a job as a professor, but everywhere, they declined him. Nine years after his graduation at the Poly, his friend Marcel Grossman gave him a job offer. Albert got the chance to become a patent officer in Bern, Switzerland. Myth is that he approved the patent for the Toblerone chocolate bar. When working in the patent office, his first scientific paper was sent to the Annalen der Physik, or the Annals of Physics. Nobody thought much of his paper, but in 1905 - Einstein’s so called “Miracle Year”, in which a string of theories, including his paper on the world-famous Theory of Relativity, he published a paper on the photoelectric effect, which I am NOT going to go through — lots of scientists listened to him. Finally, the tide of popularity was going with him. Soon, he found the Special Theory of Relativity, and a few years later, the General Theory of Relativity. Finally, he became a professor at the University of Zurich, then the University of Prague. Soon, he landed a spot on his alma mater, the Swiss Polytechnic. In 1922, he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. Later, he was a continent-wide famous professor and he accepted an invitation at the University of Berlin. However, in 1933, Adolf Hitler took power and soon after, Einstein left Germany to America.

In 1933, Albert went to Princeton University. Seven years later, he became an American citizen. He started work on a Theory of Everything, which was a theory that would include nature, atoms, not just physics, everything! He failed to complete the theory, however, for he died before he could finish it. Just after he started work on the theory, Israel had been created and Einstein was asked to become the president of the country! Einstein did not accept, for he had other things to do. World War II was looming, and Einstein realized that Germany might create an atomic bomb. He personally wrote to Franklin Roosevelt about the ongoing threat. Two days later, the president took action, creating the Manhattan Project. At the end of the war, Einstein realized that Germany was in no state to build a bomb of nuclear magnitude, especially when all of the losing side’s factories were destroyed or damaged. He wrote again to the White House to stop the bomb from being dropped, but FDR was dead already. The two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Einstein was horrified. Ten years after the dropping of the two bombs, he had internal bleeding. On 18 April, 1955, at the age of 73, at Princeton Hospital, Albert Einstein died of a ruptured blood vessel. Beside him were his unfinished calculations.

Albert Einstein was — and still is — one of the world’s most famous scientists. To survive the Nazis and discover the theory of relativity is a great accomplishment indeed. He still has a great influence to modern science.