Albert Einstein

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Albert Einstein

Einstein was a German/American physicist who contributed more to the
20th century vision of physical reality than any other scientist. Einstein's theory of RELATIVITY seemed to a lot of people to be pure human thought, as did his other theories.

LIFE

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Einstein's parents were nonobservant Jews. They moved to Munich from Ulm when Einstein was an infant. The family business was to manufacture electrical equipment. When the business failed in 1894, the family move to Milan, Italy. He decided to officially give up his German citizenship. With in a year, still not having completed secondary school, he failed and examination that allow him to follow studies that would lead to a diploma in electrical engineering at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology (the Zurich Polytechnic). He spent the following year in Aarau where there were excellent teachers and an excellent physics facility. In 1896 he returned to the Zurich Polytechnic, there he graduated in
1900 as a secondary school teacher of math and physics.
Two years later, he acquired a post at the Swiss patent office in Bern.
While he was employed there from 1902 to 1909, he completed an extraordinary range of publications in theoretical physics. Most parts of there were written in his spare time. In 1905 he submitted one of his many scientific papers to the
University of Zurich to obtain a Ph.D. degree. In 1908 he sent another scientific paper to the University of Bern and became a lecturer there.
In 1914 Einstein returned to Germany but did not reapply for citizenship.
He was one of only handful of German professors who was opposed the use of force and did not support Germany's war aims. After the war, the allies wanted the removal of German scientist from international meetings, but Einstein was a Jew and traveling with a Swiss passport, he remained an acceptable German delegate.
Albert Einstein's political views as a pacifist and a Zionist placed him against conservatives in Germany, who labeled him a traitor and a defeatist.
In Germany there was a rise of fascism, so he moved to the united states in 1933 and abandoned his pacifism. He unwillingly agreed that the new danger
(the Germans) had to be brought down by force of arms. In 1939 he sent a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that urged America to continue to develop an
ATOMIC BOMB before the Germans did. This letter was one of many exchanges the
White House and Einstein had. This contributed to Roosevelt's decision to fund what became the MANHATAN PROJECT.

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