Finale carpenter biography of albert einstein

Einstein was not a nationalist and opposed the creation of an independent Jewish state. The state of Israel was established without his help in ; Einstein was limited to a marginal role in the Zionist movement. Per Lee Smolin , I believe what allowed Einstein to achieve so much was primarily a moral quality. He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics have to explain everything in nature coherently and consistently.

In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York , [ ] and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Association , which publishes New Humanist in Britain. For the 75th anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture , he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism.

He observed, Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can for me change this. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. I cannot see anything ' chosen ' about them. Einstein had been sympathetic toward vegetarianism for a long time. Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle.

Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind. He became a vegetarian himself only during the last part of his life. In March he wrote in a letter: So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way.

It almost seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore. If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music I get most joy in life out of music. His mother played the piano reasonably well and wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to instill in him a love of music but also to help him assimilate into German culture.

According to conductor Leon Botstein , Einstein began playing when he was 5. However, he did not enjoy it at that age. When he turned 13, he discovered Mozart 's violin sonatas , whereupon he became enamored of Mozart's compositions and studied music more willingly. Einstein taught himself to play without "ever practicing systematically". He said that love is a better teacher than a sense of duty.

The examiner stated afterward that his playing was remarkable and revealing of 'great insight'. What struck the examiner, writes Botstein, was that Einstein displayed a deep love of the music, a quality that was and remains in short supply. Music possessed an unusual meaning for this student. Music took on a pivotal and permanent role in Einstein's life from that period on.

Although the idea of becoming a professional musician himself was not on his mind at any time, among those with whom Einstein played chamber music were a few professionals, including Kurt Appelbaum, and he performed for private audiences and friends. Chamber music had also become a regular part of his social life while living in Bern, Zurich, and Berlin, where he played with Max Planck and his son, among others.

In , while engaged in research at the California Institute of Technology, he visited the Zoellner family conservatory in Los Angeles, where he played some of Beethoven and Mozart's works with members of the Zoellner Quartet. On 17 April , Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm , which had previously been reinforced surgically by Rudolph Nissen in Einstein refused surgery, saying, I want to go when I want.

It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly. During the autopsy, the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent.

Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn. Einstein bequeathed his personal archives, library, and intellectual assets to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

Throughout his life, Einstein published hundreds of books and articles. Einstein's first paper [ 77 ] [ ] submitted in to Annalen der Physik was on capillary attraction. Two papers he published in — thermodynamics attempted to interpret atomic phenomena from a statistical point of view. These papers were the foundation for the paper on Brownian motion, which showed that Brownian movement can be construed as firm evidence that molecules exist.

His research in and was mainly concerned with the effect of finite atomic size on diffusion phenomena. Einstein returned to the problem of thermodynamic fluctuations, giving a treatment of the density variations in a fluid at its critical point. Ordinarily the density fluctuations are controlled by the second derivative of the free energy with respect to the density.

At the critical point, this derivative is zero, leading to large fluctuations. The effect of density fluctuations is that light of all wavelengths is scattered, making the fluid look milky white. Einstein relates this to Rayleigh scattering , which is what happens when the fluctuation size is much smaller than the wavelength, and which explains why the sky is blue.

These four works contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space , time, and matter. The four papers are:. It reconciled conflicts between Maxwell's equations the laws of electricity and magnetism and the laws of Newtonian mechanics by introducing changes to the laws of mechanics. The theory developed in this paper later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity.

This paper predicted that, when measured in the frame of a relatively moving observer, a clock carried by a moving body would appear to slow down , and the body itself would contract in its direction of motion. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether —one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time—was superfluous.

Einstein originally framed special relativity in terms of kinematics the study of moving bodies. In , Hermann Minkowski reinterpreted special relativity in geometric terms as a theory of spacetime. Einstein adopted Minkowski's formalism in his general theory of relativity. General relativity GR is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Einstein between and According to it, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of spacetime by those masses.

General relativity has developed into an essential tool in modern astrophysics ; it provides the foundation for the current understanding of black holes , regions of space where gravitational attraction is so strong that not even light can escape. As Einstein later said, the reason for the development of general relativity was that the preference of inertial motions within special relativity was unsatisfactory, while a theory which from the outset prefers no state of motion even accelerated ones should appear more satisfactory.

In that article titled "On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn from It", he argued that free fall is really inertial motion, and that for a free-falling observer the rules of special relativity must apply. This argument is called the equivalence principle. In the same article, Einstein also predicted the phenomena of gravitational time dilation , gravitational redshift and gravitational lensing.

In , Einstein published another article "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light" expanding on the article, in which he estimated the amount of deflection of light by massive bodies. Thus, the theoretical prediction of general relativity could for the first time be tested experimentally. In , Einstein predicted gravitational waves , [ ] [ ] ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as waves , traveling outward from the source, transporting energy as gravitational radiation.

The existence of gravitational waves is possible under general relativity due to its Lorentz invariance which brings the concept of a finite speed of propagation of the physical interactions of gravity with it. By contrast, gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation , which postulates that the physical interactions of gravity propagate at infinite speed.

While developing general relativity, Einstein became confused about the gauge invariance in the theory. He formulated an argument that led him to conclude that a general relativistic field theory is impossible. He gave up looking for fully generally covariant tensor equations and searched for equations that would be invariant under general linear transformations only.

In June , the Entwurf 'draft' theory was the result of these investigations. As its name suggests, it was a sketch of a theory, less elegant and more difficult than general relativity, with the equations of motion supplemented by additional gauge fixing conditions. After more than two years of intensive work, Einstein realized that the hole argument was mistaken [ ] and abandoned the theory in November In , Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to the structure of the universe as a whole.

As observational evidence for a dynamic universe was lacking at the time, Einstein introduced a new term, the cosmological constant , into the field equations, in order to allow the theory to predict a static universe. The modified field equations predicted a static universe of closed curvature, in accordance with Einstein's understanding of Mach's principle in these years.

This model became known as the Einstein World or Einstein's static universe. Following the discovery of the recession of the galaxies by Edwin Hubble in , Einstein abandoned his static model of the universe, and proposed two dynamic models of the cosmos, the Friedmann—Einstein universe of [ ] [ ] and the Einstein—de Sitter universe of In many Einstein biographies, it is claimed that Einstein referred to the cosmological constant in later years as his "biggest blunder", based on a letter George Gamow claimed to have received from him.

The astrophysicist Mario Livio has cast doubt on this claim. In late , a team led by the Irish physicist Cormac O'Raifeartaigh discovered evidence that, shortly after learning of Hubble's observations of the recession of the galaxies, Einstein considered a steady-state model of the universe. For the density to remain constant, new particles of matter must be continually formed in the volume from space.

It thus appears that Einstein considered a steady-state model of the expanding universe many years before Hoyle, Bondi and Gold. General relativity includes a dynamical spacetime, so it is difficult to see how to identify the conserved energy and momentum. Noether's theorem allows these quantities to be determined from a Lagrangian with translation invariance , but general covariance makes translation invariance into something of a gauge symmetry.

The energy and momentum derived within general relativity by Noether 's prescriptions do not make a real tensor for this reason. Einstein argued that this is true for a fundamental reason: the gravitational field could be made to vanish by a choice of coordinates. He maintained that the non-covariant energy momentum pseudotensor was, in fact, the best description of the energy momentum distribution in a gravitational field.

In , Einstein collaborated with Nathan Rosen to produce a model of a wormhole , often called Einstein—Rosen bridges. These solutions cut and pasted Schwarzschild black holes to make a bridge between two patches. Because these solutions included spacetime curvature without the presence of a physical body, Einstein and Rosen suggested that they could provide the beginnings of a theory that avoided the notion of point particles.

However, it was later found that Einstein—Rosen bridges are not stable. In order to incorporate spinning point particles into general relativity, the affine connection needed to be generalized to include an antisymmetric part, called the torsion. This modification was made by Einstein and Cartan in the s. In general relativity, gravitational force is reimagined as curvature of spacetime.

A curved path like an orbit is not the result of a force deflecting a body from an ideal straight-line path, but rather the body's attempt to fall freely through a background that is itself curved by the presence of other masses. A remark by John Archibald Wheeler that has become proverbial among physicists summarizes the theory: Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

The geodesic equation covers the former aspect, stating that freely falling bodies follow lines that are as straight as possible in a curved spacetime. Einstein regarded this as an "independent fundamental assumption" that had to be postulated in addition to the field equations in order to complete the theory. Believing this to be a shortcoming in how general relativity was originally presented, he wished to derive it from the field equations themselves.

Since the equations of general relativity are non-linear, a lump of energy made out of pure gravitational fields, like a black hole, would move on a trajectory which is determined by the Einstein field equations themselves, not by a new law. Accordingly, Einstein proposed that the field equations would determine the path of a singular solution, like a black hole, to be a geodesic.

Both physicists and philosophers have often repeated the assertion that the geodesic equation can be obtained from applying the field equations to the motion of a gravitational singularity , but this claim remains disputed. In a paper, [ ] Einstein postulated that light itself consists of localized particles quanta. Einstein's light quanta were nearly universally rejected by all physicists, including Max Planck and Niels Bohr.

This idea only became universally accepted in , with Robert Millikan 's detailed experiments on the photoelectric effect, and with the measurement of Compton scattering. Einstein concluded that each wave of frequency f is associated with a collection of photons with energy hf each, where h is the Planck constant. He did not say much more, because he was not sure how the particles were related to the wave.

But he did suggest that this idea would explain certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect. Lewis in In , Einstein proposed a model of matter where each atom in a lattice structure is an independent harmonic oscillator. In the Einstein model, each atom oscillates independently—a series of equally spaced quantized states for each oscillator.

Einstein was aware that getting the frequency of the actual oscillations would be difficult, but he nevertheless proposed this theory because it was a particularly clear demonstration that quantum mechanics could solve the specific heat problem in classical mechanics. Peter Debye refined this model. In , Einstein received a description of a statistical model from Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose , based on a counting method that assumed that light could be understood as a gas of indistinguishable particles.

Einstein also published his own articles describing the model and its implications, among them the Bose—Einstein condensate phenomenon that some particulates should appear at very low temperatures. Einstein's sketches for this project may be seen in the Einstein Archive in the library of the Leiden University. Although the patent office promoted Einstein to Technical Examiner Second Class in , he had not given up on academia.

In , he became a Privatdozent at the University of Bern.

Finale carpenter biography of albert einstein

This paper introduced the photon concept and inspired the notion of wave—particle duality in quantum mechanics. Einstein saw this wave—particle duality in radiation as concrete evidence for his conviction that physics needed a new, unified foundation. In a series of works completed from to , Planck reformulated his quantum theory and introduced the idea of zero-point energy in his "second quantum theory".

Soon, this idea attracted the attention of Einstein and his assistant Otto Stern. Assuming the energy of rotating diatomic molecules contains zero-point energy, they then compared the theoretical specific heat of hydrogen gas with the experimental data. The numbers matched nicely. However, after publishing the findings, they promptly withdrew their support, because they no longer had confidence in the correctness of the idea of zero-point energy.

In , at the height of his work on relativity, Einstein published an article in Physikalische Zeitschrift that proposed the possibility of stimulated emission , the physical process that makes possible the maser and the laser. This paper was enormously influential in the later development of quantum mechanics, because it was the first paper to show that the statistics of atomic transitions had simple laws.

Einstein discovered Louis de Broglie 's work and supported his ideas, which were received skeptically at first. In another major paper from this era, Einstein observed that de Broglie waves could explain the quantization rules of Bohr and Sommerfeld. Einstein played a major role in developing quantum theory, beginning with his paper on the photoelectric effect.

However, he became displeased with modern quantum mechanics as it had evolved after , despite its acceptance by other physicists. He was skeptical that the randomness of quantum mechanics was fundamental rather than the result of determinism, stating that God "is not playing at dice". The Bohr—Einstein debates were a series of public disputes about quantum mechanics between Einstein and Niels Bohr , who were two of its founders.

Their debates are remembered because of their importance to the philosophy of science. Einstein never fully accepted quantum mechanics. While he recognized that it made correct predictions, he believed a more fundamental description of nature must be possible. Over the years he presented multiple arguments to this effect, but the one he preferred most dated to a debate with Bohr in Einstein suggested a thought experiment in which two objects are allowed to interact and then moved apart a great distance from each other.

The quantum-mechanical description of the two objects is a mathematical entity known as a wavefunction. But because of what would later be called quantum entanglement , measuring one object would lead to an instantaneous change of the wavefunction describing the other object, no matter how far away it is. Moreover, the choice of which measurement to perform upon the first object would affect what wavefunction could result for the second object.

Einstein reasoned that no influence could propagate from the first object to the second instantaneously fast. Indeed, he argued, physics depends on being able to tell one thing apart from another, and such instantaneous influences would call that into question. Because the true "physical condition" of the second object could not be immediately altered by an action done to the first, Einstein concluded, the wavefunction could not be that true physical condition, only an incomplete description of it.

A more famous version of this argument came in , when Einstein published a paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen that laid out what would become known as the EPR paradox. Then, no matter how far the two particles were separated, a precise position measurement on one particle would imply the ability to predict, perfectly, the result of measuring the position of the other particle.

Likewise, a precise momentum measurement of one particle would result in an equally precise prediction for of the momentum of the other particle, without needing to disturb the other particle in any way. They argued that no action taken on the first particle could instantaneously affect the other, since this would involve information being transmitted faster than light, which is forbidden by the theory of relativity.

They invoked a principle, later known as the "EPR criterion of reality", positing that: If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty i. From this, they inferred that the second particle must have a definite value of both position and of momentum prior to either quantity being measured. But quantum mechanics considers these two observables incompatible and thus does not associate simultaneous values for both to any system.

Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen therefore concluded that quantum theory does not provide a complete description of reality. In , John Stewart Bell carried the analysis of quantum entanglement much further. He deduced that if measurements are performed independently on the two separated particles of an entangled pair, then the assumption that the outcomes depend upon hidden variables within each half implies a mathematical constraint on how the outcomes on the two measurements are correlated.

This constraint would later be called a Bell inequality. Bell then showed that quantum physics predicts correlations that violate this inequality. Consequently, the only way that hidden variables could explain the predictions of quantum physics is if they are "nonlocal", which is to say that somehow the two particles are able to interact instantaneously no matter how widely they ever become separated.

Despite this, and although Einstein personally found the argument in the EPR paper overly complicated, [ ] [ ] that paper became among the most influential papers published in Physical Review. It is considered a centerpiece of the development of quantum information theory. Encouraged by his success with general relativity, Einstein sought an even more ambitious geometrical theory that would treat gravitation and electromagnetism as aspects of a single entity.

In , he described his unified field theory in a Scientific American article titled "On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation". Although most researchers now believe that Einstein's approach to unifying physics was mistaken, his goal of a theory of everything is one to which his successors still aspire. Einstein conducted other investigations that were unsuccessful and abandoned.

These pertain to force , superconductivity , and other research. In addition to longtime collaborators Leopold Infeld , Nathan Rosen , Peter Bergmann and others, Einstein also had some one-shot collaborations with various scientists. In , Owen Willans Richardson predicted that a change in the magnetic moment of a free body will cause this body to rotate.

This effect is a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum and is strong enough to be observable in ferromagnetic materials. These measurements also allow the separation of the two contributions to the magnetization: that which is associated with the spin and with the orbital motion of the electrons. The Einstein-de Haas experiment is the only experiment concived, realized and published by Albert Einstein himself.

It was lost among the museum's holdings and was rediscovered in This absorption refrigerator was then revolutionary for having no moving parts and using only heat as an input. Their invention was not immediately put into commercial production, but the most promising of their patents were acquired by the Swedish company Electrolux. Einstein also invented an electromagnetic pump, [ ] sound reproduction device, [ ] and several other household devices.

While traveling, Einstein wrote daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters Margot and Ilse. The letters were included in the papers bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Margot Einstein permitted the personal letters to be made available to the public, but requested that it not be done until twenty years after her death she died in [ ].

Barbara Wolff, of the Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives , told the BBC that there are about 3, pages of private correspondence written between and Einstein's right of publicity was litigated in in a federal district court in California. Although the court initially held that the right had expired, [ ] that ruling was immediately appealed, and the decision was later vacated in its entirety.

The underlying claims between the parties in that lawsuit were ultimately settled. The right is enforceable, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the exclusive representative of that right. Mount Einstein in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska was named in In , Einstein was named Time 's Person of the Century. In , a survey of the top physicists voted for Einstein as the "greatest physicist ever", while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists gave the top spot to Isaac Newton , with Einstein second.

Physicist Lev Landau ranked physicists from 0 to 5 on a logarithmic scale of productivity and genius, with Newton and Einstein belonging in a "super league", with Newton receiving the highest ranking of 0, followed by Einstein with 0. Physicist Eugene Wigner noted that while John von Neumann had the quickest and acute mind he ever knew, the understanding of Einstein was deeper than von Neumann's, stating that: [ ].

But Einstein's understanding was deeper than even Jancsi von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything so original.

No modern physicist has. The year was labeled the " World Year of Physics ", and was also known as "Einstein Year", in recognition of Einstein's " miracle year " in Einstein became one of the most famous scientific celebrities after the confirmation of his general theory of relativity in In the period before World War II, The New Yorker published a vignette in their "The Talk of the Town" feature saying that Einstein was so well known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory".

Eventually he came to cope with unwanted enquirers by pretending to be someone else: Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein. Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films, plays, and works of music. Time magazine's Frederic Golden wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist's dream come true".

Many popular quotations are often misattributed to him. Einstein received numerous awards and honors, and in , he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. None of the nominations in met the criteria set by Alfred Nobel , so the prize was carried forward and awarded to Einstein in Einsteinium , a synthetic chemical element, was named in his honor in , a few months after his death.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. German-born physicist — For other uses, see Einstein disambiguation and Albert Einstein disambiguation. Princeton, New Jersey , U. See list. Coining the term unified field theory Describing mass—energy equivalence Explaining Brownian motion Explaining gravitational waves Explaining the photoelectric effect Formulating Einstein field equations Introducing Bose—Einstein statistics Introducing the cosmological constant Postulating the Bose—Einstein condensate Proposing the EPR paradox Proposing general relativity Proposing special relativity.

Albert Einstein's voice. This article is part of a series about. Political views Religious views Family Oppenheimer relationship. Childhood, youth and education. See also: Einstein family. Einstein's parents, Hermann and Pauline. Marriages, relationships and children. Resident scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. Main article: Political views of Albert Einstein.

Relationship with Zionism. Religious and philosophical views. Main article: Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein. Thermodynamic fluctuations and statistical physics. Main articles: Statistical mechanics , thermal fluctuations , and statistical physics. Theory of critical opalescence. Main article: Critical opalescence.

Main article: History of special relativity. General relativity and the equivalence principle. Main article: History of general relativity. See also: Theory of relativity and Einstein field equations. Hole argument and Entwurf theory. Main article: Physical cosmology. Energy momentum pseudotensor. Main article: Stress—energy—momentum pseudotensor.

Einstein—Cartan theory. As Einstein supported the cause of the Zionists he took part in a Zionist congress in August in Zurich. Not only due to the political situation in Europe and especially in Germany he had been fighting ever more intensely for pacifism since He wrote and signed numerous appeals and petitions. In summer he began writing with the founder of the psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

Apart from that Einstein took part in many political actions. When Einstein moved to Caputh in , the national socialists were in Germany with Hitler as their leader already on their way to power. What began in with the Hitler putsch in Munich and was lead on in a mass moving war now began to bear fruits. Hitler was announced Reich Chancellor on January 30 in by Hindenburg and so finally came to power.

At this time Einstein was on a lecture journey in the United States. His city flat in Berlin in the Haberlandstrasse 5 was also searched in the middle of April. In July Einstein lost the German citizenship and his fortune was seized. His reaction to what happened in Germany was that he resigned from the Prussian Academy of Sciences on March 28 in by letter, abandoned his German citizenship and cut off all contacts with any German institution he had ever dealt with.

To hold guest lectures in the United States, as he had done in the two years before, Einstein and his wife left Caputh on December 6 in to go from Antwerpen to California by ship on December Einstein sensed the development in Germany but whether he really believed in never returning to Caputh or rather to Germany before his departure is doubtful.

Two examples may prove this theory. Why did Einstein, even in November , buy the garden house in Caputh and why did he negotiate in February from Pasadena with the Prussian Academy of Sciences about a revision for his employment? Also he will often have thought about the people in Caputh who surely have waited for the friendly professor with the childish gleaming eyes and the long hair to return — but in vain.

After Einstein had left Germany forever his summer house went through a changing history. In Einstein was expropriated in favour of Prussia which in sold the house to one third of the estimated value to the municipality of Caputh. In the Soviet military office had instructed the municipality to repair the house for a possible return of Einstein.

But as Einstein had decided to never set a foot on German soil again, the house was given to the municipality. During the time of the GDR it had different tenants. In on the occasion of the th birthday of Einstein the house was reconstructed by the Institute for Preservation of Historical Monuments of the GDR with the help of Konrad Wachsmann and was classified as a historical monument.

From until the opening of the Wall it served as a guest house for the Academy of Sciences. As the reconstruction of was not done appropriately, the first preliminary inspections for a new reconstruction of the house were done by people from monument protection at the end of Inside the house — there are no longer original objects — there is not much anymore that reminds of the big thinker.

The desk in his former study was reconstructed according to information of Konrad Wachsmann who had built the original according to the wishes of Einstein. The little other furniture in the house are in no relation with Einstein. On some of the walls there are photographs that show Einstein in Caputh. In addition to the edificial deficiencies there were also problems with the ownership structure.

Until the final clarification there was a compromise between the Land Brandenburg and the local authority of Caputh about the preliminary use of the summer house. A contract from October stated that the house is available for the local authority of Caputh on weekends and public holidays. The rest of the week it may be used by the foundation Einstein Forum.

The Einstein Forum was founded in and paid for by the Land Brandenburg. It wanted to turn the house into a scientific meeting place. Furthermore an Einstein archive should have its place in the house. The local authority of Caputh thought more about turning it into a kind of museum. The ownership structures are clear. The house now belongs to a community of heirs.

The biggest part belongs to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It is administrated and used by the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. The extensive reconstruction measures have been made possible through the support of the German Bund and the Cornelsen Culture Foundation. In addition to small workshops and cultural events it is planned to open up a room for scientific scholarship holders to allow them to do their interdisciplinary studies there.

Furthermore the house will also be open for visitors on a limited scale. A visit of the summer house in Caputh as well as the participation in guided tours is only possible with advanced reservation. That suited him very well. He lived in Princeton right up to his death in As a Jew, he was very interested in the founding of Israel and took an active role in that.

He was a patent clerk in Bern and worked in the patent office for a number of years from Probably his most productive years are those years when he was a patent clerk. Having said that, he came up with general relativity when he was a professor of physics in Berlin. Also, at the patent office, although he was not known in the academic world, he had some contact with academic physicists like Max Planck who was a key supporter of relativity.

But we should remember that he was always involved with those two worlds. Are there any clues as to where his revelations came from? Did his unconventional background play a part in that? Like many geniuses, he was not particularly successful in his university training. He attended a famous institution—in Zurich—but was always rebelling against his academic education, constantly reading the latest research on his own.

He was not working with other people at all. He was not very successful in his relationships with his university lecturers. He was a rebel and, because he was so passionate about physics, his best ideas really came from his own reading and thinking. One of the most famous ones concerns chasing a light ray. When he was 16 or 17, he imagined whether you could catch up with a light ray and what that would mean.

Yes, to begin with, it did. He had friends who he tried his ideas out on and often they disagreed—quite violently in some cases—and that improved his thinking. At one point, he did have a collaborator who was a mathematician and they published some work on general relativity together. Afterwards, he always published alone. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Einstein published five papers that year. All of them are considered of great value. The paper that Einstein regarded as the most revolutionary of his work in was actually about quantum theory. There was another paper about Brownian motion. He showed that the phenomenon of Brownian motion—which had been known for almost years—was actually due to atoms bombarding particles.

This was considered proof of the atomic theory of matter by his fellow physicists — the first time that atoms had really been proved to exist. This came out of his first paper on relativity and was published at the end of This is the principle that energy and mass are two aspects of the same thing. Yes, and c is the speed of light. Fission was not discovered until later — just before the Second World War , in fact.

Can you talk us through that theory? John Rigden puts it quite well in his book. This theory of relativity led to the concept of space-time which is a key thought in general relativity. General relativity was much more comprehensive, it included gravitation and acceleration. General relativity is what we often see illustrated with a rubber sheet with marbles on it distorting the sheet.

Is that right? The experimental proof of general relativity came only later. Probably the most famous aspect of the experimental proof is the bending of a light-ray by the gravitational field of the sun. The light emitted by distant stars was observed to be bent by the gravitational field of the sun in during an astronomical expedition led by Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer.

After that expedition, physicists started to take general relativity much more seriously. There were other experimental proofs as well, but that was the beginning of the idea that general relativity was correct. Before that, it was unproven and Einstein asked astronomers to go looking for it. Astronomers were able to back up his theory with observations.

So, after we had the proof of general relativity, how was science different? How did the universe look different? What are the implications of that for the way we see the world now? The whole idea of the Big Bang has been explained, to a great extent, in terms of general relativity. This came much later than Einstein of course — he was dead by then.

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