The greatest scientist of his time, Einstein was a man with a profound sense of social responsibility. He was a humanitarian who believed passionately in social justice and who often championed unpopular causes which he deemed worthy of his support.Although a confirmed pacifist, he was responsible for initiating the U.S. atomic-bomb project. Fearing that the National Socialists would achieve world domination if they developed an atomic weapon first, he wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939 urging the US to undertake nuclear research urgently.
Awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1921, the German Albert Einstein was one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, redefining the nature of time and matter and preparing the way for the atomic age, which he firmly believed should have been directed towards the benefit of Man and not his destruction.
Einstein's ideas in science were so new and strange that for many years ordinary people used to say that no one else could possibly understand them. But now his theories about time and space (relativity), about how very tiny particles like electrons and protons behave (quantum theory), and many others, are important parts of the courses that all physics students learn at university.
Einsteins theories seemed to contradict common sense, and produced an intellectual turmoil that lasted several decades. Einstein also extended the Quantum Theory published in 1900 by the German physicist Max Planck to explain the photoelectric effect. Einstein was awarded the Nobel prize in 1921.
A life-long pacifist, Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1940 to warn him of the potential of nuclear weapons and Germany's interest in developing them. The element of atomic number 99, einsteinium, is named after him.
Following World War II, he attempted to arouse the world to the dangers of atomic warfare and devoted much energy to the promotion of world peace, which he believed attainable only through total disarmament and some form of world government.
Einstein was an ardent supporter of the effort to establish a homeland for the Jewish people and in 1952 was invited by the Israeli government to succeed the Russian born chemist and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann as president of Israel, but he declined.
Not many people really deserve the title 'genius' but Einstein must be one of them. Nearly all branches of physics were changed by his theories, and without them lasers, television, computers, space travel and many other things that are familiar today would never have been developed. His work greatly advanced Man's knowledge of the universe.
References
- Library of Essential Knowledge, Volume 1, Readers Digest, 1980
- New Encyclopedia, Volume 8, 1971, Funk & Wagnalls
- New Knowledge Library - Universal Reference Encyclopedia, Volume 9, Bay Books, 1981
- The Oxford Children's Book of Famous People, 1994, Oxford University Press
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