ALBERT EINSTEIN | Draw My Life
Albert Einstein, the most popular physicist in the 20th century, was born on March 14th 1879,
in the city of Ulm, in the Old German Empire. Albert, we are among friends, was raised with
his Jewish family in Munich. He was a quite shy boy, and he didn't learn to talk until he was
Nothing like his little sister Maya, who was lively and cheerful. This had his parents very worried.
They even thought he had some kind of problem. Albert didn't like playing with kids his same
age, he'd rather be alone. This didn't contribute to his parents not worrying about him.
His uncle Jacob, a very creative engineer with great ideas, motivated his love for science.
Sharing with him all kinds of books and letting little Albert wander around his studio.
When he was only 15 years old, with no mentor or guide, he started nothing less than the study
of calculus. In 1894, the family business had to close down and his family had to move to Pavia,
in Italy, but without Albert, who still had to finish his studies. But this separation didn't
last for long, as Albert managed to get a medical certificate that allowed him to leave his school
and so, get back with his family again. Two years later, he rejected his German nationality
and he was considered stateless, so he could get away with not doing the military service.
In 1896, he met Mileva Marek, at the Zurich Institute of Technology. She would become his
wife later on. In January 1902, they had a daughter, in secret, since Albert's parents
never approved of his relationship with Marek. Little we know about their first daughter.
People say she was given up for adoption in Serbia, Marek's native country.
In 1903, Albert and Mileva finally got married, and a year later, his son Hans Albert Einstein
was born. He'd moved to California to become a hydraulic engineer.
In 1905, while Albert was still an unknown physician, he published his first special
theory of relativity. And as a deduction from this one, we have the most popularly known
physics equation, E equals mc squared, the equation of mass-energy equivalence.
That same year, he published some other works that would set the basis of statistical
physics and quantum mechanics. Not much, as you can see.
In 1910, their third kid was born, Edward Einstein, and Albert moved to Berlin,
leaving his family in Switzerland. And meanwhile, he was named a member of the
Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1915, he published his general theory of relativity.
Which reformulated, completely, the concept of gravity. A couple of years after that,
he'd confirm his theories about light curvature. This man never took a break!
On October 14th 1919, he divorced Mileva Marek. And two months later,
he married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal. Yes, you've heard right, his first cousin.
1921 was the year his work was officially recognized, and he was given the Nobel Prize
in Physics. But not thanks to his general theory of relativity, considered very controversial.
It was thanks to his explanations about the photoelectric effect and its contribution
to theoretical physics. In 1932, when the Nazis took power,
Albert moved to the US. That same year, his son Edward, who was studying medicine,
was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital in
Berlin. Albert tried, by all means, to take him with him to Prince Town in the US,
but the authorities prevented him from doing so. Edward died in 1965 at the psychiatric hospital.
In the US, Albert would then teach classes at the Institute for Advanced Study,
and some years later, he'd become a citizen of the United States.
On April 18th 1955, Albert Einstein died in Prince Town. During the autopsy, the forensic
pathologist Thomas Harvey extracted his brain in secret and kept it hidden for 20 years,
for possible future studies. Nowadays, some of those studies have resulted in curiosities.
For example, Albert's brain has more glial hormones in the math skills area, or part of
his brain related to maths is bigger than usual, and his lateral sulcus, a fissure that goes all
the way from the front to the back, didnt make it all the way. Albert is also the father of the
atomic bomb, though he didnt participate in the program due to his pacifist ideology.
He was, and still is, a very important character. His contribution to physics is still one of the
most important ones. Genius and figure, Albert Einstein will never stop fascinating us!
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