Laget Av: Martin Kristiansen, Geir Lindemark og Emir Evlic
E=mc² page 3
World Fame page 4.
The Nuclear age page 5.
Philosophy page 5. Final Years page 6. Quotes page 7.
Albert Einstein was born March 14 1879 in Ulm Germany, as the first child of his parents Hermann and Pauline Einstein. Albert's abilities became apparent early in his life. He learned to play the violin before 5 and surpassed other kids in a lot of area including math, by the age of seven. From that time on he went to a catholic primary school in Munich, where his Family moved on year after his birth.
It were his uncles Jacob Einstein and Caesar Koch that stimulated his fascination in mathematics and science, so that at the age of twelve he devoted himself to solve the riddle of the "huge world". At the age of 15, Albert left school in Germany because of bad grades in several subjects, such as history and languages, and moved to Milan following his family, which moved there recently because of his fathers business. Having the wish to continue his education he applied at Zurich's Swiss Federal polytechnic to become a teacher. Failing the entrance exams he had to attend a technical school. Also being away from his parents he lived there as a boarder at on of his professors, Jost Winteler.
Formative Years
One story Einstein liked to tell about his childhood was of a "wonder" he saw when he was four or five years old: a magnetic compass. The needle's invariable northward swing, guided by an invisible force, profoundly impressed the child. The compass convinced him that there had to be "something behind things, something deeply hidden." Even as a small boy Einstein was self-sufficient and thoughtful. According to family legend he was a slow talker at first, pausing to consider what he would say. His sister remembered the concentration and perseverance with which he would build up houses of cards to many stories. The boy's thought was stimulated by his uncle, an engineer, and by a medical student who ate dinner once a week at the Einsteins'.
Although he got generally good grades (and was outstanding in mathematics), Einstein hated the academic high school he was sent to in Munich, where success depended on memorization and obedience to arbitrary authority. His real studies were done at home with books on mathematics, physics, and philosophy. A teacher suggested Einstein leave school, since his very presence destroyed the other students' respect for the teacher. The fifteen-year-old boy did quit school in mid-term to join his parents, who had moved to Italy.
Einstein's family had moved to Italy to try to establish a business, and he joined them for a glorious half year of freedom from work and anxiety. In 1895 he took the entrance examination for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology -- and he failed. He was advised to study at a Swiss school in Aarau; here his teachers were humane and his ideas were set free. His thoughts turned to the theory of electromagnetism formulated by James Clerk Maxwell, seldom taught even in universities at the turn of the century.
Einstein grew familiar with the successes of past scientists who had tried to explain the world entirely through atoms or fluids, interacting like parts of a machine. But he learned that Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism was defying efforts to reduce it to mechanical processes. Through a new friend, the engineer Michele Besso, Einstein came to the writings of Ernst Mach -- a skeptical critic of accepted ideas in physics.
At the Zurich Polytechnic a romance had arisen between the handsome and witty would-be science teacher and a young Serbian woman, Mileva Maric, the only woman in Albert's physics class. Einstein's family opposed any talk of marriage, even after Mileva gave birth to a daughter (who was apparently given up for adoption). The pair finally married in 1903 after Einstein got his job at the 
Patent Office. Einstein discussed physics with Mileva, but there is no solid evidence that she made any significant contribution to his work. In 1904 a son was born, and a second in 1910.
March 1905
E
instein sent to the Annalen der Physik, the leading German physics journal, a paper with a new understanding of he structure of light . He argued that light can act as though it consists of discrete, independent particles of energy, in some ways like the particles of a gas.September 1905
Einstein reported a remarkable consequence of his special theory of relativity: if a body emits a certain amount of energy, then the mass of that body must decrease by a proportionate amount
E = Mc
Einstein's theories sprang from a ground of ideas prepared by decades of experiments. One of the most striking, in retrospect, was done in Cleveland, Ohio, by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in 1887. Their apparatus, was a massive stone block with mirrors and crisscrossing light beams, giving an accurate measurement of any change in the velocity of light. Michelson and Morley expected to see their light beams shifted by the swift motion of the earth in space. To their surprise, they could not detect any change. It is debatable whether Einstein paid heed to this particular experiment, but his work provided an explanation of the unexpected result through a new analysis of space and time.
The deep connection Einstein discovered between energy and mass is expressed in the equation E=mc² . Here E represents energy, m represents mass, and c² is a number, the square of the speed of light. Full confirmation was slow in coming. In Paris in 1933, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie took a photograph showing the conversion of energy into mass. A quantum of light, invisible here, carries energy up from beneath. In the middle it changes into mass -- two freshly created particles which curve away from each other.
World fame
Einstein's new general theory of relativity predicted a remarkable effect: when a ray of light passes near a massive body, the ray should be bent. For example, starlight passing near the sun should be slightly deflected by gravity. This deflection could be measured when the sun's own light was blocked during an eclipse. Einstein predicted a specific amount of deflection, and the prediction spurred British astronomers to try to observe a total eclipse in May 1919. Feverish preparations began as the war ended. Two expeditions, to an island off West Africa and to Brazil, succeeded in photographing stars near the eclipsed sun. The starlight had been deflected just as Einstein had predicted
In a letter to an astronomer in 1913, Einstein sent a sketch showing how gravity should deflect light near the sun, making stars appear to shift. These apparent positions deviated from the positions of the stars photographed when the sun was elsewhere in the sky. As a ripple on glass is detected when objects seen through the glass are distorted, so we detect here a warping of space itself.
The nuclear age
Scientists in the 1930s, using machines that could break apart the nuclear cores of atoms, confirmed Einstein's formula E=mc² . The release of energy in a nuclear transformation was so great that it could cause a detectable change in the mass of the nucleus. But the study of nuclei -- in those years the fastest growing area of physics -- had scant effect on Einstein. Nuclear physicists were gathering into ever-larger teams of scientists and technicians, heavily funded by governments and foundations, engaged with massive experimental devices. Such work was alien to Einstein's habit of abstract thought, done alone or with a mathematical assistant. In return, experimental nuclear physicists in the 1930s had little need for Einstein's theories.
Philosophy
From before 1920 until his death, Einstein struggled to find laws of physics far more general than any known before. In his theory of relativity, the force of gravity had become an expression of the geometry of space and time. The other forces in nature, above all the force of electromagnetism, had not been described in such terms. But it seemed likely to Einstein that electromagnetism and gravity could both be explained as aspects of some broader mathematical structure. The quest for such an explanation for a "unified field" theory that would unite electromagnetism and gravity, space and time, all together occupied more of Einstein's years than any other activity.
Einstein thought that if only he could find the right unified field theory, this theory might also explain the structure of matter. Thus he could fill the troubling gap in quantum theory the inability to describe the world otherwise than in terms of mere probabilities. He doubted his ability to find this "more complete theory," but he was convinced that someday, somebody would find it. "I cannot," he admitted, "base this conviction on logical reasons my only witness is the pricking of my little finger."
Einstein was not only interested in Physics, but had also several other interests such as Zionism (The quest for a Jewish state in it's original homeland, palestine) and World peace (Einstein was a pacifist). In 1933 Albert Einstein made a vacation in the US, but because of the Nazis who came to power, never returned. Einstein accepted a full-time position as a foundation member of the school of mathematics at the new institute for advanced study in Princeton, New Jersey.
In the later years of his life, he lacked the big breakthrough he had earlier, his attempts to make a unified field theory were immediately but politely critized by most physicists as untenable. But he spent a lot of time trying to bring harmony to the World.
Albert died April 18, 1955 in the age of 76 in his sleep in Princeton hospital. Albert Einstein established himself as a giant of science.
Quotes
"It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life,
perpetuating itself through all eternity; to reflect upon the marvelous
structure of the Universe; and to try humbly to comprehend even an
infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature."
-Albert Einstein
"Only a life lived for others is worth living."
-- Albert Einstein
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-- Albert Einstein
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. "
-- AlbertEinstein
"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
-- Albert Einstein
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
-- Albert Einstein
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"
--Albert Einstein
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones."
--Albert Einstein