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Albert Einstein ○̉｜Definition｜1st｜20251119205401-00-⌔
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein1 (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the known theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory.[^2]2 His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc, which arises from special relativity, has been called “the world’s most famous equation”.3 He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for “his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”.4
Born as a subject to the Kingdom of Württemberg, part of the German Empire,[^1] Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his citizenship the following year. In 1896, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zurich, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later, which he kept for the rest of his life, and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1917; he also became a Prussian and consequently also German citizen again. In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews,5 he decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in 1940.6 On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research, later carried out as the Manhattan Project.
In 1905, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year), he published four groundbreaking papers.7 In them, he outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity, and demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass and energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he proposed a general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole.89 It introduced the cosmological constant and is further regarded as the first step in the field of modern theoretical cosmology. In 1917, Einstein wrote a paper which introduced the concepts of spontaneous emission and stimulated emission, the latter of which is the core mechanism behind the laser and maser, and which contained a trove of information that would be beneficial to developments in physics later on, such as quantum electrodynamics and quantum optics.10
In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose–Einstein statistics. For much of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that ultimately proved unsuccessful. First, he advocated against quantum theory’s introduction of fundamental randomness into science’s picture of the world, objecting that “God does not play dice”.11 Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics. Many things are named after him, including the element Einsteinium. In 1999, he was named Time’s Person of the Century.12
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
/ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ↩
Yang, Fujia; Hamilton, Joseph H. (2010). Modern Atomic and Nuclear Physics. World Scientific. p. 274. ISBN 978-981-4277-16-7. ↩
Bodanis, David (2000). E = mc: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation. New York: Walker. ↩
“The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921”. Nobel Prize. Archived from the original on 3 July 2018. Retrieved 11 July 2016. ↩
Levenson, Thomas (9 June 2017). “The Scientist and the Fascist”. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 12 May 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2018. ↩
Paul S. Boyer; Melvyn Dubofsky (2001). The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-19-508209-8. ↩
Galison (2000), p. 377. ↩
“Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011. The accelerating universe” (PDF). Nobel Media AB. p. 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 May 2012. Retrieved 4 January 2015. ↩
Overbye, Dennis (24 November 2015). “A Century Ago, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Changed Everything”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 January 2022. Retrieved 24 November 2015. ↩
Kleppner, Daniel (1 February 2005). “Rereading Einstein on Radiation”. Physics Today. 58 (2): 30–33. Bibcode:2005PhT…58b..30K. doi:10.1063/1.1897520. ISSN 0031-9228. ↩
Robinson, Andrew (30 April 2018). “Did Einstein really say that?”. Nature. 557 (30): 30. Bibcode:2018Natur.557…30R. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05004-4. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 14013938. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020. Retrieved 21 February 2021. ↩
Golden, Frederic (31 December 1999). “Albert Einstein”. Time. ↩
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