Albert Einstein
14 Mar 1879 – 9 Jul 195579 items
physicsscienceFrom Ulm to Princeton
In 1905 a patent clerk of twenty-six, with no university post and no laboratory, sent Annalen der Physik four papers that said light comes in quanta, atoms are real, time depends on who measures it, and mass is energy. Ten years later in Berlin he replaced Newton’s gravity. He spent his last twenty-two years in Princeton, a refugee and the most famous scientist in the world, who had signed the letter that first warned Roosevelt of the bomb and, a week before he died, a manifesto against it.
How it is built
The periods follow where he worked: Munich, Aarau, the Zurich Polytechnic, the Bern patent office, three professorships in five years, Berlin and Princeton. Two of them zoom in to single days. In the miracle year, each 1905 paper appears twice, on the day Annalen der Physik received it and on the day it came out. In November 1915 he read general relativity to the Prussian Academy on four Thursdays running. His private life is here too, plainly: Mileva Marić, the daughter nobody traced, the sons, and Elsa. Every date is Gregorian.
Threads to follow
relativity: from a beam of light at sixteen to the field equations and the eclipsequanta: light quanta, Bose, dice and the EPR paradoxatoms: the thesis and Brownian motion, proof of moleculesfamily: parents, Mileva, Lieserl, the boys and Elsapolitics: citizenships, Zionism, pacifism and exilenuclear: from E = mc² to the letter and the manifesto
Newton, forgive me; you found the only way which, in your age, was just about possible for a man of highest thought and creative power. — Autobiographical Notes, 1949
Items
Albert Einstein is born in Ulm
His father shows him a compass
The “holy geometry booklet”
Quits school and follows his family to Italy
Fails the Polytechnic’s entrance exam
Gives up his German citizenship
Graduates; Mileva does not
Lieserl is born in Novi Sad
The Olympia Academy
His father dies in Milan
Marries Mileva Marić
Hans Albert is born
Annalen receives the light-quantum paper
Finishes his doctoral thesis
Annalen receives the Brownian-motion paper
“Very revolutionary”: a letter to Habicht
The light-quantum paper is published
Annalen receives “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”
The Brownian-motion paper is published
Submits the thesis in Zurich
“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” is published
Annalen receives the E = mc² paper
The E = mc² paper is published
“The happiest thought of my life”
Eduard is born
Mileva takes the boys back to Zurich
The eclipse the war cancelled
A manifesto for Europe, with four signatures
4 November: back to general covariance
11 November: an addendum
18 November: Mercury’s orbit
25 November: the field equations
The cosmological constant
Divorce, with a Nobel Prize promised in advance
Eddington photographs the eclipse on Príncipe
Crommelin and Davidson photograph the eclipse at Sobral
Marries Elsa
“Lights all askew in the heavens”
A rally against relativity in the Philharmonie
Inaugural lecture at Leiden
“Subtle is the Lord” at Princeton
Walther Rathenau is murdered
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921
First lecture in Tokyo
“How I created the theory of relativity”
The Nobel lecture, in Gothenburg
A letter from Bose in Dacca
“He does not throw dice”
Arguing with Bohr at the fifth Solvay Conference
A summer house in Caputh
With Hubble on Mount Wilson
Leaves Germany for the last time
Hands in his passport
His last speech in Europe, at the Albert Hall
The EPR paper
112 Mercer Street
Elsa dies
Signs the letter to Roosevelt
Becomes an American citizen
Hiroshima
The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists
Mileva dies in Zurich
Offered the presidency of Israel
Signs the Russell–Einstein Manifesto
Death in Princeton
The manifesto is launched at Caxton Hall