Albert Einstein: The Greatest Scientist of the 20th Century

The history of science is full of amazing individuals who changed the world with their ingenious ideas. Determining the best is no easy task, and people will always have different opinions when it comes to the most influential scientific mind of all time.

Yet there’s one man who will always be part of this conversation: Albert Einstein. At twenty-six years of age, this brilliant individual cemented himself in the history books with several outstanding scientific papers. This was just the start of his career, and he continued to amaze the scientific community throughout his life.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the German city of Ulm beside the Danube River. His parents were secular Jews who were part of the middle class. Just one year after the birth of little Albert, the family moved to Munich, where Einstein’s father Hermann set up an electrical engineering business with his brother Jakob.

Yet Einstein was ahead of his peers in other areas, such as mathematics and problem-solving. At home, he would construct models and play with building blocks, while at school, he developed a reputation for independent learning, preferring to solve problems his own way.

Einstein had already discovered a love for algebra and philosophy by the time he became a teenager. Some of his earliest influences were the mathematician Theodor Spieker and the philosopher Immanuel Kant, both of whom were German. Einstein also developed an interest in music. Encouraged to pick up an instrument by his mother (who was a pianist), he started playing the violin when he was six, though he didn’t start to practice seriously until he was thirteen.

Einstein’s education was inconsistent during the latter half of his adolescence. Opposed to the requirement that seventeen-year-olds do a year of military service, he left the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich and went to live with his family in Pavia, Italy. He then went to Zurich, Switzerland, and tried to get into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School.

Though he scored highly in math and physics, he struggled with the language, zoology, and botany tests. He studied at the Swiss Cantonal School in Aarau for a year before retaking the entrance exams for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School. This time, Einstein passed.

Contrary to what one might expect, Einstein wasn’t an ideal student. He typically attended the lectures he was interested in but neglected the others, preferring to sit and discuss physics. Einstein also fell in love with a student on his course: Mileva Marić. (Like Einstein, Mileva didn’t take her studies very seriously.)

With disappointing examination results and a reputation for disobedience, Einstein failed to secure a job at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School after graduating. Instead, he started working at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern in Summer 1902 and married Marić the following January. Outside of his job at the patent office, Einstein worked on scientific papers.

In 1905, the year Einstein turned twenty-six, he published four remarkable papers. The first one discussed the photoelectric effect and proposed the wave-particle theory, arguing light is released in packets of energy. Before this, many scientists wrongly believed light traveled exclusively in waves.

The third paper introduced the Special Theory of Relativity, while the fourth paper featured the most famous equation in history: E = mc². For those who don’t know, the equation says that the energy of a body at rest equals its mass times the speed of light squared.

Einstein’s argument that time moves slower for objects traveling at a faster speed was revolutionary at the time.

Academia & Personal Struggles

In September 1908, when Einstein was still in his twenties, he started his career in academia, delivering lectures at the University of Bern. Initially, his lectures weren’t very popular, but a fellow scientist, Hermann Minkowski, helped Einstein grow his reputation.

Minkowski delivered lectures on the theory of relativity, helping people understand the ideas and explaining how Einstein had discovered a fourth dimension: space-time. The two great minds even worked together briefly until Minkowski’s death in January 1909.

With time, Einstein’s work became more appreciated in the world of academia. He received offers from many institutions and accepted a position at the University of Berlin. The family, which now included two children, moved to the German capital, and Einstein started his new job in April 1914.

However, the marriage wasn’t in a good place. The young scientist had a heavy work schedule and put his career above everything else. Moreover, Mileva didn’t like Berlin and moved back to Switzerland with the children. Einstein was looked after by his cousin Elsa, who had her own children and lived nearby.

Soon after, Europe was enveloped in one of the greatest conflicts of the twentieth century: the First World War. As a pacifist, Einstein opposed the conflict, but his stance on war wasn’t popular in the German academic community. A document known as the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three, signed by 93 German professors, helped galvanize support for the war. Einstein signed a counter-manifesto, but his signature was just one of four.

The scientist’s poor health didn’t help matters. In 1917, his work on the theory of relativity was put on hold owing to a stomach ulcer and jaundice, which causes the skin and eyes to turn yellow. He also lost weight during this time.

Elsa was still able to take care of him, and over time, the cousins became closer, with the two of them developing romantic feelings for each other. After officially divorcing Mileva in February 1919, Einstein married Elsa several months later.

Though Einstein had already established himself in the scientific community, some still doubted his theory. But this all changed on May 29, 1919, thanks to the Eddington Experiment.

Conducted by British astronomers Frank Watson Dyson and Arthur Stanley Eddington, the Eddington Experiment set out to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity by utilizing a total solar eclipse. With the moon temporarily blocking out the sun, the background stars were more easily visible, allowing the scientists to measure the gravitational deflection of the light coming from the background stars.

They did this by comparing photographs taken during the eclipse with photographs taken six months earlier when the Sun was shining down on the other side of the world. The two batches of photographs were compared, revealing the stars photographed during the eclipse appeared to have moved slightly.

The experiment proved Einstein was right about the relationship between mass, gravity, and speed. After the results were shown to the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, academic and public interest in Einstein reached new heights.

The University of Princeton presented him with an honorary degree, while the Royal Swedish Academy of Science presented the scientist with the Nobel Prize for Physics.

The Rise of Fascism & The Manhattan Project

Having returned to Berlin, Einstein continued working both independently and alongside others. A notable collaborator was the Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose. Together, they developed the Bose-Einstein condensate and Bose-Einstein statistics.

But his peaceful lifestyle was under threat from a dangerous ideology: fascism. Einstein was singled out and referred to as a “Communist Jew” by the German press and accused of cultural internationalism and international treason. The Nazis also froze his bank account and burned copies of his books.

Luckily, the Einsteins were in California when the Nazis came to power in January 1933, as Einstein was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. While it was much safer for Einstein on the other side of the Atlantic, he encountered hostilities in the US too, with some taking issue with his left-leaning, pacifist views.

Einstein also had to deal with the mounting threat of nuclear war. Horrified that the Nazis would try to develop a nuclear bomb, he signed a letter written by the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard. The letter was sent to Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning the president about the potential nuclear threat from Germany.

This letter prompted Roosevelt into action, for he was determined to develop nuclear weapons before the Nazis did. The Manhattan Project, headed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear bomb. It was a colossal project, employing approximately 130,000 people. But Einstein wasn’t one of them. Due to his political views, he was seen as a potential security risk and barred from working on the Manhattan Project.

Einstein regretted signing the Szilard letter and campaigned against nuclear weapons in the post-war years. Shortly before his death, he signed what was known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, calling for global peace.

Einstein died at the age of 76 on April 18, 1955. The cause of death was a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.

He left behind a phenomenal legacy, with many regarding him as an era-defining genius. His theory of relativity and his ideas regarding space-time were revolutionary. Popular ideas like the Big Bang Theory simply wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Einstein’s work.

No one denies his impact on the field of science, but there will always be those who object to Einstein’s political views, particularly his pacifist attitudes. Some have also taken issue with his support of Zionism. Yet it’s important to note Einstein had a balanced approach to this issue, arguing Zionists harmed their cause by asking for too much and expecting political rule over Palestine.

Politics aside, finding anyone in today’s scientific community who disputed his achievements would be a struggle. Though it took some time for his contemporaries to fully appreciate him, Einstein is now regarded as the greatest scientist of the twentieth century.