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Albert Einstein (Biography)

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Popularity: 3 Vote:	A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
Popularity: 4 Vote:	A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
Popularity: 0 Vote:	After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike-and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Popularity: 8 Vote:	Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Force always attracts men of low morality.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.
Popularity: 5 Vote:	Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	God always takes the simplest way.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	God does not play dice.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Popularity: -3 Vote:	He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
Popularity: 6 Vote:	He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
Popularity: 0 Vote:	How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the of the inquiring constructive mind.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
Popularity: 6 Vote:	I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!
Popularity: 0 Vote:	I have just got a new theory of eternity.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	I made one great mistake in my life - when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.
Popularity: -6 Vote:	I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	I want to know God's thoughts... the rest are details.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Popularity: 2 Vote:	If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Information is not knowledge.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
Popularity: -1 Vote:	It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
Popularity: 7 Vote:	It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Popularity: 5 Vote:	It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	Love is a better teacher than duty.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
Popularity: -3 Vote:	Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Popularity: -3 Vote:	Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Never lose a holy curiosity.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Popularity: -3 Vote:	Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for every one, best both for the body and the mind.
Popularity: 5 Vote:	Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like anhour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.THAT'S relativity.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Popularity: -3 Vote:	The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The environment is everything that isn't me.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The faster you go, the shorter you are.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
Popularity: 5 Vote:	The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The only real valuable thing is intuition.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	The only source of knowledge is experience.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
Popularity: -2 Vote:	The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Popularity: 7 Vote:	The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
Popularity: -4 Vote:	The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation.
Popularity: 6 Vote:	They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Popularity: 4 Vote:	We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.
Popularity: 6 Vote:	We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Popularity: 0 Vote:	We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	When the solution is simple, God is answering.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Popularity: 3 Vote:	Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Popularity: -1 Vote:	Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
Popularity: 1 Vote:	You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
Popularity: 2 Vote:	You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Popularity: 5 Vote:	You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

Biography

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He proposed the theory of relativity and also made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and "for his services to Theoretical Physics".

After his general theory of relativity was formulated in November 1915, Einstein became world-famous, an unusual achievement for a scientist. In his later years, his fame exceeded that of any other scientist in history, and in popular culture, Einstein has become a byword for great intelligence or even genius.

Einstein himself was deeply concerned with the social impact of scientific discovery. An individual of monumental intellectual achievement, he remains the most influential theoretical physicist of the modern era. Einstein's reverence for all creation, his belief in the grandeur, beauty, and sublimity of the universe (the primary source of inspiration in science), his awe for the scheme that is manifested in the material universe - all of these show through in his work and philosophy. To this day Einstein receives popular recognition unprecedented for a scientist.

Biography

Youth and college

Einstein was born at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany; about 100 km east of Stuttgart. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a featherbed salesman who later ran an electrochemical works, and Pauline, whose maiden name was Koch. They were married in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. The family was Jewish (and non-observant); Albert attended a Catholic elementary school and, at the insistence of his mother, was given violin lessons.

At age five, his father showed him a pocket compass, and Einstein realized that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience as one of the most revelatory of his life. Though he built models and mechanical devices for fun, he was considered a slow learner, possibly due to dyslexia, simple shyness, or the significantly rare and unusual structure of his brain (examined after his death). He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect. Another, more recent, theory about his mental development is that he had Asperger's syndrome, a condition related to autism.

Einstein began to learn mathematics around age twelve. There is a recurring rumor that he failed mathematics later in his education, but this is untrue; a change in the way grades were assigned caused confusion years later. Two of his uncles fostered his intellectual interests during his late childhood and early adolescence by suggesting and providing books on science and mathematics.

In 1894, following the failure of Hermann's electrochemical business, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia, Italy (near Milan). During this year, Einstein's first scientific work was written (called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields"). Albert remained behind alone in Munich lodgings to finish school, completing only one term before leaving school in spring 1895, without telling his parents, a year and a half before final examinations, before rejoining his family in Pavia. He convinced the school to let him go with a medical note from a friendly doctor, but this meant he had no secondary-school certificate.

Despite excelling in the mathematics and science portion, his failure of the liberal arts portion of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich) entrance exam the following year was a setback; he was sent by his family to Aarau, Switzerland, to finish secondary school, where he received his diploma in 1896 September. During this time he lodged with Professor Jost Winteler's family and became enamoured with Marie, their daughter, his first sweetheart. Albert's sister Maja was to later marry their son Paul, and his friend Michele Besso married their other daughter Anna. Einstein subsequently enrolled at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in October and moved to Zurich, while Marie moved to Olsberg for a teaching post. The same year, he renounced his Württemberg citizenship, becoming stateless.

In the spring of 1896, the Serbian Mileva Marić (an acquaintance of Nikola Tesla) started initially as a medical student at the University of Zurich, but after a term switched to the same section as Einstein, and as the only woman that year, to study for the same diploma. Einstein's relationship with Mileva developed into romance over the next few years.

In 1900, he was granted a teaching diploma by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule and was accepted as a Swiss citizen in 1901. During this time Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Mileva. He and Mileva had a daughter Lieserl, born in January 1902. Lieserl, at the time, was considered illegitimate because the parents were unwed.

Work and doctorate

Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post, mostly because his brashness as a young man had apparently irritated most of his professors. The father of a classmate helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office (http://www.ipi.ch/E/institut/i1.shtm) in 1902. There, Einstein judged the worth of inventors' patent applications for devices that required a knowledge of physics to understand. He also learned how to discern the essence of applications despite sometimes poor descriptions, and was taught by the director how "to express myself correctly". He occasionally rectified their design errors while evaluating the practicality of their work.

Einstein married Mileva Marić on January 6, 1903. Einstein's marriage to Marić, who was a mathematician, was both a personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred to Mileva as "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am". Ronald W. Clark, a biographer of Einstein, claimed that Einstein depended on the distance that existed in his and Mileva's marriage in order to have the solitude necessary to accomplish his work. Abram Joffe, a Soviet physicist who knew Einstein, in an obituary of Einstein, wrote, "The author of [the papers of 1905] was ... a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern, Einstein-Marić" and this has recently been taken as evidence of a collaborative relationship. However, according to Alberto A. Martínez of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University, Joffe only ascribed authorship to Einstein, as he believed that it was a Swiss custom at the time to append the spouse's last name to the husband's name.(http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/17/4/2) Whatever the truth, the extent of her influence on Einstein's work is a highly controversial and debated question.

On May 14, 1904, the couple's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born. In 1904, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent. He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "A new determination of molecular dimensions" ("Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen") in 1905.

That same year, he wrote four articles that provided the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to which he could refer or many scientific colleagues with whom he could discuss the theories. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes. Only the paper on the photoelectric effect would win one. This is ironic, not only because Einstein is far better-known for relativity, but also because the photoelectric effect is a quantum phenomenon, and Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would take. What makes these papers remarkable is that, in each case, Einstein boldly took an idea from theoretical physics to its logical consequences and managed to explain experimental results that had baffled scientists for decades.

He submitted these papers to the "Annalen der Physik". They are commonly referred to as the "Annus Mirabilis Papers" (from Annus mirabilis, Latin for 'year of wonders'). The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) plans to commemorate the 100th year of the publication of Einstein's extensive work in 1905 as the 'World Year of Physics 2005'.

Photoelectric effect

The first paper, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", ("Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt") proposed the idea of "energy quanta" (which underlies the concept of what is now called photons) and showed how it could be used to explain such phenomena as the photoelectric effect. The idea of energy quanta was motivated by Max Planck's earlier derivation of the law of black-body radiation by assuming that luminous energy could only be absorbed or emitted in discrete amounts, called quanta. Einstein showed that, by assuming that light actually consisted of discrete packets, he could explain the mysterious photoelectric effect.

The idea of light quanta contradicted the wave theory of light that followed naturally from James Clerk Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic behavior and, more generally, the assumption of infinite divisibility of energy in physical systems. Even after experiments showed that Einstein's equations for the photoelectric effect were accurate, his explanation was not universally accepted. However, by 1921, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize and his work on photoelectricity was mentioned by name in the award citation, most physicists thought that the equation (hf = Φ + E) was correct and light quanta were possible.

The theory of light quanta was a strong indication of wave-particle duality, the concept, used as a fundamental principle by the creators of quantum mechanics, that physical systems can display both wave-like and particle-like properties. A complete picture of the photoelectric effect was only obtained after the maturity of quantum mechanics.

Brownian motion

His second article in 1905, named "On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", ("Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen") covered his study of Brownian motion. Using the then-controversial kinetic theory of fluids, it established that the phenomenon, which still lacked a satisfactory explanation decades after it was first observed, provided empirical evidence for the reality of atoms. It also lent credence to statistical mechanics, which was also controversial at the time.

Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists hotly debated whether atoms were real entities. Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school, later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to a belief in atoms by Einstein's complete explanation of Brownian motion.

Special relativity

Einstein's third paper that year was called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ("Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper"), was published on June 30, 1905. While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to Mileva about "our work on relative motion", and this has led some to ask whether Mileva played a part in its development. This paper introduced the special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity.

Special relativity solved the puzzle that had been apparent since the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had shown that light waves did not travel through a medium unlike other known waves which require a medium such as water or air. The speed of light was thus fixed, and not relative to the movement of the observer. This was impossible under Newtonian classical mechanics.

It had already been conjectured by George Fitzgerald in 1894 that the Michelson-Morley result could be accounted for if moving bodies were squashed in the direction of their motion. Indeed, some of the paper's core equations, the Lorentz transforms, had been introduced in 1903 by Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, giving mathematical form to Fitzgerald's conjecture. But Einstein revealed the underlying reasons for this geometrical oddity.

His explanation arose from two axioms: Galileo's old idea that the laws of nature should be the same for all observers that move with constant speed relative to each other, and the rule that the speed of light is the same for every observer. Special relativity has several striking consequences, because the absolute concepts of time and distance are rejected. The theory came to be called the "special theory of relativity" to distinguish it from his later theory of general relativity, which considers all observers to be equivalent.

The theory abounded with paradoxes, and appeared to make little sense, landing Einstein substantial ridicule, but he eventually managed to work out the apparent contradictions and solve the problems.

Energy equivalence

A fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", ("Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?") published late in 1905, showed one further deduction from relativity's axioms, the famous equation that the energy of a body at rest (E) equals its mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared:

Einstein considered this equation to be of paramount importance because it showed that a massive particle possesses an energy, the "rest energy", distinct from its classical kinetic and potential energies. Nevertheless, most scientists simply regarded the finding as a curiosity until the 1930s.

The mass-energy relation can be used to predict how much energy will be released or consumed by chemical and nuclear reactions; one simply measures the mass of all constituents and products and multiplies the difference by c. The result shows how much energy will be released or consumed, usually in the form of light or heat. If applied to certain nuclear reactions, the equation shows that an extraordinarily large amount of energy will be released, much larger than in the combustion of chemical explosives, where the mass difference is hardly measurable at all. This explains why nuclear weapons produce such phenomenal amounts of energy.

According to Umberto Bartocci (University of Perugia historian of mathematics), the famous equation was first published two years earlier by Olinto De Pretto, an industrialist from Vicenza, Italy, though this is not generally regarded as true or important by mainstream historians. Even if De Pretto introduced the formula, it was Einstein who connected it with the theory of relativity.

Middle years

In 1906, Einstein was promoted to technical examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was licensed in Bern, Switzerland, as a Privatdozent (unsalaried teacher at a university). Einstein's second son, Eduard, was born on July 28, 1910.

In 1911, Einstein became first associate professor at the University of Zurich, and shortly afterwards full professor at the (German) University of Prague, only to return the following year to Zurich in order to become full professor at the ETH Zurich. At that time, he worked closely with the mathematician Marcel Grossman. In 1912, Einstein started to refer to time as the fourth dimension.

In 1914, just before the start of World War I, Einstein settled in Berlin as professor at the local university and became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He took German citizenship. His pacifism and Jewish origins irritated German nationalists. After he became world-famous, nationalistic hatred of him grew and for the first time he was the subject of an organized campaign to discredit his theories.

From 1914 to 1933, he served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and it was during this time that he was awarded his Nobel Prize and made his most groundbreaking discoveries.

Einstein divorced Mileva on February 14, 1919, and married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal (née Einstein: Löwenthal was the surname of her first husband, Max) on June 2, 1919. Elsa was Albert's first cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally). She was three years older than Albert, and had nursed him to health after he had suffered a partial nervous breakdown combined with a severe stomach ailment. There were no children from this marriage.

The fate of Albert and Mileva's first child, Lieserl, is unknown: some believe she died in infancy, while others believe she was given out for adoption. Eduard was institutionalized for schizophrenia and died in an asylum, while Hans became a professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, having little interaction with his father.

In 1922, Einstein and his wife Elsa boarded the SS Kitano Maru bound for Japan. The trip also took them to other ports including Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

General relativity

In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described his theory of general relativity. The final lecture climaxed with his introduction of an equation that replaced Newton's law of gravity. This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time.

The theory provided the foundation for the study of cosmology and gave scientists the tools for understanding many features of the universe that were discovered well after Einstein's death. A truly revolutionary theory, general relativity has so far passed every test posed to it — unlike many other scientific theories — and become a method of perceiving all of physics.

Initially, scientists were skeptical because the theory was derived by mathematical reasoning and rational analysis, not by experiment or observation. But in 1919, predictions made using the theory were confirmed by Arthur Eddington's measurements (during a solar eclipse), of how much the light emanating from a star was bent by the Sun's gravity when it passed close to the Sun. On November 7, The Times reported the confirmation, cementing Einstein's fame.

However, many scientists were still unconvinced for various reasons, ranging from disagreement with Einstein's interpretation of the experiments, to not being able to tolerate the absence of an absolute frame of reference. In Einstein's view, many of them simply could not understand the mathematics involved. Einstein's public fame which followed the 1919 article created resentment among these scientists, some of which lasted well into the 1930s.

In the early 1920s, Einstein was the lead figure in a famous weekly physics colloquium at the University of Berlin. On March 30, 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture on his new theory. In the same year, he was finally awarded the Nobel Prize. Though he is now most famous for his work on relativity, it was for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the Prize, because his work on relativity was still disputed and the Nobel committee decided that citing his less-contested theory would be a better political move.

The "Copenhagen" interpretation

Einstein's relationship with quantum physics was quite remarkable. He was the first to say that quantum theory was revolutionary. His idea of light quanta, now known as photons, marked a landmark break with the classical physics. In 1909, Einstein presented his first paper to a gathering of physicists and told them that they must find some way to understand waves and particles together.

In the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new quantum mechanics, Einstein balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations because it settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical behavior. Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available, but he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e., more deterministic. He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things", the belief which had led to his successes with atoms, photons, and gravity

In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein made a remark that is now famous:
To this, Niels Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on quantum theory retorted, "Stop telling God what He must do!" The Bohr-Einstein debates on foundational aspects on quantum mechanics happened during the Solvay conferences.

It was not a rejection of probabilistic theories per se—Einstein had used statistical analysis in his work on Brownian motion and photoelectricity, and in papers published before the miraculous year 1905, and had even discovered Gibbs ensembles on his own—but he believed that, at the core, physical reality behaved deterministically. Experimental evidence against this belief has been found only much later with the discovery of Bell's Theorem and Bell's inequality. However, there is still space for controversial discussions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Bose-Einstein statistics

In 1924, Einstein received a short paper from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose describing light as a gas of photons and asking for Einstein's assistance in publication. Einstein realized that the same statistics could be applied to atoms, and published an article in German (then the lingua franca of physics) which described Bose's model and explained its implications. Bose-Einstein statistics now describe any assembly of these indistinguishable particles known as bosons. The Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon was predicted in the 1920s by Bose and Einstein, based on Bose's work on the statistical mechanics of photons, which was then formalized and generalized by Einstein.

Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in the development of the Quantum Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model—although he realized that this was less significant than the Bose-Einstein model, and declined to have his name included on the paper.

Later years

Einstein and former student Leó Szilárd co-invented a unique type of refrigerator (usually called the Einstein Refrigerator) in 1926. (http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/sum98/einsrefr.html) (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/pulse/epulse/pulse01101_6.htm) On November 11, 1930, was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd. The patent covered a thermodynamic refrigeration cycle providing cooling with no moving parts, at a constant pressure, with only heat as an input. The refrigeration cycle used ammonia, butane, and water.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, expressions of hatred for Einstein reached new levels. He was accused by the National Socialist regime of creating "Jewish physics" in contrast with Deutsche Physik—German or "Aryan physics". Nazi physicists (notably including the Nobel laureates Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard) continued the attempts to discredit his theories and to blacklist politically those German physicists who taught them (such as Werner Heisenberg). Einstein renounced his German citizenship and fled to the United States, where he was given permanent residency. He accepted a position at the newly-founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton Township, New Jersey. He became an American citizen in 1940, though he still retained Swiss citizenship.

Einstein spent the last fourteen years of his life trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism, giving a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics. He was looking for a classical unification of gravity and electromagnetism.

Institute for Advanced Study

His work at the Institute for Advanced Study focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he referred to as the Unified Field Theory. He attempted to construct a model, under the appropriate conditions, which described all of the fundamental forces as different manifestations of a single force. His attempt was in a way doomed to failure because the strong and weak nuclear forces were not understood independently until around 1970, fifteen years after Einstein's death. Einstein's goal survives in the current drive for unification of the forces, embodied most notably by string theory.

Generalized theory

Einstein began to form a generalized theory of gravitation with the universal law of gravitation and the electromagnetic force in his first attempt to demonstrate the unification and simplification of the fundamental forces. In 1950, he described his work in a Scientific American article. Einstein was guided by a belief in a single statistical measure of variance for the entire set of physical laws, and he investigated the similar properties of the electromagnetic and gravity forces, as they are infinite and obey inverse-square laws.

Einstein's generalized theory of gravitation is a universal mathematical approach to field theory. He investigated reducing the different phenomena by the process of logic to something already known or evident. Einstein tried to unify gravity and electromagnetism in a way that also led to a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics.

Einstein assumed a four-dimensional space-time continuum expressed in axioms represented by five component vectors. Particles appear in his research as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. Einstein treated subatomic particles as objects embedded in the unified field, influencing it and existing as an essential constituent of the unified field but not of it. Einstein also investigated a natural generalization of symmetrical tensor fields, treating the combination of two parts of the field as being a natural procedure of the total field and not the symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts separately. He researched a way to delineate the equations and systems to be derived from a variational principle.

Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation and was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts.

Final years

In 1948, Einstein served on the original committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis University. A portrait of Einstein was taken by Yousuf Karsh on February 11 of that same year. In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he take the post of second president. He declined the offer, and remains the only United States citizen to ever be offered a position as a foreign head of state. On March 30, 1953, Einstein released a revised unified field theory.

He died in his sleep at a hospital in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. The only person present at his deathbed, a hospital nurse, said that just before his death he mumbled several words in German that she did not understand. He was cremated without ceremony on the same day he died at Trenton, New Jersey, in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.

His brain was preserved in a jar by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein. Harvey found nothing unusual with his brain, but in 1999 further analysis by a team at McMaster University revealed that his parietal operculum region was missing and, to compensate, his inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/371698.stm). The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.

...(more on Wikipedia)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Albert Einstein".

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