Albert Einstein was born in Germany. His father was a salesman and an engineer. But later his family moved to Munich, and his father began manufacturing electrical appliances based on direct current.
He is known as the greatest physicist of all time. He made contributions to the two pillars of modern physics; he made additions to the theory of quantum mechanics and is credited for developing the theory of relativity.
Albert Einstein studied in a Catholic elementary school until he was eight. Then he began studying in a Gymnasium and completed his secondary education from there only. That gymnasium was later renamed Albert Einstein Gymnasium.
Einstein’s father wanted him to study electrical engineering, but Einstein was against the teaching system and got involved in arguments with the teachers and lecturers.
Einstein was good at Mathematics and Physics from a young age. Within summer break, he taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry and discovered his own authentic proof of the Pythagorean theorem. At that time he was only 12 years old.
By the age of 14, he had a good command of integral and differential calculus.
When Albert Einstein was 16, he scored outstanding marks in mathematics and physics entrance papers of Swiss Federal polytechnic school, Zurich, but he failed to score good marks in the general section of the examination.
At the age of 17, he applied to renew his citizenship, as he wanted to avoid military service. He enrolled in the Federal polytechnic and joined a four-year mathematics and physics course.
At the age of 21, Einstein was awarded the Federal teaching diploma after passing mathematics and physics exams.
He received Swiss nationality at the age of 22 and found a job at the Swiss Patent Office as an assistant examiner – level III. He began a small discussion group with his new friends and named it ‘The Olympia Academy’, in which they often organized meetings and discussed science and philosophy.
Einstein published four groundbreaking theses, consisting of the theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced special relativity, and demonstrated mass-energy equivalence.
This year, 1905 is often referred to as Einstein’s miracle year. Out of these four, one major contribution he made was the equation, E=MC², known as mass-energy equivalence.
He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Zurich when he was 26.
He continued to modify and play with problems of statistical mathematics and quantum theory, which helped him in understanding particle theory and the motion of molecules more clearly.
There were two unsuccessful projects of his life, on which he worked for the rest of his life. First one, he opposed the result he obtained from his contributions to quantum mechanics as he found it objectionable and said that nature “doesn’t play dice”.
The second one, he tried to invent a unified field theory by simplifying his theory of gravitation, based on geometry, to add electromagnetism.
At the age of 76, Albert Einstein died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
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