Three years after he started work at the patent-office, he sent his second paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" to the University of Bern, where he soon became a lecturer. This is when the Theory of Relativity was born.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity." – Albert Einstein.
At the time Einstein knew that, according to Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's theory of electrons, the mass of an electron increased as the velocity of the electron approached the velocity of light. Einstein also knew that the electron theory, based on Maxwell's equations, carried along with it the assumption of a luminiferous ether, but that attempts to detect the physical properties of the ether had not succeeded. Einstein realised that the equations describing the motion of an electron in fact could describe the nonaccelerated motion of any particle or any suitably defined rigid body. He based his new kinematics on a reinterpretation of the classical principle of relativity, that the laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all frames of reference, as required by the classical Maxwellian theory. Einstein abandoned the hypothesis of the ether, for it played no role in his kinematics or in his reinterpretation of Lorentz's theory of electrons. As a consequence of his theory Einstein recovered the phenomenon of time dilatation, wherein time, analogous to length and mass, is a function of the velocity of a frame of reference. Later in 1905, Einstein applied his theory and elaborated how mass and energy were the same, and therefore formulated the equation e=mc2. The next year, Einstein received a regular appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich.
Albert Einstein as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, in 1905.
The third of Einstein's seminal papers, "Motion of Suspended Particles in the Kinetic Theory" of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics, a field of study that had been elaborated by, among others, Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Unaware of Gibbs' contributions, Einstein extended Boltzmann's work and calculated the average trajectory of a microscopic particle buffeted by random collisions with molecules in a fluid or in a gas. Einstein observed that his calculations could account for brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of pollen in fluids, which had been noted by the British botanist Robert Brown. Einstein's paper provided convincing evidence for the physical existence of atom-sized molecules, which had already received much theoretical discussion. His results were independently discovered by the Polish physicist Marian von Smoluchowski and later elaborated by the French physicist Jean Perrin. The next year, Einstein received a regular appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich.
In 1909, Einstein was recognized throughout German-speaking Europe as a leading scientific thinker. In 1911, Einstein moved to the German-speaking university at Prague, and in 1912 he returned to the Swiss National Polytechnic in Zürich. Finally, by 1914 he advanced to the most prestigious and best-paying post that a theoretical physicist could hold in central Europe, professor at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft Institute for physics in Berlin.
Einstein’s family moved to Berlin with Einstein in April. Mileva had a child by him. They later married. Mileva helped Albert refine many of the ideas for which he became famous. Mileva was devoted to Albert, and would do anything to please her husband. Mileva did Albert's university homework, gave up her own physics career for his. However, Einstein’s wife, Mileva, and their son returned to Zurich after three months. This is when the divorce proceedings began. She took care of their schizophrenic son though even after Albert divorced her, and was his scientific partner.
In 1915, Einstein completed his General Theory of Relativity. Soon after completing it, Einstein collapsed and, near death, fell seriously ill. He was nursed back to health by his cousin, Elsa. This is when he published his first paper on paper on cosmology. Four years later, Einstein married his cousin Elsa, and a solar eclipse proved Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to work.
In 1920 Einstein's lectures in Berlin were disrupted by demonstrations which, although officially denied, were almost certainly anti-Jewish. Certainly there were strong feelings expressed against his works during this period. During 1921 Einstein made his first visit to the United States. His main reason was to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but another reason however, was that Hitler had come into power in Germany. He received the Barnard Medal during his visit and lectured several times on relativity. He took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey.
Einstein upon his arrival to New York in 1921
Einstein renounced his former pacifist stand in the face of the awesome threat to humankind posed by the Nazi regime in Germany. Among many honours which Einstein received were the “Copley Medal of the Royal Society “in 1925 and the “Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society” in 1926.
By 1930, Einstein was making international visits again, back to the United States. A third visit to the United States in 1932 was followed by the offer of a post at Princeton. The idea was that Einstein would spend seven months a year in Berlin, five months at Princeton. Einstein accepted and left Germany in December 1932 for the United States. At this point in time, Einstein was 53 years old, and he was at the height of his fame. The following month however, the Nazis came into power in Germany, and Einstein, Identified as a Jew, began to feel the weight of Nazi Germany on his shoulders, causing him to never return there again.
In 1939, World War II began and Einstein collaborated with several other physicists in writing a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning of the possibility of Germany building an atomic bomb and urging nuclear research. The letter bore only Einstein's signature.
In 1940 Einstein became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain his Swiss citizenship. He made many contributions to peace. In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six million dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of Congress.
By 1949 Einstein was unwell. A spell in hospital helped him recover but he began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950. He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a university which he had raised funds for on his first visit to the USA, served as a governor of the university from 1925 to 1928 but he had turned down the offer of a post in 1933 as he was very critical of its administration. Also, in the early 1950s he spoke out on the need for the nation's intellectuals to make any sacrifice necessary to preserve political freedom. One more major event was to take place in his life. After the death of the first president of Israel in 1952, the Israeli government decided to offer the post of second president to Einstein. He refused but found the offer an embarrassment since it was hard for him to refuse without causing offense.
One week before his death, Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter to Bertrand Russell in which he agreed that his name should go on a manifesto urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons. It is
fitting that one of his last acts was to argue, as he had done all his life, for international peace.
Einstein died on April 16th, 1955 due to heart failure.
Bibliography:
http://www.westegg.com/einstein/
