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Albert Einstein was born of non-observant Jews, he attended a Catholic elementary school. When Einstein was five, his father showed him a small pocket compass, and he realized that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; later he would describe the experience as one of the most revelatory events of his life.
Einstein called Euclid's Elements, the "holy little geometry book" which was given by Max Talmud.
In 1894, Einstein's first scientific work, called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields". He quit school a year and a half prior to final examinations without telling his parents, convincing the school to let him go, but this meant that he had no secondary-school certificate. That year, at the age of 16, he performed the thought experiment known as "Albert Einstein's mirror". After gazing into a mirror, he imagined what would happen to his image if he were moving at the speed of light; his conclusion, that the speed of light is independent of the observer, would later become one of the two postulates of special relativity.
In 1900, Einstein submitted his first paper to be published, on the capillary forces of a drinking straw, titled "Consequences of the observations of capillarity phenomena", he tried to unify the laws of physics, an attempt he would continually make throughout his life.
Works and Doctorate
Einstein in 1905, when he wrote the "Annus Mirabilis Papers" and obtained his doctorate, under Alfred Kleiner at the University of Zurich after submitting his thesis called "A new determination of molecular dimensions". Also in that year, in his spare time, he wrote four articles that participated in the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to which he could refer to or many scientific colleagues with whom he could discuss the theories. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes.
"On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", Einstein's key contribution here is his assertion that energy quantization is a general, intrinsic property of light, rather than a particular constraint of the interaction between matter and light, as Planck believed.
"On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", provided empirical evidence for the existence of atoms.
"On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", introduced the special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity.
"Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", showed that from relativity's axioms, it is possible to deduce the famous equation which shows the equivalence between matter and energy. E = mc2. However, it was Poincaré who in 1900 first published the "energy equation" in slightly different form, namely as: m= E/c2
In 1912, Einstein started to refer to time as the fourth dimension (although H.G. Wells had done this earlier, in 1895 in The Time Machine).
In 1917, "On the Quantum Mechanics of Radiation", introduced the concept of stimulated emission, the physical principle that allows light amplification in the laser. He also published a paper that year that used the general theory of relativity to model the behavior of the entire universe, setting the stage for modern cosmology. In this work he created his self-described "worst blunder": the cosmological constant.
General Relativity
In November 1915, he replaced Newton's law of gravity, with the Einstein field equation. This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time.
In 1919 The Times reported the headline: "Revolution in science – New theory of the Universe – Newtonian ideas overthrown". Nobel laureate Max Born viewed General Relativity as the "greatest feat of human thinking about nature"; fellow laureate Paul Dirac called it "probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made".
In 1909 Einstein presented a paper, The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation to a gathering of physicists on the history of aether theories and, more importantly, on the quantization of light. In this and an earlier 1909 paper, Einstein showed that the energy quanta introduced by Max Planck also carried a well-defined momentum and acted in many respects as if they were independent, point-like particles. Einstein showed that light must be simultaneously a wave and a particle, and foretold correctly that physics stood on the brink of a revolution that would require them to unite these dual natures of light.
Determinism
Beginning in the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein voiced his objections to the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations. His opposition in this regard would continue all his life. The majority sees the reason for his objection in terms of the view that he was a rigid determinist. They would cite a 1926 letter to Max Born, where Einstein made the remark which history recalls the most: Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
To this, Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on quantum theory, retorted, "Stop telling God what He must do!"
Incompleteness and Realism
Many of Einstein's comments indicate his belief that quantum mechanics is 'incomplete'. Einstein never rejected probabilistic techniques and thinking, in and of themselves. According to the majority of physicists, however, he believed that indeterminism constituted a criterion for strong objection to a physical theory.
Summary
Whatever his inner convictions, Einstein agreed that the quantum theory was the best available, but he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e., either more deterministic or one that could more fundamentally explain the reason for probabilities in a logical way. He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things", nor could he abandon the belief that there are no explanations that contain contradictions, which had driven him to his successes explaining photons, relativity, atoms, and gravity.
World War II
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he forced all Jewish university professors out of their jobs, and throughout the 1930s a campaign to label Einstein's work as "Jewish physics"—in contrast with "German" or "Aryan physics”. Einstein renounced his Prussian citizenship and stayed in the United States. He concentrated on developing a unified field theory Einstein became an American citizen in 1940.
In 1939, under the encouragement of Szilárd, Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging the study of nuclear fission for military purposes, under fears that the Nazi government would be first to develop nuclear weapons. Roosevelt started a small investigation into the matter, which eventually became the massive Manhattan Project. Einstein himself did not work on the bomb project; however, and, according to Linus Pauling, he later regretted having signed this letter. At the end of his life Einstein, along with Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell, fought against nuclear tests and bombs.
Unified field theory
Einstein's research efforts after developing the theory of general relativity consisted primarily of a long series of attempts to generalize his theory of gravitation in order to unify and simplify the fundamental laws of physics, particularly gravitation and electromagnetism. In 1950, Einstein was guided by a belief in a single origin for the entire set of physical laws.
Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation and his attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. In particular, his pursuit of a unification of the fundamental forces ignored work in the physics community at large (and vice versa), most notably the discovery of the strong and weak nuclear forces, which were not understood independently until around 1970, fifteen years after Einstein's death. Einstein's goal of unifying the laws of physics under a single model survives in the current drive for unification of the forces.
Final years
On March 30, 1953, Einstein released a revised unified field theory. He died alone in obscurity, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved.
Quotations on religion
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God (?) and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”
“I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve.”
“I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural opposites. In fact, I think that there is a very close connection between the two. Further, I think that science without religion is lame and, conversely, that religion without science is blind. Both are important and should work hand-in-hand.” (Quote possibly attributable to Rabindranath Tagore).
“A Jew who sheds his faith along the way, or who even picks up a different one, is still a Jew.”
As an adult, he called his religion a "cosmic religious sense".
In The World As I See It he wrote:
“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man...
For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.”
Owing to this aforementioned suspicion for a personal God - of Jewish or Catholic origin, his taste for impersonal clinical thinking is clearly demonstrated and further influences his religious beliefs.
In response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in 1929: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." Spinoza was a naturalistic pantheist.
Scientific philosophy
In favor of the deterministic view are the following statements of Einstein:
“But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past.”
“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
His devotion to Schopenhauer can be cited:
“I do not believe in freedom of the will, but in Schopenhauer's words: ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills.’”
Einstein believed that true theorists always take some position on the metaphysics behind what they do.
