Einstein, Albert

Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Luce Index™ rank 95. A theoretical physicist born in German Empire who is widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time.

Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the twentieth century. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been called “the world’s most famous equation.” He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg) the following year. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zürich, graduating in 1900. In 1901, he acquired Swiss citizenship, which he kept for the rest of his life. In 1903, he secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful Ph.D. dissertation to the University of Zurich.

In 1914, he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1917, he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics; he also became a German citizen again, this time as a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia.

In 1933, while he was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi “war of extermination” against his fellow Jews, Einstein decided to remain in the U.S., and was granted American citizenship in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the U.S. begin similar research. Einstein supported the Allies but generally viewed the idea of nuclear weapons with great dismay.

In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked the greatest physicist of all time. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein broadly synonymous with genius.