Albert Einstein 2

ALBERT EINSTEIN


Albert Einstein was born in Germany on March 14,
1879.As a kid he had trouble learning to speak. His parents
thought that he might be mentally retarded. He was not
smart in school. He suffered under the learning methods that
they used in the schools of Germany at that time so he was
never able to finish his studies. In 1894 his father's business
had failed and the family moved to Milan, Italy. Einstein who
had grown interested in science, went to Zurich, Switzerland,
to enter a famous technical school. There his ability in
mathematics and physics began to show.
When Einstein was graduated in 1900 he was unable to get a
teaching appointment at a university. Instead he got a
clerical job in the patent office at Bern, Switzerland. It was
not what he wanted but it would give him leisure for studying
and thinking. While over there he wrote scientific papers.
Einstein submitted one of his scientific papers to the
University of Zurich to obtain a Ph.D. degree in 1905. In
1908 he sent a second paper to the University of Bern and
became lecturer there. The next year Einstein received a
regular appointment as associate professor of physics at the
University of Zurich. By 1909, Einstein was recognized
throughout Europe as a leading scientific thinker. In 1909 the
fame that resulted from his theories got Einstein a job at the
University of Prague, and in 1913 he was appointed director of
a new research institution opened in Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm
Physics Institute.
In 1915, during World War 1, Einstein published a paper
that extended his theories. He put forth new views on the
nature of gravitation. Newton's theories he said were not
accurate enough. Einstein's theories seemed to explain the
slow rotation of the entire orbit of the planet Mercury, which
Newton's theories did not explain. Einstein's theories also
predicted that light rays passing near the sun would be bent
out of a straight line. When this was verified at the eclipse of
1919, Einstein was instantly accepted as the great scientific
thinker since Newton.
By now Germany had fallen in the hands of Adolf Hitler
and his Nazis. Albert Einstein was Jewish. In 1933 when the
Nazis came to power, Einstein happened to be in California.
He did not return to Germany. He went to Belgium instead.
The Nazis confiscated his possessions, publicly burned his
writings, and expelled him from all German scientific societies.
Einstein came back to the United States and became a
citizen.
The atomic bomb is an explosive device that depends
upon the release of energy in a nuclear reaction known as
FISSION, which is the splitting of atomic nuclei. Einstein sent
a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out that
atomic bombs are possible and that enemy nations must be
allowed to make them first.
Roosevelt agreed with Einstein and funded the
Manhattan Project.
On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died. To his dying
day, he urged the world to come to some agreement that
would make nuclear wars forever impossible.

SHAHIN TEHRANI