The Life of Albert Einstein

The Life of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Southern Germany. One year after his birth his fathers business failed, so the family moved to Munich, and began a new business manufacturing electrical parts. His parents Hermann and Pauline were of Jewish descent, but were very lax regarding religion. The Einstein’s sent Albert to a Catholic grade school.

Albert’s first scientific revelation came when he was five years of age, and his father showed him a pocket compass. This occurrence left a long lasting impression on Albert. Otherwise Albert was not an extraordinary learner. At the age of nine Albert was unable to speak fluently, and his grades were poor. His parents and teachers thought he might even be mildly retarded. When Albert was ten he began secondary school, at which he still failed to excel. He disliked the regiment of school, and the strictness of his teachers.

Einstein’s hunger for learning was aroused by science books and magazines. His mother passed her passion for music on to Albert. He began violin lessons at the age of six and although he was never a musical genius he carried a passion for music for the rest of his life.1

In 1894 Albert’s fathers business failed again so the family moved to Milan in order to get a fresh start. Albert’s father left him behind so that he would be able to finish school and receive a diploma. Less than a year later, Albert left school, without receiving his diploma, to be with his family in Milan. At the age of sixteen, Einstein took the entrance exam for a school that would give him a degree in electrical engineering, and failed.

Einstein attended a Swiss school to prepare to take the exam again, and found that he so much preferred the less regimented system of teaching and the Swiss democratic attitude that he relinquished his German citizenship. On his second attempt to enter the University, one year later, he passed and was admitted for a degree in science and mathematics education.2 He graduated at the age of twenty-one.

In 1893 he married a classmate from his school in Switzerland, Mileva Maric, who was Hungarian. They had two children. Upon Albert’s graduation in 1900, he found employment as a patent examiner in a patent office in Bern, and began tutoring part time. This was not a challenging job for Einstein, and all...

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...ment in the field of Physics his goals for world peace are even more important to remember. He is one of the best known scientists of the century and was even named the person of the century, by Time Magazine.

Works Cited:

1. Clark, Ronald. Einstein the Life and Times. New York, New York: Avon Books, 1971

2. French. A. P., eds. Einstein A Centenary Volume. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard

University Press, 1979

3. Maleki, Yashir. “Einstein’s Biography.” 1999. 11 pages.

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hanger/6469/biography.htm. December 1, 2000.

4. Cuny, Hillary. Albert Einstein The Man and His Theories. Paris, France: Pierre

Seghers, 1962

5. Barnett, Lincon. The Universe and Dr. Einstein. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948

6. Long, Doug. “Albert Einstein and the Atomic Bomb.” Hiroshima: Was it Necessary?

Http://www.doug-long.com/einstein.htm

7. Quoted From, Cuny, Hillary. Albert Einstein The Man and His Theories. Paris,

France: Pierre Seghers, 1962, Page 105.

8. Quoted From, French. A. P., eds. Einstein A Centenary Volume. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979, Page 209.