Albert Einstein’s life

Christine D. Cortes

Albert Einstein was a German theoretical physicist born on March 14, 1879 and died on April 18, 1955. He was the son of Jewish parents Hermann Einstein, who was a salesman and an electrical engineer, and Pauline Einstein. Although the Einsteins were Jewish, they didn’t practice this religion and they put Albert in a Catholic elementary school. Here Albert was a top student nevertheless his speech difficulties at those years. At age five, his father showed him a compass and this experience made a strong impression because he then started thinking that there had to be something in space that made the needle move. When he was six his mother made him take violin lessons, although he hated them and quitted after some years, he later enjoyed Mozart’s violin sonatas. While still a kid, Albert built mechanical devices and demonstrated his abilities in math.

When Albert was ten years old, Max Talmud, a family friend and medical student, presented Albert science, math and philosophy texts. Among them was Euclid’s “Elements”. This latter Albert called the “holy little geometry book” and with it he learned deductive reasoning and two years later he had learned Euclidian geometry. At age fifteen, in 1894, his father’s company Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, from which products were made for Direct Current, failed against the Alternating Current electrical products. Their family moved to Italy but left him to finish High School, but a year later he dropped out of school. Einstein decided to go to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (the Zurich Polytechnic) and was required to take entrance examination test because he didn’t have the High School Certificate. He got very good scores in math and physics but was unable to pass the test. During this time was that he visualized himself traveling alongside a beam of light. His parents then sent him to Aarau, Switzerland to finish school and when he graduated at age 17, he renounced German citizenship in order to avoid military service. In 1896 he got accepted in the Zurich Polytechnic.

In the Zurich Polytechnic he studied mathematics and physics. Along with him were 5 other students including one of the first women to study physics and mathematics in Europe, and Albert’s first wife Mileva Maric (1875 - 1948). In 1900 Einstein got his diploma in mathematics and physics, but Maric didn’t pass the examinations. A year later Maric found out she was pregnant. She went to Novi Sad, Serbia and had her baby girl Lieserl Einstein in 1902. The fate of the baby is unknown; she may have died or given for adoption. Einstein and Maric got married in 1903. They had two sons, Hans Albert (1904-1973) which was a Civil engineer concentrated in Hydraulic engineering and Eduard (1910-1955). Eduard was a music talented student and wanted to become a psychoanalyst, but at the age of twenty he was diagnosticated with schizophrenia. His mother cared for him until her death, he later died at the at the University of Zurich psychiatric hospital "Burghölzli". In June 1919, Albert Einstein married his cousin Elsa (1876 - 1936) with whom he started a relationship while still being married to his first wife in 1912. Elsa had two daughters of from her first marriage, Ilse and Margot who became Einstein’s stepdaughters. Albert raised the girls as if they were his own, and had a better father relationship with them than with his two sons.

In 2006, Einstein’s letters, which he wrote to his family, were revealed. This was not done before because of his stepdaughter Margot’s request to do so after 20 years of her death (she died on 1986). These letters didn’t revealed any new information related but to his personal life. They describe how he was a womanizer and wasn’t faithful to his wives. He even mentions that because of his second’s son schizophrenia he’s son should have never been born. In the letters he explains that more than half of his Nobel Prize money, which he promised full to his first wife Maric, instead was invested in the US and later much of it was lost in the Depression.

Albert Einstein was a genius, bright and extremely intelligent man, but when it came to relationship with family and faithfulness, well he wasn’t good at it. We are all human and it’s in our nature to be imperfect.

References:

- http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xeinstei.html

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Albert_Einstein

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Einstein

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_Einstein

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5168002.stm

- http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles

/2006/07/11/einstein_letters_reveal_a_turmoil_beyond_science/