Albert Einstein Biography
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Here we will be looking 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, like his thesis on the ‘Theory of Relativity and The Photoelectric Effect,’ have helped scientists find breakthrough discoveries throughout the field of science.
Another significant contribution from him was the mass-energy equivalence formula, E = mc². One of the most celebrated and influential physicists of all time. In 1921, he was given the Nobel Prize in Physics for contributing to the concept of ‘The Photoelectric Effect.’
Childhood and Education
Einstein was born in Ulm, a city in the German Empire, on March 14th, 1879, to a family of Ashkenazi Jews.
Since childhood, he was always interested in the subject of science. He often recalls how certain events in his early childhood days were pretty significant in his interest in science. At age 5, he was introduced to a compass and mesmerized by its deflecting needle. At age 12, he was interested in Geometry. These were the stepping stones to his intrigue in the subject. He even named his favorite book the “sacred little geometry book.”
As a child, his tutor, Max Talmey, was one of the most important influences. He introduced him to higher mathematics & philosophy.
He was great at Math 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 started to teach himself these concepts and, after a point, said, “I have learned all the maths they teach at school and a bit more.”
For Einstein, understanding the concepts and reasoning behind the various phenomena was more critical than learning the dates of those said phenomena.
Inventions
Here is a list of some of his well-known inventions and discoveries:
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General relativity
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Special relativity
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Photoelectric Effect
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Theory of Brownian movement
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Mass and energy equivalence, E = mc²
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Planck-Einstein relation, E = hf
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Bose-Einstein condensate
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Bose-Einstein statistics
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Gravitational-wave
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Cosmological constant
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EPR paradox
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Unified field theory
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Ensemble interpretation
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Einstein-de Haas effect
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Einstein-Rosen bridge
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Stark-Einstein law
Achievements
Out of many, a few of his most notable achievements are:
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He emphasized the concept of mass and energy being equivalent, which led to the famous formula of E = mc².
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In 1932, Einstein and de Sitter proposed the concepts that helped in the initial stages of the research of ‘dark matter.’