🌌Albert Einstein
Original nameAlbert Einstein
German-American Physicist, Proposer of Relativity
The Laws Behind the Technology · Theoretical Founders
Special and General RelativityThe Photoelectric EffectThe Mass-Energy Equation E=mc²
Who they are
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-American theoretical physicist who in 1905, while an examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern, published in a single year four epoch-making papers, of which the special theory of relativity wholly rewrote the basic understanding of time, space, and mass in the Newtonian system, and his famous mass-energy equation E=mc² revealed that mass and energy can in essence convert into each other, a principle that thereafter directly formed the theoretical basis of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In 1915 he further proposed the general theory of relativity, reinterpreting gravity with the wholly new geometric picture of "curved spacetime," a theory thereafter not only verified by eclipse observation but whose effect is proven to be a key factor the modern Global Positioning System (GPS) must precisely correct for — without accounting for general relativity’s tiny effect on satellite clocks, GPS positioning accuracy would see a marked, continual accumulation of error. Another of Einstein’s 1905 papers successfully explained the photoelectric effect, the contribution for which he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics (rather than the more famous relativity), and the theory of the photoelectric effect thereafter became the physical basis of photoelectric conversion technologies such as the solar cell. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Einstein, as a Jewish scientist, was forced into exile in the United States, and in his later years actively took part in social activity against nuclear proliferation and for world peace, though a joint letter he earlier co-signed urging President Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb objectively indirectly drove the start of the US "Manhattan Project."
Primary sourcesAlbert Einstein’s four 1905 "miracle year" papersThe original of the 1939 joint letter to President Roosevelt (held at the US National Archives)
Key stories
The Patent Examiner’s "Miracle Year"
In 1905 Einstein was only an ordinary third-class technical examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern, thinking through problems of physics in his spare time, and in this year published in succession four weighty papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the mass-energy relation, any one of which alone would suffice to secure a physicist’s place in history — this year was thereafter called by the history of physics Einstein’s "miracle year."
A Letter and the Manhattan Project
In 1939, learning that Nazi Germany might be developing nuclear weapons, Einstein, at the urging of other physicists, co-signed a letter to US President Roosevelt urging the government to take seriously the military prospects of nuclear-fission technology, and this letter is thereafter seen as one of the important factors driving the US to start the "Manhattan Project" and develop the atomic bomb — though Einstein himself remained a firm anti-nuclear-weapon and pacifist advocate for the rest of his life, feeling deeply conflicted about the consequences this letter objectively brought.
Version differences
Einstein himself felt deeply conflicted about signing the joint letter urging nuclear-weapon development, saying publicly in his later years it was "one of the greatest mistakes of my life," though he thereafter remained a firm anti-nuclear-weapon and pacifist advocate for life.
Echoes today
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
"Einstein" as a byword for "genius"The surname "Einstein" has evolved in everyday English and many languages into a common byword for "a person of great intelligence," and his signature tousled hair and tongue-out photograph are among the most widely circulated images of a scientist in the world.