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- Essay Name : 505.txt
- Uploader : Graem Nelson
- Email Address :
- Language : English
- Subject : Social Studies
- Title : Albert Einstein
- Grade : 84%
- School System : High School(grade 12)
- Country : Canada
- Author Comments : Put together very well.
- Teacher Comments : None(I don't think)
- Date : Nov.2/95
- Site found at : Search
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- Albert Einstein, was a German-born American physicist and Nobel prize winner,
- best known as the creator of the special and general theories of relativity. He is perhaps the
- most well-known scientist of the 20th century. Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14,
- 1879, and spent his youth in Munich, where his family owned a small shop that
- manufactured electric machinery. He did not talk until the age of three, but even as a youth
- he showed about nature and an ability to understand difficult mathematical concepts.
- Einstein hated the dull and unimaginative spirit of school in Munich. When repeated
- business failure led the family to leave Germany for Milan, Italy, Einstein, who was then
- 15 years old, used the opportunity to withdraw from the school. He spent a year with his
- parents in Milan, and when it became clear that he would have to make his own way in the
- world, he finished secondary school in Arrau, Switzerland, and entered the Swiss National
- Polytechnic in Zⁿrich. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction there. He often cut
- classes and used the time to study physics on his own or to play his violin. He passed his
- examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying the notes of a classmate. His professors
- did not think highly of him and would not recommend him for a university position.
- For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902 he secured a
- position as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. In 1903 he married Mileva
- Mariτ, who had been his classmate at the polytechnic. They had two sons but eventually
- divorced. Einstein later remarried.
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- The theory of relativity was developed in the early 20th century,
- which originally attempted to account for certain differences in the concept of relative
- motion, but which in its alterations has developed into one of the most important basic
- concepts in physical science. The theory of relativity, developed mainly by Albert
- Einstein.
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- The difficulty that others had with Einstein's work was not because it was too
- mathematically complex or technically obscure; the problem resulted, rather, from
- Einstein's beliefs about the nature of good theories and the relationship between experiment
- and theory. Although he maintained that the only source of knowledge is experience, he
- also believed that scientific theories are the free creations of a finely tuned physical
- intuition and that the foundation on which theories are based cannot be connected logically
- to experiment. Few of his colleges though could not even understand the theories that
- Einstein had come up with, and therefore could not support them. Einstein did have some
- important supporters, however. His first early patron was the German physicist Max
- Planck. Einstein remained at the patent office for four years after his name began to rise
- within the physics community.
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- In 1939 after realizing the possible dangers in the newly developed theory of
- relativity, Einstein collaborated with several other physicists in writing a letter to
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out the possibility of making an atomic bomb and
- the likelihood that the German government was embarking on such a course. The letter,
- which bore only Einstein's signature, helped lend urgency to efforts in the U.S. to build the
- atomic bomb, but Einstein himself played no role in the work and knew nothing about it at
- the time. After the war, Einstein was active in the cause of international disarmament and
- world government. He continued his active support of Zionism but declined the offer made
- by leaders of the state of Israel to become president of that country. In the U.S. during the
- late 1940s and early '50s he spoke out on the need for the nation's intellectuals to make any
- sacrifice necessary to preserve political freedom. Einstein died in Princeton on April 18,
- 1955.
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- Although Einstein gave much of himself to political and social causes, science
- always came first, because, he often said, only the discovery of the nature of the universe
- would have lasting meaning.
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