2. There are a number of points I'd like to
make:
1.Early life and education.
2.All against Einstein
3.Scientific trajectory.
4.The articles of 1905.
5.Photoelectric effect.
6.The theory of relativity.
7.Political activity.
8.Death.
3. 1. Early life and education.
Albert Einstein was born in the city of Ulm on March 14, 1879. He was the eldest son of
Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch, both Jews, whose families came from Swabia. The
following year they moved to Munich, where the father settled down, along with his
brother Jakob, like trader in the electrotechnical novelties of the time. Little Albert was a
quiet child, and had a slow intelectual development. In 1894 he moved to Milan;
Einstein remained in Munich to finish his secondary studies. In the autumn of 1896 he
began his studies at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, where he was
a student of the mathematician Hermann Minkowski.
In 1903 he married Mileva Maric, a former classmate in Zurich, with whom he had two
children: Hans Albert and Eduard, born respectively in 1904 and 1910. In 1919 they
divorced, and Einstein remarried with his cousin Elsa.
4. 2. All against Einstein.
The controversial figure of the German scientist aroused bitter debates in his day. A group of
enemies of his theories in Nazi Germany came to create an association against him, and
even a man was accused of promoting his murder.
To make matters worse, the book entitled A hundred authors against Einstein, whose purpose
was evident, was published. Genius merely said, "Why a hundred? If I were wrong, I would
only have one”.
5. 3. Scientific trajectory.
In 1901 appeared the first scientific work of Einstein: it was about the capillary attraction. He
published two papers in 1902 and 1903 on the statistical foundations of thermodynamics,
corroborating experimentally that the temperature of a body is due to the agitation of its
molecules, a theory still discussed at that time.
6. 4. The articles of 1905.
In 1905 he finished his doctorate presenting a thesis titled “A new determination of the
molecular dimensions”. That same year he wrote four fundamental articles on small and
large-scale physics. In them he explained the Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and
developed special relativity and mass-energy equivalence. Einstein's work on the
photoelectric effect would provide him with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
7. 5. Photoelectric effect.
The first of his articles of 1905 was titled "A heuristic point of view on the production and
transformation of light". In it Einstein proposed the idea of "how much" light (now called
photons) and showed how this concept could be used to explain the photoelectric effect.
Why is this important? This article constituted one of the basic pillars of quantum mechanics.
8. 6. The theory of relativity.
In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures at the Prussian Academy of
Sciences in which he described the theory of general relativity. The last of these talks
concluded with the presentation of the equation that replaces Newton's law of gravity. The
theory provided the basis for the study of cosmology and made it possible to understand the
essential characteristics of the Universe, many of which would not be discovered until after
Einstein's death.
9. 7. Political activity.
The events of World War I pushed Einstein to engage politically, taking sides. He feels
contempt for violence, bullying, aggression, injustice. He was one of the most well-known
members of the German Democratic Party (DDP). Albert Einstein was a convinced pacifist.
10. 8. Death.
On April 16, 1955, Albert Einstein experienced an internal hemorrhage caused by the rupture
of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been surgically reinforced by Dr.
Rudolph Nissen in 1948. Einstein rejected the surgery, saying, "I want to leave when I want. It is
bad taste to artificially prolong life. I've done my part, it's time to go. I will do it with
elegance".
He died at Princeton Hospital early on April 18, 1955 at 76 years of age. On the table was the
draft of the speech before millions of Israelis for the seventh anniversary of the independence
of Israel that would never pronounce, and that began: "Today I speak not as a US citizen, nor
as a Jew, but as a being human”.
