Remember the Genius – Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein Biography: Here we will take a look at the life of Albert Einstein. This world famous theoretical physicist revolutionized the world of physics in the modern world. His contributions to quantum mechanics, such as his thesis on ‘The Theory of Relativity and the Photoelectric Effect’, have helped scientists make important discoveries across the entire field of science.
Another important contribution of his was the mass-energy equivalence formula, E = mc². One of the most famous and influential physicists of all time. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the concept of ‘The Photoelectric Effect’.
Childhood and Education
Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, a city in the German Empire, to a family of Ashkenazi Jews.
He was interested in science since childhood. He often recalls how certain events from his early childhood days were crucial to his interest in science. At the age of 5, he was introduced to the compass and became fascinated by its deflecting needle. At the age of 12, he became interested in geometry. These were the initial stages of his intrigue on this subject. He even named his favorite book “The Sacred Little Geometry Book”.
As a child, his teacher, Max Talmy, was one of the most important influences. He introduced him to higher mathematics and philosophy.
He was great at mathematics and physics from a very young age, which led him to believe that we can understand any concept in our nature as a “mathematical structure”. He began teaching himself these concepts and after a point said, “I’ve learned all the math taught in school and then some.”
For Einstein, understanding the concepts and logic behind various events was more important than knowing the dates of those events.
Inventions
- Here is a list of some of his well-known inventions and discoveries:
- General relativity
- Special relativity
- Photoelectric Effect
- Theory of Brownian movement
- Mass and energy equivalence, E = mc²
- Planck-Einstein relation, E = hf
- Bose-Einstein condensate
- Bose-Einstein statistics
- Gravitational-wave
- Cosmological constant
- EPR paradox
- Unified field theory
- Ensemble interpretation
- Einstein-de Haas effect
- Einstein-Rosen bridge
- Stark-Einstein law
Achievements
Out of many, a few of his most notable achievements are:
- He emphasized the concept of mass and energy being equivalent, which led to the famous formula of E = mc².
- Einstein was one of the first few people who dismissed the ideologies of Older Physics. He talked about how the absolute of Time was now replaced by a greater absolute of light.
- In 1910, he explained the phenomenon, ‘Why the Sky is Blue, and his paper on this subject was considered to be a great contribution to the subject of the cumulative effect of the light scattering by individual molecules in the atmosphere.
- He questioned ‘The Wave Theory of Light’ and debated how light could also be regarded as particulates. This ideology was one of the stepping stones for Quantum Physics. For these ideals, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.
- In 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose, an Indian Physicist, provided a paper on the subject of light as a gas of photons and asked Einstein for his assistance in the publication of this paper. Einstein studied his concepts to discover that the same theory could be applied for atoms, and these discoveries turned out to be the basis for the concept of Bosons.
- In 1932, Einstein and de Sitter proposed the concepts that helped in the initial stages of the research of ‘dark matter.’
