About me
Born |
14 March 1879 |
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Died |
18 April 1955 (aged 76) |
Residence |
Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, United States |
Citizenship |
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Fields |
Physics |
Institutions |
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Alma mater |
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Thesis |
Folgerungen aus den Capillaritatserscheinungen (1901) |
Doctoral advisor |
Alfred Kleiner |
Other academic advisors |
Heinrich Friedrich Weber |
Notable students |
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Known for |
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Notable awards |
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Spouse |
Mileva Marić (1903–1919) |
Children |
"Lieserl" (1902–1903?) |
Albert Einstein (/ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-borntheoretical physicist. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongsidequantum mechanics).[2][3] He is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation").[4] He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory.
He articulated the principle of relativity. This was understood by Hermann Minkowski to be a generalization of rotational invariance from space to space-time. Other principles postulated by Einstein and later vindicated are the principle of equivalence and the principle of adiabatic invariance of the quantum number.
Main article: History of special relativity
Einstein's "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") was received on 30 June 1905 and published 26 September of that same year. It reconciles Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics, by introducing major changes to mechanics close to the speed of light. This later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Consequences of this include the time-space frame of a moving body appearing to slow down and contract (in the direction of motion) when measured in the frame of the observer. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether—one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time—was superfluous.
In his paper on mass–energy equivalence, Einstein produced E = mc2 from his special relativity equations.Einstein's 1905 work on relativity remained controversial for many years, but was accepted by leading physicists, starting with Max Planck.
Main articles: Photon and Quantum
In a 1905 paper,Einstein postulated that light itself consists of localized particles (quanta). Einstein's light quanta were nearly universally rejected by all physicists, including Max Planck and Niels Bohr. This idea only became universally accepted in 1919, with Robert Millikan's detailed experiments on the photoelectric effect, and with the measurement of Compton scattering.
Einstein concluded that each wave of frequency f is associated with a collection of photons with energy hf each, where h is Planck's constant. He does not say much more, because he is not sure how the particles are related to the wave. But he does suggest that this idea would explain certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect.
Main article: Einstein solid
In 1907, Einstein proposed a model of matter where each atom in a lattice structure is an independent harmonic oscillator. In the Einstein model, each atom oscillates independently—a series of equally spaced quantized states for each oscillator. Einstein was aware that getting the frequency of the actual oscillations would be different, but he nevertheless proposed this theory because it was a particularly clear demonstration that quantum mechanics could solve the specific heat problem in classical mechanics. Peter Debye refined this model.