Einstein, Albert

(1879-1955)

   Born in Ulm, Germany, and educated in Munich and Zurich, Switzerland, Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity published in a series of articles in the Annals of Physics in 1905. This was the most revolutionary development in physics since Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity in the 17th century. From 1913 until 1933 Einstein was the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin, Germany. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1919 and published The Principle of Relativity in 1923. Jewish by origin and a committed pacifist, Einstein was forced to emigrate when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, and he secured an appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1939, he wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt expressing his concern that Germany might develop nuclear weapons first and urging the president to ensure that the United States prevented such an act. This provided the incentive for the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb in the United States. Einstein spent the rest of his career trying to establish the relationship between gravitation and electromagnetism.