The Biography of Albert Einstein

The Biography of Albert Einstein

Born in 1879, Albert Einstein is known today for his incredible

mathematical ability and… well, his wild hair. But more important than

the physical attributes of his cranium, is the fantastic information

which it provided. He will probably always be remembered as the

greatest mathematical genius of the modern world. Honors he has

received for his works include the Nobel Prize, which he was awarded

in 1921, the Royal Society Copley Medal, which he was awarded in 1925,

he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1921, and he became

an AMS Gibbs Lecturer in 1934. He also was a very vocal advocate

against nuclear weapons, and spoke out for international peace.

Fittingly, a letter asking that his name be put on a manifesto urging

all nations to give up their nuclear weapons, was the last he wrote

before his death in 1955.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14th, 1879, in Ulm,

Württembert, Germany, and six weeks later his family moved to Munich.

When he was very young, accounts given by his family say that he was

always one to think before action. While he was first talking, his

sister recalls that he would nearly always “pause before speaking, as

though pondering what he was going to say.” A story he enjoyed telling

about his youth was of the “wonder" he saw when he was four or five

years old: a magnetic compass. The needle's invariable northward

swing, guided by an invisible force, profoundly impressed the child.

The compass convinced him that there had to be "something behind

things, something deeply hidden." He was taught violin from the ages

six to thirteen, and had religious schooli...

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...eories, but if you consider the

technology we use today, and the mathematical engineering behind them,

you would realize that without those “nominal” contributions, many

inventions would never have come into being. Influence from his

research reaches as far away from the purely academic and theoretical

societies as health care. Without his new ideas about light and about

quantum of energy, lasers may not have been in existence yet, and

corrective eye surgery performed with them now would be unthinkably

risky done manually. His insistence and persistence at trying to

achieve a global peace, and nuclear disarmament have brought us far

along in rebuilding a cooperative global society since the Second

World War. Over all Albert Einstein was a positive force in

contributing to the knowledge and humanitarianism of the world.