Albert Einstein and his time

 Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics, and one of the most prolific intellects in human history. His great intelligence and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.

•  He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics.

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Einstein at 4 Einstein at 14

• Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, (Germany) on 1879. The Einsteins were non-observant Jews. Albert’s father was a salesman and engineer. In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded a company that manufactured electrical equipment.

• In 1894, his father's company failed. In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, a few months later, to Pavia. When the family moved to Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies

• Then, the Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, in northern Switzerland to finish secondary school.   At age 17, he graduated, and, with his father's approval, renounced his  German citizenship  to avoid military service; in 1896 he enrolled in the four year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Polytechnic in Zurich.

• After graduating, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years searching for a teaching post, but a former classmate's father helped him secure a job in Bern, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant examiner.  He evaluated patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office became permanent, although he was passed over for promotion because, they said, "he did not fully master machine technology".

Bern

The patent office where Einstein worked

• In 1905 Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. That same year, which has been called Einstein's "miracle year", he published four groundbreaking papers:

• on the photoelectric effect, • Brownian motion, • special relativity, • and the equivalence of matter and energy,

which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world.

Einstein’s dissertation

The photoelectric effect

Equivalence of mass and energy

• By 1908, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Bern. The following year, he quit the patent office and the lectureship to take the position of physics docent  at the University of Zurich. He became a full professor at Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. In 1914, he returned to Germany after being appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (1914–1932) and a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, with a special clause in his contract that freed him from most teaching obligations. He became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1916, Einstein was appointed president of the German Physical Society (1916–1918).

the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics

The first world war (1915-1918)

• When the 1st world war began, international criticism of Germany for attacking a neutral country (Belgium) was so great that a government-sponsored 'Manifesto to the Civilized World' was published. It defended German militarism and was signed by nearly 100 famous German intellectuals.

• A prominent German pacifist responded with a 'Manifesto to Europeans', which challenged militarism and 'this barbarous war' and called for peaceful European unity against it.

• Only three other people were brave enough to sign this peace manifesto; one of them was Einstein. It was the first of many public actions he took to promote pacifist ideals over the next 40 years. But Eistein was not just “any scientist…”

1919 eclipse

• In 1919 observations made of an eclipse of the sun confirmed Einstein's theory about the relation of time and space and the nature of gravity. It made headline news, and Einstein became an international celebrity.  He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1921

Einstein receives the Nobel prize (1921)

• But this didn't stop him from being thoroughly unpopular in Germany, and the fact that he was Jewish did not help…

The advent of Nazism

• As Nazism took hold, brown-shirted students hissed him at lectures; one openly threatened to 'cut that Jew's throat'.

• But Einstein was not disliked only by the nazis: Communists disliked his unshakeable independence of mind; religious leaders feared that his new science would empty the churches.

• Einstein's view was straightforward, non-political and non-sectarian: he believed that what intellectuals could and should do was promote international reconciliation through their scientific work and artistic achievements: 'creative work lifts people above personal and selfish national aims'. Not a good message in the ultra-nationalistic Germany

Adolf Hitler

Mussolini in Roma

• In the Summer of 1922, the German minister of foreign affairs (who, like Einstein, was a Jew who preached internationalism) was assassinated. Einstein ignored warnings from worried friends and appeared publicly at the annual rally of the 'No More War' movement in Berlin.

• But in Europe the news was bad. Hitler was gaining power. Nazism and its racist creeds were spreading. Mussolini was entrenching his fascist dictatorship in Italy. The anti-Jewish sentiments became more and more pronounced.

Anti Jewish propaganda

• On the night of January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany (the equivalent of prime minister) The previous year he had lost the election to became president; von Hindenburg won, but could not form a coalition government. Many influential politicians pressed to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties", which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people …

In March 1933 Hitler and his allies had already dissolved the political opposition and Hitler was a de facto a dictator.

• APRIL 7, 1933:LAW DISMISSES JEWS FROM CIVIL SERVICE

• The Nazi government enacts a law to exclude those considered to be opponents of the Nazi state—Jews and political opponents from public employment. Civil service employees were forced to prove their "Aryan descent” by documenting the religion of their parents and grandparents, or else they were dismissed from service. Similar laws passed in the following weeks affected Jewish lawyers and doctors.

"Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too." ... (Heinrich

Heine,1819 )

• On May 10, 1933 student groups at universities across Germany carried out a series of book burnings of works that the students and leading Nazi party members associated with an “un-German spirit.” Enthusiastic crowds witnessed the burning of books by Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann and Remarque,

• The largest of these book bonfires occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered to hear a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which he pronounced that “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and endorsed the students’ “right to clean up the debris of the past.”

Einstein’s name was put on a list of assassination targets, with a "$5,000 bounty on his head". One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged". At that point, Einstein decided to emigrate to the US. He was offered a position in Princeton in 1933

Einstein in Princeton

1955. Einstein dies.