Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Friend or Foe

Albert Einstein is considered to be one of the greatest and most popular scientists of all time. Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1874.His name is associated with genius and is know is almost every household even thou his inventions and discoveries are not always fully understood. He was fortunate to have an excellent family with which he held a strong relationship. In 1894 Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich. Albert's mother, Pauline Einstein, had an intense passion for music and literature, and it was she that first introduced her son to the violin in which he found much joy and relaxation.

As a child, Einstein's sense of curiosity had already begun to stir. Before his first birthday, his family had moved to Munich where young Albert's father, Hermann Einstein, and uncle set up a small electro-chemical business. A favorite toy of his was his fathers compass, and he often marveled at his uncle's explanations of algebra. Albert did very mediocre as a child in school because of his dislike of the rigid methods of instruction, he was also considered quite disruptive by school officials. Although Albert was intrigued by certain mysteries of science, he was considered a slow learner. There were no early indications of Albert's intellectual capabilities, and there was some actual concern on the part of his parents that he was a bit slow. His failure to become fluent in German until the age of nine even led some teachers to believe he was disabled. Despite troubles in education and learning as a child, Einstein surpassed the odds and helped revolutionize science today.

As well as his violin lessons, which he had from age six to age thirteen, he also had religious education at home where he was taught Judaism. Albert, however, had strong interests in Math and Science, the subjects that he studied on his own. His life was not always so good to him and he had a lot of personal problems on his road to becoming one of the most known scientists in the world. Einstein's post-basic education began at the Luitpold Gymnasium when he was ten. It was here that he first encountered the German spirit through the school's strict disciplinary policy. His disapproval of this method of teaching led to his reputation as a rebel. At sixteen he attempted to enroll at the Federal Institute of Technology but failed the entrance exam. In 1900 he graduated from the Institute and then achieved citizenship to Switzerland.

Einstein's early work on the theory of relativity (1905) dealt only with systems or observers in uniform (unaccelerated) motion with respect to one another and is referred to as the special theory of relativity; among other results, it demonstrated that two observers moving at great speed with respect to each other will disagree about measurements of length and time intervals made in each other's systems, that the speed of light is the limiting speed of all bodies having mass, and that mass and energy are equivalent. In 1939 Einstein collaborated with several other physicists in writing a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing