Albert Einstein

I consider Albert Einstein to be a hero because he made so many new discoveries and his genius changed the face of science. Einstein accomplished so much in his life, and many of his accomplishments helpled people and changed the world. This is why I chose him as a hero. Albert Einstein was born in 1897 to Hermann Einstein and his wife, Pauline, in Ulm, Germany. Around 1884, when Einstein was very young, he got his first compass, and began to investigate the natural world around him. Around 1886, he began going to school in Munich. He took violin lessons, which he took from age six to age thirteen, and he had religious education at home, where he was taught Judaism. At age 10, he aet into a self-education program, and read as much about science as he could. He studied mathematics, particularly calculus.

Three years later, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia, but Albert, at age 15, stayed in Munich to finish the school year. He lasted only a term on his own and then followed his family to Pavia. In 1895, Albert attempted to skip school by taking an entrance exam to the Swiss Polytechnic, a top technical university, but he failed the arts portion. His family then sent him to the Swiss town of Aarau to finish high school. Albert graduated from high school at the age of 17 and enrolled in the ETH (the Federal Polytechnic) in Zurich. In 1896, Albert fell in love with Mileva Marich, a Hungarian classmate at the ETH. He graduated from the ETH in 1900. In 1901, he became a Swiss citizen. Unemployed, he searched for a job. He and Mileva met in north Italy for a tryst. Mileva became pregnant . In the fall, Albert found work in Schauffhasen, Switzerland as a tutor. Mileva moved to Stein Am Rhein, three miles upriver. She then moved to Hungary to give birth to their baby at their parents’ home. Soon, Albert moved to Bern. In January of 1902, Mileva gave birth to their daughter, Lieserl, whom they eventually put up for adoption. She reportedly became ill and all record of her disappeared.

Albert then took a job at the Swiss patent office. His father, Hermann Einstein, became ill and died. In January of 1903, Albert and Mileva married. A year later, Mileva gave birth to their first son, Hans Albert. 1905 was Einstein’s “Annus Mirabilis”, or “Miracle year”, because he created his famous Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein submit his paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” on June 30, to the leading German physics journal. At the age of 26, he applied his theory to mass and energy and formulates the equation E=mc2. Still living in Bern, Einstein continued his work as an examiner at the Swiss Patent Office. In 1907, Einstein began applying the laws of gravity to his Special Theory of relativity. Einstein’s second son, Eduard, was soon born in 1910. A year later the Einsteins moved to Prague, where Albert was given a full professorship at the German University there. He was the youngest to attend the invitation-only Solvay Conference in Brussels, which was the first world physics conference. In 1912 Albert’s family moved again to Zurich, where Albert was given a position as a professor of Theoretical Physics at the ETH, the university the he went to himself. In 1913, Einstein began working on his Theory of Gravity. In the next year, he became a director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin. His family moved there in April, but Mileva and their sons returned to Zurich after three months, and Mileva and Albert’s divorce proceedings began.

In August of 1914, World War I began. One year later, Einstein completed his General Theory of Relativity. In 1917, Einstein collapsed, and near death, fell seriously ill. He was nursed back to health by his cousin, Elsa. Later, he published his first paper on cosmology. Two years later, he married Elsa. On May 29, a solar eclipse proved that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity worked. Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921. In 1927, He attended the fifth Solvay Conference and began developing the foundation for quantum mechanics with Niels Bohr. One year after, Einstein began pursuing his idea of a unified field theory. In 1932, Albert Einstein was 53 years old and at the height of his fame. Identified as a Jew, he began feeling the heat of Nazi Germany. One year later, he and Elsa set sail for the United States, and they settled in Princeton, New Jersey. Albert assumed a post there at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1936, Elsa died after a brief illness. In 1939, World War II began, Einstein wrote a famous letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning of the possibility of Germany building an atomic bomb, and urging the United States to conduct nuclear research. In 1940, Einstein became a US citizen, but still retained his Swiss citizenship. In 1949, his former wife, Mileva, died. On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein died at the age of 76.

In his life, Einstein accomplished a great deal. He made many new discoveries in mathematics and science, he was a professor in several universities, and he was highly regarded and respected by many because he was so intelligent and had accomplished so much. I chose Albert Einstein for my hero project, because he was very intelligent and he had accomplished a large amount of things.