12 Facts About Albert Einstein
Information and Theories 7/18/09
By: Yona Williams
Can't get enough of Albert Einstein? Below you will find 12 facts regarding the man who dabbled in special relativity, has a chemical element named after him, and has won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
1. Einstein is best linked to the following scientific theories or studies: general relativity, Special relativity, Photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Mass-energy equivalence, Einstein field equations, Unified Field Theory, and BoseÃ¢â‚¬â€œEinstein statistics.
2. Besides winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, Einstein also received a Copley Medal (1925) and Max Planck Medal (1929). He was also named Person of the Century in the Time 100 compilation of The Important People of the Century.
3. During his travels, Einstein wrote daily letters to his wife and adopted stepdaughters. When he died, his stepdaughter Margot allowed the personal letters to become public with the condition that they were not revealed until she had been dead for 20 years. The letters were included in a collection of papers bequeathed to the Hebrew University. A representative of the Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives admitted that his private correspondences were written between 1912 and 1955, including close to 3,500 pages.
4. When a Roman Catholic student urged him to pray to Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and convert to Christianity, Einstein replied: "If I would follow your advice and Jesus could perceive it, he, as a Jewish teacher, surely would not approve of such behavior."
5. Einstein has published more than 300 scientific works and contributed more than 150 non-scientific works during his lifetime. One of the most revealing of his publications is Einstein's Collected Papers. To indulge in some of his scientific questions and thoughts, there are five volumes (1, 5, 8Ã¢â‚¬â€œ10) that concentrate on just that.
6. To enjoy the majority of Einstein's original scientific work, journal articles offer the best insight. Some of the topics that he touched upon included intermolecular forces, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, photons, and electromagnetism.
7. Einstein wrote books, such as A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions (1906) that focused on statistical mechanics. All of his book publications were of his doing with the exception of just one.
8. Albert Einstein received his formal education at ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.
9. Einstein's ethnicity is listed as Ashkenazi Jewish and German.
10. If you travel to Washington, DC, you will find the Albert Einstein Memorial Ã¢â‚¬â€œ a bronze statue fashioned out of bronze that shows Einstein seated with manuscript papers in his hand. The specific location of the statue is in a grove of trees situated at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue Ã¢â‚¬â€œ by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
11. The chemical element 99, einsteinium, was named after the physicist in August of 1955 Ã¢â‚¬â€œ four months after his death.
12. Supporting those interested in science, the Albert Einstein Peace Prize is given yearly by the Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation, where recipients are given $50,000.