"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."--Albert Einstein

by Paul A. Schons

Originally published by the Germanic-American Institute in March, 2000

Time Magazine's "Person of the Century", Albert Einstein, was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879  The next year the family moved to Munich where Albert would grow up.  He completed his early schooling in Munich.  He would continue his studies in Zürich at the Federal Polytechnic Academy.  Thereafter he worked for a short time as a mathematics teacher and then became an examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern. He gained a Ph.D. from the Universiy of Zürich.

After early publications on molecular motion and the nature of light he began the development of his theory of relativity. He concluded that the speed of light is constant and that time and motion are relative to the observer. He developed his famous equation E=mc² with his paper "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Erergieinhalt abhängig?" (Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon its Energy Content?") In 1912, based on his growing reputation, he secured a position teaching at the University of Zürich.

The theory of relativity advanced Einstein to national and then international prominence and is the theory for which Einstein is most widely recognized todayJalthough many who know of the theory do not understand what it is about.  In fact, Einstein himself said in later life concerning his theory, "Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore."  (Although he had been a mathematics teacher, Einstein often joked about his lacks in the area of mathematics.  He once addressed those who find mathematics difficult, "Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I assure you that mine are greater."

 In 1914 Einstein moved to Berlin with his wife Mileva and their two sons, Albert and Edward. In Berlin he engaged primarily in research at the Prussian Academy of Sciences with only limited teaching duties. Due to a number of factors, his marriage ended in divorce during this period. Also during this period as a part of his continuing development of the general theory of relativity, he concluded that Newton had been wrong regarding gravity. Gravity, he was convinced, was not an attractive force, but rather a curved field in the space-time continuum.

Gravitation as a curved field and as a part of space-time is a bit difficult to envision in that it seems to contradict common sense. But then, Einstein maintained that common sense is essentially little more than the collection of prejudices acquired by about age eighteen.

After the Royal Society of London had conducted experiments in 1919 which they said proved the theory of relativity, Einstein's international reputation grew to tremendous proportions. In Germany, though, due to his long standing commitment to pacifism and his Jewish heritage (although Judaism played only a very minor role in his personal life), he was regarded with increasing distrust and eventually hatred by the growing right wing of political activism in his native land.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler became the German chancellor. Einstein renounced his German citizenship and, in the company of his second wife, Elsa, left Germany, never to return. He accepted a research position in Princeton, New Jersey and spent the remainder of his life in America.

Especially in the early years after his immigration, Einstein acquired the heroic image of'probably the smartest man in the world'. He was a bit amused by this from time to time, saying at one point, "The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler."

There is still today a wide-spread belief that Einstein developed the atomic bomb for the United States. He did not. At one point, based on reports of the work in nuclear physics by Hahn, Strasser and Meitner at the University of Berlin, he did send a warning to President Roosevelt that such a bomb might theoretically be possible, although he tended to doubt the feasibility. He did not learn of the success of America's bomb until one ignited over Japan in 1945. (Today we know that Germany too had an atomic bomb project, but was not yet able to build one by the time the war ended.)

Einstein was regarded during his lifetime as one of the most intelligent people in history and still has that reputation to great extent. Of his method of developing his revolutionary theories, he explained, "These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward." Einstein with his great mind was never enchanted with the educational systems he had encountered during his lifetime. At one point he remarked, "It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry." On another occasion he quipped, "Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything learned in school."