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Albert Einstein – The Archetypal Genius
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The archetypal genius in the popular imagination, Albert Einstein was a maverick thinker who turned the laws of physics upside-down while sticking out his tongue at the world. But the man behind this mischievous mask was a mass of contradictions.
His family was scared that something was wrong with him. He had a very large image shape and head, but fortunately, within the first few weeks, the shape of his head became normal. However, their worries didn’t stop there, when he was very young. His parents thought he might be intellectually disabled because he was very slow to learn to talk and did not speak until he was four years old.
So, at that time he often formed full sentences in his thoughts but did not speak. He used to practice the sentences in his head or whisper them softly under his breath, until he got them right, and then see them aloud. Many people believed, Einstein would never succeed at anything when he was five years old. His father showed him a simple pocket compass and Einstein was fascinated.
And that was the beginning of his obsession with science. He also began playing the violin, at the age of six and would continue to play throughout his life at school, Einstein was a good student, most of his grades were high, and he was near the top of his class. But mainly because of math and science, so his grades depended mostly on his interest in the subject when Einstein was only 10 years old. He started, educating himself by the age of 12.
Einstein taught himself geometry in by the age of 15, he mastered calculus, but he hated the discipline ridged style of the teachers. So he dropped out of school at the age of 15 and left Germany to avoid military service. His parents were worried that their son became a school dropout with no employable skills and not a very promising future.
However, Albert Einstein did not quit his education. He applied to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. And believe it or not, he failed the entrance exam, Albert Einstein failed an exam. Well, he wasn’t prepared; he excelled at math and physics, but his knowledge of subjects. Other than that was not good. So he failed the exam and had to take it a second time.
Before publishing his groundbreaking papers on physics, at the age of just 26, he had been an underachiever both at school and college. He was a mediocre student who never did any practical experiments. His initial theory was based largely on intuition.
The contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque’, wrote Albert Einstein in 1931.
Perhaps the great thinker had some foreboding of the macabre scenes that the genius cult surrounding him would provoke following his death on 18 April 1955. No sooner had the 76-year-old physicist passed away at Princeton Hospital, New Jersey, than the pathologist, Dr Thomas Stoltz Harvey, removed his brain during the autopsy, without permission, in the hope of discovering what it was that made Einstein so extraordinary.
As it turned out, the brain weighed 200 grams less than average. Its only unusual feature was that the left hemisphere was more highly developed than in most people. This was to the detriment of the part of the brain which controls language, which is consistent with the fact that young Einstein was a slow developer. He was only acquiring speech relatively late in childhood.
And then he was admitted. There he met his future wife mid-level marriage; she was the only woman among the six students in that section. After finally graduating, he couldn’t get a job in academia. For almost a decade, every one of his professors knew that Albert was brilliant, but they were also bothered by his rebellious and disobedient side.
So they refused to recommend him for various positions, so the academic institutions wouldn’t hire him, but the young Einstein needed money so he got a job as a clerk in a patent office, the job was mostly mindless and very easy for Einstein, so he liked the job because he had so much free time to study and research.
While working there, and he developed his most important theories while working his boring job. He developed the theory of relativity, and the world’s most famous equation, Einstein was nominated for a Nobel Prize but did not receive it, until 11 years later. Albert Einstein became the most influential physicist, of the 20th century. His research changed the world.
He wrote hundreds of books and was also a great philosopher, so there are so many things to be learned. I have no special talent. I’m only passionately curious, so follow your curiosity, whatever that is, sees where it goes. Never be afraid to question the world around, and don’t be afraid of failing and making mistakes along the way a person who never made a mistake. Also never tried anything new there to discover in there to make mistakes. That’s what divides successful people from unsuccessful, don’t be afraid to conquer your fears, and don’t be afraid to follow your passion. You don’t have to be the next Einstein, be the.
Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879, to a non-practicing Jewish family in the southern German city of Ulm. From an early age, he displayed great powers of concentration and an aptitude for original thinking. As his sister, Maja recalled ‘even when there was a lot of noise, he could lie down on the sofa, pick up a pen and paper and engross himself in a problem so much that the background noise stimulated rather than disturbed him’.
At the age of 5, he was already showing, more interest in the compass owned by his engineer father Hermann than in the violin lessons he received from his mother Pauline. Albert was a solitary and quick-tempered child, who later learned to adopt a dreamy air of detachment to anything that threatened to disturb his work.
He formulated his Theory of Special Relativity by thinking up imaginary scenarios and devising thought experiments, in the mold of Galileo and Isaac Newton, two of the scientists he most admired.
Self-taught Physicist
After enrolling at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute in 1896, the 17-year-old Einstein began to come out of his shell. During his time there he met Mileva Maric, a brilliant mathematician, whom he married in 1903.
Three years earlier he had passed his exams in mathematics and physics, but it was largely through his own efforts that he acquired a thorough knowledge of e developments in physics. He struggled to make ends meet during this phase of his life, but it was also a time of great intellectual Endeavour and achievement for him.
In 1901 Einstein took technical assistant (third class) at the Swiss Federal Patent Office in Bern, a lowly position that happily left him plenty of time to think and pursue his own scientific investigations. Just four years later, as a complete unknown, he published his article on special relativity, which stirred the learned world of physics and laid the foundations for quantum theory.
There followed, in 1915 and 1917 respectively, works on the general theory of relativity and on its application to cosmology, It took time for Einstein’s theories to be widely accepted: even the Nobel prize that he was awarded in 1921 made no mention whatsoever of relativity. In an attempt to win over reluctant fellow scientists, Einstein embarked on an extensive lecture tour around Europe in the 1920s.
It was at this time that his work first came under attack by anti- Semitic elements, who decried his theories as ‘degenerate’ and tried to smear him with accusations of plagiarism. But by now his reputation was too firmly established.
The A-bomb and quantum physics
With Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, Einstein went into exile in the USA, taking up a research post at the University of Princeton, In 1939, despite his fundamental pacifist beliefs, he urged President Franklin Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb for use against the Nazis. But by 1945, he regretted his involvement in its development.
On the eve of the bomb’s deployment against Japan, he begged President Truman to think again. Einstein was also at the forefront of quantum physics in the 1930s, even though he rejected the uncertainty principle at its heart (formulated by German physicist Werner Heisenberg) with the famous statement ‘God does not play dice’.
After the war, Einstein stepped back from the limelight but continued his researches. At his death, he was working on a Grand Unified Theory that would embrace all the fundamental laws of physics. His successors are still engaged in that quest. A
Cult Figure
Everyone knows the famous picture of Einstein the tousle-headed iconoclast, poking his tongue out at the camera. This was just one of many faces of a man who, by turns, epitomized the absent-minded professor the melancholic loner, the laughing genius and the selfless scientific pioneer. Einstein became every bit as much a universal archetype as Mahatma Gandhi in the political arena and Pablo Picasso in the world of art.
College sweetheart Albert Einstein’s first wife was Mileva Maric, a young Serbian mathematician. She is pictured here in 1914 with their sons Eduard (left) and Hans Albert.
Into exile
Einstein playing the violin on his return voyage to Germany on the liner Belgenland in early 1933. When be learned that Hitler was the new German Chancellor. Einstein got off the ship at Antwerp and went back to the USA, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
Albert Einstein playing the violin on his return voyage to Germany on the liner Belgenland in early 1933. When be learned that Hitler was the new German Chancellor.
US citizen
On 1 October 1940, Albert Einstein, his secretary Helen Dukas (left) and his stepdaughter Margot (right) swore the oath of allegiance to the United States of America and became naturalized US citizens.
Captured for posterity – This famous photo of Albert Einstein was taken on his 72nd birthday on 14 March 1951.
Captured for posterity – This famous photo of Albert Einstein was taken on his 72nd birthday on 14 March 1951.
