Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,
Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.
I'm your host,
Benjamin Boster,
And today's episode is about Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein,
March 14th,
1879 to April 18th,
1955,
Was a German-born theoretical physicist,
Best known for developing the theory of relativity.
Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory.
His mass-energy equivalence formula,
E equals mc-squared,
Which arises from special relativity,
Has been called the world's most famous equation.
He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics,
And especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
Born in the German Empire,
Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895,
Forsaking his German citizenship the following year.
In 1897,
At the age of 17,
He enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich,
Graduating in 1900.
He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later,
Which he kept for the rest of his life,
And afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern.
In 1905,
He submitted a successful Ph.
D.
Dissertation to the University of Zurich.
In 1914,
He moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin,
Becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1917.
He also became a German citizen again.
In 1933,
While Einstein was visiting the United States,
Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews,
He decided to remain in the U.
S.
And was granted American citizenship in 1940.
On the eve of World War II,
He endorsed a letter to President Franklin D.
Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the U.
S.
Begin similar research,
Later carried out as the Manhattan Project.
In 1905,
Sometimes described as his annus mirabilis,
Miracle year,
He published four groundbreaking papers.
In them,
He outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect,
Explained Brownian motion,
Introduced his special theory of relativity,
And demonstrated that if the special theory is correct,
Mass and energy are equivalent to each other.
In 1915,
He proposed a general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation.
A paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole.
It introduced the cosmological constant and is further regarded as the first step in the field of modern theoretical cosmology.
In 1917,
Einstein wrote a paper which introduced the concepts of spontaneous emission and stimulated emission,
The latter of which is the core mechanism behind the laser and maser and which contained a trove of information that would be beneficial to developments in physics later on,
Such as quantum electrodynamics and quantum optics.
In the middle part of his career,
Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory.
Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation,
In which light consists of particles,
Subsequently called photons.
With physicist Satyendranath Bose,
He laid the groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics.
For much of the last phase of his academic life,
Einstein worked on two endeavors that ultimately proved unsuccessful.
First,
He advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's picture of the world,
Objecting that God does not play dice.
Second,
He attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism.
As a result,
He became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics.
Many things are named after him,
Including the element Einsteinium.
In 1999,
He was named Time's Person of the Century.
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,
In the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire,
On March 14,
1879.
His parents,
Secular Ashkenazi Jews,
Were Hermann Einstein,
A salesman and engineer,
And Pauline Koch.
In 1880,
The family moved to Munich's borough of Ludwig-Vorstadt-Iser-Vorstadt,
Where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J.
Einstein & C.
,
A company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.
When he was very young,
His parents worried that he had a learning disability because he was very slow to learn to talk.
When he was five and sick in bed,
His father brought him a compass.
This sparked his lifelong fascination with electromagnetism.
He realized that something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
Einstein attended St.
Peter's Catholic Elementary School in Munich from the age of five.
When he was eight,
He was transferred to the Leutopold Gymnasium,
Where he received advanced primary and then secondary school education.
In 1894,
Hermann and Jakob's company tendered for a contract to install electric lighting in Munich,
But without success,
They lacked the capital that would have been required to update their technology from direct current to the more efficient alternating current alternative.
The failure of their bid forced them to sell their Munich factory and search for new opportunities elsewhere.
The Einstein family moved to Italy,
First to Milan and a few months later to Pavia,
Where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani.
Einstein,
Then fifteen,
Stayed behind in Munich in order to finish his schooling.
His father wanted him to study electrical engineering,
But he was a fractious pupil who found the gymnasium's regimen and teaching methods far from congenial.
He later wrote that the school's policy of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity.
At the end of December 1894,
A letter from a doctor persuaded the Leutopold's authorities to release him from its care,
And he joined his family in Pavia.
While in Italy as a teenager,
He wrote an essay entitled On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field.
Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age,
And soon acquired the mathematical expertise normally only found in a child several years his senior.
He began teaching himself algebra,
Calculus,
And Euclidean geometry when he was twelve.
He made such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday.
A family tutor,
Max Talmud,
Said that only a short time after he had given the twelve-year-old Einstein a geometry textbook,
The boy had worked through the whole book.
He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics.
Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow.
Einstein recorded that he had mastered integral and differential calculus while still just fourteen.
His love of algebra and geometry was so great that at twelve,
He was already confident that nature could be understood as a mathematical structure.
At thirteen,
When his range of enthusiasms had broadened to include music and philosophy,
Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant's critique of pure reason.
Kant became his favorite philosopher.
According to Talmud,
At the time he was still a child,
Only thirteen years old,
Yet Kant's works,
Incomprehensible to ordinary mortals,
Seemed to be clear to him.
In 1895,
At the age of sixteen,
Einstein sat the entrance examination for the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich,
Switzerland.
He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of a test,
But performed with distinction in physics and mathematics.
On the advice of the polytechnic's principal,
He completed his secondary education at the Argovia and Cantonal School,
A gymnasium,
And Oro,
Switzerland,
Graduating in 1896.
While lodging in Oro with the family of Joost Vindler,
He fell in love with Vindler's daughter,
Marie.
His sister,
Maya,
Later married Vindler's son,
Paul.
In January 1896,
With his father's approval,
Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order to avoid conscription into military service.
The Matura,
Graduation for the successful completion of higher secondary schooling,
Awarded to him in September 1896,
Acknowledged him to have performed well across most of the curriculum,
Allotting him a top grade of six for history,
Physics,
Algebra,
Geometry,
And descriptive geometry.
At seventeen,
He enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Federal Polytechnic School.
He befriended fellow student Marcel Grossmann,
Who would help him there to get by despite his loose study habits,
And later to mathematically underpin his revolutionary insights into physics.
Marie Vindler,
A year older than him,
Took up a teaching post in Olsberg,
Switzerland.
The five other Polytechnic School freshmen following the same course as Einstein included just one woman,
A twenty-year-old Serbian,
Mileva Maric.
Over the next few years,
The pair spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning about topics in physics that the Polytechnic School's lectures did not cover.
In his letters to Maric,
Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more enjoyable than reading a textbook in solitude.
Einstein graduated from the Federal Polytechnic School in 1900,
Duly certified as competent to teach mathematics and physics.
His successful acquisition of Swiss citizenship in February 1901 was not followed by the usual sequel of conscription.
The Swiss authorities deemed him medically unfit for military service.
He found that Swiss schools too appeared to have no use for him,
Failing to offer him a teaching position despite the almost two years that he spent applying for one.
Eventually,
It was with the help of Marcel Grossmann's father that he secured a post in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office as an assistant examiner,
Level 3.
Patent applications that landed on Einstein's desk for his evaluation included ideas for a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter.
His employers were pleased enough with his work to make his position permanent in 1903,
Although they did not think that he should be promoted until he had fully mastered machine technology.
It is conceivable that his labors at the Patent Office had a bearing on his development of his special theory of relativity.
He arrived at his revolutionary ideas about space,
Time,
And light through thought experiments about the transmissions of signals and the synchronization of clocks,
Matters which also figured in some of the inventions submitted to him for assessment.
In 1902,
Einstein and some friends whom he had met in Bern formed a group that held regular meetings to discuss science and philosophy.
Their choice of a name for their club,
The Olympia Academy,
Was an ironic comment upon its far-from-Olympian status.
Sometimes they were joined by Marich,
Who limited her participation in the proceedings to careful listening.
The thinkers whose works they reflected upon included Henri Poincaré,
Ernst Mach,
And David Hume,
All of whom significantly influenced Einstein's own subsequent ideas and beliefs.
Einstein's first paper,
Conclusions Drawn from the Phenomena of Capillarity,
In which he proposed a model of intermolecular attraction that he afterwards disavowed as worthless,
Was published in the journal Annalen der Physik in 1901.
His 24-page doctoral dissertation also addressed the topic in molecular physics.
Titled A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions and dedicated to his friend Marcel Grossmann,
It was completed on April 30,
1905 and approved by Professor Alfred Kleine of the University of Zurich three months later.
Einstein was formally awarded his Ph.
D.
On January 15,
1906.
Four other pieces of work that Einstein completed in 1905 his famous papers on the photoelectric effect,
Brownian motion,
His special theory of relativity,
And the equivalence of mass and energy have led to the year being celebrated as an Annus Mirabilis for physics,
Akin to the miracle year of 1666 when Isaac Newton experienced his great epiphanies.
The publications deeply impressed Einstein's contemporaries.
Einstein's sabbatical as a civil servant approached its end in 1908 when he secured a junior teaching position at the University of Bern.
In 1909 a lecture on relativistic electrodynamics that he gave at the University of Zurich,
Much admired by Alfred Kleiner,
Led to Zurich's luring him away from Bern and Einstein was a newly created associate professorship.
Promotion to a full professorship followed in April 1911 when he took up a chair at the German Charles Ferdinand University in Prague,
A move which required him to become an Austrian citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Which was not completed.
His time in Prague saw him producing 11 research papers.
From October 30th to November 3rd,
1911,
Einstein attended the Solvay Conference on Physics.
In July 1912 he returned to his alma mater,
The ETH Zurich,
To take up a chair in theoretical physics.
His teaching activities there centered on thermodynamics and analytical mechanics and his research interests included the molecular theory of heat,
Continuum mechanics,
And the development of a relativistic theory of gravitation.
In his work on the latter topic,
He was assisted by his friend Marcel Grossmann,
Whose knowledge of the kind of mathematics required was greater than his own.
In the spring of 1913,
Two German visitors,
Max Planck and Walter Nernst,
Called upon Einstein in Zurich in the hope of persuading him to relocate to Berlin.
They offered him membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences,
The directorship of the planned Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics,
And a chair at the humble University of Berlin that would allow him to pursue his research,
Supported by a professorial salary,
But with no teaching duties to burden him.
He duly joined the Academy on July 24th,
1913 and moved into an apartment in the Berlin district of Dahlem on April 1st,
1914.
He was installed in his humble university position shortly thereafter.
The outbreak of the First World War in July 1914 marked the beginning of Einstein's gradual estrangement from the nation of his birth.
When the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three was published in October 1914,
A document signed by a host of prominent German thinkers that justified Germany's belligerence,
Einstein was one of the few German intellectuals to distance himself from it and sign the alternative,
Ironic Manifesto to the Europeans instead.
However,
This expression of his doubts about German policy did not prevent him from being elected to a two-year term as president of the German Physical Society in 1916.
When the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics opened its doors the following year,
Its foundation delayed because of the war,
Einstein was appointed its first director,
Just as Planck and Nernst had promised.
Einstein was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1920 and a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1921.
In 1922 he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
At this point some physicists still regarded the general theory of relativity skeptically and the Nobel citation displayed a degree of doubt even about the work on photoelectricity that it acknowledged.
It did not assent Einstein's notion of the particulate nature of light which only won over the entire scientific community when S.
N.
Bose derived the Planck spectrum in 1924.
That same year Einstein was elected an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Britain's closest equivalent of the Nobel Award,
The Royal Society's Copley Medal,
Was not hung around Einstein's neck until 1925.
He was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 1930.
Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy in March 1933.
His accomplishments in Berlin had included the completion of the general theory of relativity proving the Einstein-De Haas effect,
Contributing to the quantum theory of radiation and the development of Bose-Einstein statistics.
In 1907 Einstein reached a milestone on his long journey from his special theory of relativity to a new idea of gravitation with the formulation of his equivalence principle which asserts that an observer in a box falling freely in a gravitational field would be unable to find any evidence that the field exists.
In 1911 he used the principle to estimate the amount by which a ray of light from a distant star would be bent by the gravitational pull of the Sun as it passed close to the Sun's photosphere,
That is,
The Sun's apparent surface.
He reworked his calculation in 1913 having now found a way to model gravitation with the Riemann curvature tensor of a non-Euclidean four-dimensional spacetime.
By the fall of 1915 his reimagining of the mathematics of gravitation in terms of Riemannian geometry was complete and he applied his new theory not just to the behavior of the Sun as a gravitational lens but also to another astronomical phenomenon the precession of the perihelion of Mercury a slow drift in the point in Mercury's elliptical orbit at which it approaches the Sun most closely.
A total eclipse of the Sun that took place on May 29th,
1919 provided an opportunity to put his theory of gravitational lensing to the test and observations performed by Sir Arthur Eddington yielded results that were consistent with his calculations.
Eddington's work was reported at length in newspapers around the world.
On November 7th,
1919,
For example,
The leading British newspaper,
The Times,
Printed a banner headline that read Revolution in Science New Theory of the Universe Newtonian Ideas Overthrown With Eddington's eclipse observations widely reported not just in academic journals but by the popular press as well Einstein became perhaps the world's first celebrity scientist a genius who had shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the 17th century.
Einstein began his new life as an intellectual icon in America where he arrived on April 2nd,
1921.
He was welcomed to New York City by Mayor John Francis Hyland and then spent three weeks giving lectures and attending receptions.
He spoke several times at Columbia University and Princeton and in Washington he visited the White House with representatives of the National Academy of Sciences.
He returned to Europe via London where he was a guest of the popular statesman Viscount Haldane.
He used his time in the British capital to meet several people prominent in British scientific,
Political or intellectual life and to deliver a lecture at King's College.
In July 1921 he published an essay My First Impression of the USA in which he sought to sketch the American character much as had Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America,
1835.
He wrote of his transatlantic hosts in highly approving terms What strikes a visitor is the joyous,
Positive attitude to life.
The American is friendly,
Self-confident,
Optimistic and without envy.
