Albert Einstein
Physicist · 1879–1955
Twentieth-century physics
You might ask
- What did it feel like to imagine chasing a beam of light as a teenager?
- Why did you object to quantum mechanics, and what did you really mean about God and dice?
- What did you mean when you said you believed in Spinoza's God?
- You were a committed pacifist. Why did you change your mind in 1933, and how do you feel about the letter to Roosevelt?
- Why did you speak out against racism in America?
- What role did music and your violin play in your thinking?
About this Mind
Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist whose work reshaped modern ideas of space, time, matter and light. Born in Ulm in 1879 and educated in Munich, Aarau and Zurich, he produced his most famous early papers in 1905 while working as an examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern. Those papers covered the light quantum, Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy. In 1915 he completed the general theory of relativity, and the 1919 eclipse observations made him world-famous. He held posts in Zurich, Prague and Berlin, left Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and settled in Princeton. He remained a critic of the completeness of quantum mechanics and a prominent voice on peace, Jewish life, civil rights and the dangers of nuclear weapons.
Sources (43)
This Mind is built from these documents and studies. Statements drawn from them are paraphrased, not quoted, unless the source is in the public domain.
- Relativity: The Special and General Theory (trans. Robert W. Lawson) (1920)
- Letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926 (in The Born-Einstein Letters) (1926)
- Newtons Mechanik und ihr Einfluß auf die Gestaltung der theoretischen Physik, Die Naturwissenschaften 15 (1927) (1927)
- What Life Means to Einstein, Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929 (1929)
- Telegram to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, 24 April 1929, reported in the New York Times, 25 April 1929 (1929)
- Religion and Science, New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930, pp. 1-4 (1930)
- Einstein-Szilárd letter to F. D. Roosevelt, 2 August 1939 (1939)
- Autobiographisches / Autobiographical Notes, in Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (1949)
- Why Socialism?, Monthly Review vol. 1 no. 1 (May 1949); with J. B. Foster, "Einstein's 'Why Socialism?' and Monthly Review" (1949)
- Israel: Einstein Declines (TIME, November 1952); and the 1952 Israeli presidential election (1952)
- Notes by Linus Pauling re: a meeting with Albert Einstein, 16 November 1954 (1954)
- Russell-Einstein Manifesto, London launch, 9 July 1955 (1955)
- "Subtle is the Lord": The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (1982)
- The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, digital edition (1987)
- Albert Einstein, Civil Rights activist (Harvard Gazette) (2007)
- Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007)
- Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb (2007)
- Quote Origin: Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted (2010)
- Quote Origin: Two Things Are Infinite: The Universe and Human Stupidity (2010)
- The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010)
- Quote Origin: Compound Interest Is Man's Greatest Invention; and The Eighth Wonder of the World Is Compound Interest (2011)
- Quote Origin: Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler (2011)
- Quote Origin: I Fear the Day That Technology Will Surpass Our Human Interaction (2013)
- Quote Origin: Everybody is a Genius... fish... climb a tree (2013)
- Quote Origin: If the Bee Disappeared Off the Face of the Earth... (2013)
- Quote Origin: The Person Who Never Makes a Mistake Will Never Make Anything (2014)
- Quote Origin: Education Is What Remains After You Have Forgotten Everything You Learned In School (2014)
- Albert Einstein sent Marie Curie a letter... (on the letter of 23 November 1911) (2014)
- Quote Origin: Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results (2017)
- Introduction to Volume 15 of the Collected Papers (Berlin years 1925-1927) (2018)
- Einstein's Philosophy of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (2019)
- The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- Albert Einstein: Facts (Nobel Prize in Physics 1921)
- Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement: Albert Einstein
- Albert Einstein Archives Online
- American Crusade Against Lynching (Wikipedia)
- International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (Wikipedia)
- When Marie Went Arm in Arm with Albert
- Einstein's Tümmler and the Caputh summer house
- Mileva Marić (Wikipedia)
- Albert Einstein (Wikiquote), including the talk page on disputed quotes
- Wikisource author page: Albert Einstein
- Albert Einstein (Wikipedia)