PHYSICAL VIBRANT TIMELINE

Albert Einstein

1879-1902

The beginning of Albert Einstein's life

1905

His first theories

1905

Special theory of relativity

1905

The Einstein family

1907

how to prove this theory ?

an incomplete theory

1911

Albert Einstein

1912

The help of astromers and astrophysicists

1914

A member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences

1914

Mission to prove general theory of relativity failed

1914-1918

Einstein, a pacifist man

1915 -1916

Is general theory of reltivity false ?

1922

1922-1955

Nobel prize and end of his life

The final equation

1919

divorce and marriage

In 1912, Einstein published the prediction that light would be bent around the Sun. Then he turned to astronomers and the astrophysicists. A young assistant named Erwin Finley Freundlich at the Berlin Observatory agreed to take the picture during a total solar eclipse. They met in Zurich and they realized that the next total solar eclipse will occur in the Crimea (Russia) on the 21st of August 1914. They also contacted William Wallace Campbell an American specialized in the photography of eclipses.

The help of astronomers and astrophysicists

Opportunity was knocking on Einstein’s door. His original mentor, Max Planck was asked by the king of Germany to recruit the best scientists for a new Institution in Berlin and he recommended Albert Einstein who accepted the proposition. Consequently, In april 1914, Einstein moved to Berlin to become a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.Meanwhile his relationship with his wife was deteriorating as he was spending much time with his cousin Elsa.

A member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences

In 1907, Einstein agreed to write a new article explaining special relativity, but when he re-examined his theory he found it seriously limited. Indeed it is called special relativity for a reason and that was because it really only dealt with moving at constant speeds. In other words Einstein’s theory only applied to a special case, an object moving in one direction at a constant speed. But he wanted to understand the real world and include the acceleration in his theory, a theory that would work in all kinds of situations, with everything in the universe and that includes the invisible force called gravity. He wanted to expand his special theory of relativity to a general theory of relativity that would also explain gravity. Einstein had again a thought experiment. He imagined a man working on a roof and he wondered what would happen if one of those man were to fall off the roof. Albert had a vision that the man would be weightless and then he imagined if somebody cuts the cord of an elevator and the same man is in it, still falling at the same rate of the elevator. Then the man would be weightless inside the elevator, and that is how Einstein got it. It was like if gravity has been switched off. He then concluded that the Earth has curved the space around us and that space is pushing us (gravity). This theory would for instance explain why earth is turning around the Sun. The Sun would have warped the space around the Earth and space is pushing the Earth toward the Sun.

An incomplete theory

Einstein divroced with Mileva in 1919. He promised to give her the money he would receive from the Nobel Prize (if he win it).Then he got married with his cousin Elsa the same year.

Divorce and marriage

His work on the atoms brings him increased attention. Consequently, in 1911, he was offered a position as a full-time scientist at the university of Zurich. He also started getting invited to the Solvay conferences which are the gathering of the greatest physicist in Europe, but he also started getting invited to speak in Berlin and took the opportunity to visit his cousin Elsa Einstein. He fell in love with her but when he came back to Zurich he stopped this relation as it was too complex for him. Einstein had been struggling for four years to more fully develop his general theory of relativity. He knew he was on the right track towards solving his theory, but he had to find a way to prove it. His theory will not be accepted until he can demonstrate it. But he had an idea : if he can shine a beam of light through an area where space is curved then according to his theory the light will actually appear to bend. For Albert, only the Sun would have enough gravity to bend the light. But the problem is that the Sun is too bright, except when the Sun is covered by the moon (total solar eclipse) so that we can see what is around it without being blinded by the light. He figured that to our eye the stars would appear to move as the light is bent.

How to prove his theory?

In August 1914, Freundlich and Campbell went to Russia but because of the war and the clouds they were not able to take pictures of the eclipse.

Mission to prove general theory of relativity failed

This isolation allowed Einstein to refocuse on his mathematical equation and he found out that his earlier calculations were wrong. In 1915, he was asked to present his theory of relativity at a prestigious forum to the most important German scientists. He accepted, but after 8 years of work his theory still had two majors problems : it was unproven and the maths appeared to be flawed.David Hilbert (one of the best mathematician of the century) also believed he could solve Einstein’s problem. Einstein and Hilbert raced to find the final equation. Albert finally got the equation right just as David Hilbert did, but Hilbert said Einstein deserves the credit.So during his speech at the Prussian academy he presented his final results contradicting Newton’s theory that could not explain Mercury’s orbit. He published his general theory of relativity in 1916.But Einstein could not prove it until he did not have photographs of a total solar eclipse.

A mathematical race and the final equation

In 1905, Albert Einstein was the father of a one-year-old son and husband to a fellow student from the Swiss Polytechnic, Mileva Maric who was also a physicist. They got married in 1903 and a year later their child Hans Albert was born. The Einstein family lives in a two-room apartment in Bern. Mileva became then a sounding board on all the great miracle year papers of 1905. She helps Einstein type it up and she helps check the maths but she ends up being a housewife.(Einstein had two other children, Leiserl (1902) and Eduard (1910), but they were not important in Einstein's life)

The Einstein family

He received the Nobel Prize in 1922 (for the year 1921), not for his general theory of relativity but for his first papers describing the photoelectric effect. His former wife, Mileva received the money of the Nobel price as agreed.Einstein died in 1955 at the age of 76 but his legacy will impact the world forever.

Nobel prize and end of his life

War was omnipresent in Germany, and Einstein, unlike his colleagues, refused to put his science at the service of war. For instance the chimist Frietz Haber created a weapon using poisonous gas. Albert was against. He even tried to stand up against war by creating a manifesto but this one failed as only four person signed it. Einstein was alone.

Einstein, a pacifist scientist

Campbell finally managed to take the photographs of the eclipse in Washington DC in 1918 but his results were contradicting Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But a British astronomer, Arthur Eddington believed in Einstein and went in Africa to take photographs of an eclipse and he succeeded and the results were this time in accord with Einstein’s theory. After this everyone knew who Albert Einstein was even if the scientists were still doubting the photographic results. Consequently Campbell and others went to Australia in 1922 to observe another eclipse and again the results were in accord with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Finally 15 years after he proposed his general theory of relativity, Einstein was victorious and vindicated. His theory was finally proven.

Is general theory of reltivity false ?

Albert Einstein he once said « I want to know God’s thoughts in a mathematical way ». Indeed he wanted an equation perhaps no more than one inch that would encapsulate all physical laws. Einstein was born in 1879 in Germany and although he is now a major figure in the world of science, at school he was just an ordinary student. In 1900, he was a 21-year-old undergraduate Swiss Federal Polytechnic and none of his professors, who described Albert as a dunce, would have predicted that he was going to revolutionize the way we see the world. Einstein even thought of changing fields and selling insurance as he had issues finding a job after graduation. Then he worked as a substitute teacher in short jobs in various towns. When his father died in 1902 thinking Albert was a disgrace to the family, the young man moved to Bern, Switzerland’s capital and started working as a patent clerk. But this job was not intellectually demanding, so Einstein had time to contemplate the universe and launch a scientific revolution.

The life of an ordinary person

Still in 1905, Albert Einstein published another theory more important and more controversial called the special theory of relativity. Indeed while he was on a bus, he looked at the famous clock tower that dominates Bern and he then imagined what would happen if that bus were racing near the speed of light. What he saw in his imagination was the hand of the clock frozen in time. All of a sudden Albert realizes that the faster he races through space the slower he moves through time. This insight sparked the birth of Einstein’s special theory of relativity which says that space and time are deeply connected, in fact they are one in the same (space-time). He was an unknown in the scientific world and at this time he was still a patent clerk. He submits his theory to important scientific journals and waited a long time (four, five months) until his papers fall into the hand of perhaps the one man who can fully understand him, Max Planck He was the greatest theoretical physicist in Europe and he immediatly recognized that this theory was very interesting and important.

Special theory of relativity

In 1905 and what has been called his miracle year, he published in his spare time four visionary papers. The first of which answers the age-old question : what is light ? (Photoelectric effect). It showed that light comes as a particle called the photon. In another paper, he affirmed the existence of atoms. He proved that atoms can actually make small little dust particles move in a liquid and he calculated the size of atoms. He wrote another paper with the his most famous equation E=mc^2. At the simplest level this means that matter can become energy and energy can become matter. For instance Albert Einstein answered the question : what makes stars shine ? All this would have been enough for him to become a great scientist, but it was only the beginning.

his first discoveries (theories)