Einstein, Albert

Einstein, Albert (1879–1955), physicist and Nobel Prize laureate.Born in Ulm, Germany, Albert Einstein graduated from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in 1900 and two years later became a patent examiner in the Swiss Federal Patent Office in Bern. While there he wrote three path‐breaking scientific papers in which he developed the theory of special relativity, conclusively demonstrated the existence of atoms, and presented the law of the photoelectric effect, the last of which brought him the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921. He received his first academic appointment in 1909 in Zurich. Just before the outbreak of World War I he moved to Berlin, where he assumed a research professorship without teaching obligations in the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1919, confirmation of his most lasting achievement—the theory of general relativity—granted him wide popular recognition and made him a media celebrity. This attention also gave him an international platform for his social concerns and established him as a moral arbiter of his age. Increasingly interested in political affairs after the war, he made his first trip to the United States in 1921 with Chaim Weizmann to raise money for the creation of the Hebrew University in Palestine.

In the fall of 1933, as Adolf Hitler gained power in Germany, Einstein took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, remaining in the United States for the rest of his life. Einstein's August 1939 letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, drafted by the Hungarian‐born émigré physicist Leo Szilard, describing the military implications of recent developments in physics, eventually led to the establishment of the Manhattan Project and U.S. development of the atomic bomb.

Becoming a U.S. citizen in 1940 (while also retaining Swiss citizenship), Einstein devoted himself to the search for a unified field theory, but also increasingly spoke out on public issues. Einstein retained an abiding commitment to establishing and maintaining a homeland for Jews, with an emphasis on equality of rights between Jews and Arabs. Like many fellow scientists, he feared a nuclear arms race after World War II. He initially advocated a world government, and thereafter repeatedly supported the cause of disarmament and world peace. He invariably allied himself with those who sought legal protections for the well‐being and civil rights of all.
See also Internationalism; Nuclear Weapons; Peace Movements; Physical Sciences; Science: From 1914 to 1945; Science: Since 1945.

Bibliography

Alan J. Friedman and and Carol C. Donley , Einstein as Myth and Muse, 1985.
Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden, eds., Einstein on Peace, 1960.
Jamie Sayen , Einstein in America: The Scientist's Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima, 1985.
Don Howard and John Stachel, eds., Einstein and the History of General Relativity, 1989.

Robert J. Schulmann