In 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. He graduated in 1900 and received his doctorate in 1905. He became a Swiss citizen. Unable to get an academic position, he took a post with the patent office in Bern while continuing to pursue his concern with the fundamental problems of physics.
In 1905 he published three brilliant papers which were to transform twentieth-century scientific thought.
- His most famous dealt with the "Special theory of relativity." He demonstrated that motion is relative and that physical laws must be the same for all observers moving relative to each other. He also theoretically noted the relationship of mass to energy. He predicted the equivalence of mass (m) and energy (e) according to the equation e = mc2, where (c) represents the velocity of light.
- In the paper for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1921, he founded the photon theory of light (photoelectric effect).
- He also wrote a paper dealing with the "Brownian motion."
In 1916 he published his Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitatstheorie (Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition), which profoundly modified the simple concepts of space and time on which Newtonian mechanics had been based. His prediction of the deflection of starlight by the gravitational field of the sun was theoretical at the time that he wrote his paper. In 1919, however, his predication was shown to be true by the expedition at the time of a solar eclipse. When the results of the solar eclipse observations became known to the general public, Einstein’s name became a household word. He was belittled in Germany however, and his theory of relativity was branded as "un-German."
During the early years after World War I he worked for the League of Nations Intellectual Cooperation Organization and became a familiar figure on public platforms speaking on social problems as well as his Theory of Relativity. He became more and more disappointed by the misuse of sciences in the hands of man.
Einstein became an active Zionist. In 1921 Chaim Weizmann asked Einstein to join him on a fund-raising tour of America to buy land in Palestine and seek aid for the Hebrew University. Einstein readily agreed, and the tour was highly successful. When he visited Palestine, Einstein was greatly impressed.
In 1932, Einstein accepted an invitation to spend the winter term at the California Institute of Technology. By January 1933, Hitler had come to power. Einstein promptly resigned from his position at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and never returned to Germany. He accepted a professorship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, and later became an American citizen.
During World War II, Einstein learned that the German uranium fusion project was progressing. In response, Einstein signed a letter in 1939 to President Roosevelt pointing out the feasibility of atomic energy and its use as a weapon. This letter sparked the Manhattan Project and future developments of atomic energy. Despite the letter, Einstein was opposed to the use of the atomic bomb. He wrote Roosevelt another letter emphasizing his opposition to the creation of such a weapon, but the letter arrived after Roosevelt's death. Ironically, recent evidence indicates that the German scientists were nowhere near figuring out how to create an atomic bomb. The pacifist Einstein unwittingly helped initiate the era of nuclear weapons when it was not essential, and to whose use he was completely opposed.
As chairman of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Einstein urged the outlawing of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. During the McCarthy period Einstein advised scientists to refuse to testify before the Congressional Committee on Un-American Affairs. He continued to work on the "Unified Field Theory" which attempted as a first step to unify gravitation and electromagnetism into one theory.
Einstein appeared before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine in 1946 and entered a strong plea for a Jewish Homeland. When the State of Israel was established he hailed the event as the fulfillment of an ancient dream. After Weizmann's death Einstein was asked by Ben Gurion to become the president of the State of Israel. He declined "being deeply touched by the offer but not suited for the position."
When he went to the hospital for the illness which proved to be fatal, he took with him the notes he had made for the television address he was to give on Israel's seventh Independence Day. He died on April 18, 1955.
