Albert Einstein, the mathematical physicist famous for his Theory of Relativity, is called the father of modern physics. He was born on March 14, 1879 at Ulm in Germany. When he was only one year old, his family moved to Munich. Einstein spent his boyhood there. He was shy and dreamy in his childhood. Since his mother was fond of playing piano, he also learnt it from her.
Right from the beginning, Einstein showed a keen interest in scientific instruments. He was very sharp in mathematics, but just mediocre in other subjects. When he was fifteen, his family moved to Italy. From there he was sent to the Zurich University of Switzerland. Here his genius began to flower. He turned to be an extraordinary scholar of physics and mathematics.
He completed his education in the year 1900. He wanted to become a teacher, but could not get a teaching job of his choice. Finally he joined the Swiss Patent Office at Berne as a clerk. He married a young Yugoslav science student, Mileva Marec. The couple had two sons.
In his spare time, Einstein continued his own scientific studies and would try to solve the complicated problems of physics.
In 1905 he published five research papers. Revolutionary ideas expressed in them shook the world of science. Almost overnight Einstein became a famous scientist of the world. One of these papers was related to the “Special Theory of Relativity”. In this paper, he showed that absolute motion of the material bodies is a meaningless concept. Only relative motion has some meaning. In the same paper he showed that the physical quantities like mass, length and time are not constant but vary with the velocity of bodies. Velocity of light is the only physical quantity which remains constant. He also discarded the concept of all pervading luminiferous ether medium, which was in existence from the time of Newton.
In another paper he established the equivalence between matter and energy. The development of the atom bomb in 1945 was the result of this famous formula.
In 1905 he received his doctorate in physics from the University of Zurich. In 1909 he was appointed professor at the Zurich University. In 1916, he put forward the ‘General Theory of Relativity’. This theory was so complicated that only four scientists of the world at that time could understand it fully. This theory made Einstein the greatest scientist of the world. He was given the ‘Nobel Prize’ in 1922 for his work on photoelectric effect.
In 1933, driven by brutality of Hitler’s regime, Einstein left Germany. He was accorded a senior position in the Princeton University of America. In 1940 he became an American citizen. All his life he remained busy in solving the complicated problems of mathematics and physics. He was tender-hearted and peace-loving. He hated war. After 1945 he worked hard against proliferation of nuclear weapons. He always insisted that the nuclear energy should be used for the welfare of mankind and not for its destruction. In 1955, this great genius died in sleep in a Princeton hospital.