BIOGRAPHY

"Life is very dangerous, not for the people who do evil, but for those who sit to see what happens." Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in the village of Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879; Died on April 18, 1955 in Princeton, United States. He was a physicist of German origin, later nationalized Swiss and American. He is considered the most important scientist of the 20th century, besides being the best known.  

In 1905, being an unknown young physicist, who was employed in the Patent Office of Berne, in Switzerland, he published his theory of special relativity. In it he incorporated, in a simple theoretical framework, based on simple physical postulates, concepts and phenomena previously studied by Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz. Probably the most well-known equation of physics at the popular level is the mathematical expression of mass-energy equivalence, E = mc², deduced by it as a logical consequence of this theory. That same year published other works that would lie some of the bases of the statistical physics and the quantum mechanics.

In 1915 he presented the General Theory of Relativity, in which he completely reformulated the concept of gravity. One of the consequences was the emergence of the scientific study of the origin and evolution of the Universe by the branch of physics called cosmology. In 1919, when British observations of a solar eclipse confirmed their predictions about the curvature of light, it was idolized by the press. Einstein became a popular icon of science, world-famous, a privilege available to very few scientists.

For his explanations on the photoelectric effect and his numerous contributions to theoretical physics, in 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics and not for Theory of Relativity, because the scientist who was entrusted with the task of evaluating it did not understand it, and they feared that they might later prove to be erroneous. At that time it was still considered somewhat controversial by many scientists.

Before the rise of Nazism in December 1932, the scientist left Germany for the United States, where he taught at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. He became a US citizen in 1940. During his last years he worked to integrate in the same theory the four Fundamental Forces. He died in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955.

Although considered the "father of the atomic bomb," he pleaded in his writings for pacifism, socialism and Zionism. He was proclaimed as the "character of the twentieth century" and as the most preeminent scientist by the famous Time magazine.