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  • As a child Albert Einstein was a slow learner and spoke very slowly. So much so that his

  • parents actually feared he may have learning difficulties. Thankfully, it turned out, that

  • couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s some amazing facts you probably didn’t know

  • about the man who spearheaded the theory of relativity and the world’s most renowned

  • genius.

  • Albert Einstein was born in Ulm in Germany on 14th March 1879. It is said that the story

  • of Einstein’s brilliance started when he was just four years old. His father gave him

  • a magnetic pocket compass to play with. He became obsessed with the way the needle seemed

  • to move around as if by magic. It’s believed that was the event from where Einstein’s

  • deep passion for physics originated. Even as an old man, Einstein wrote about the compass,

  • saying “I can still remember...that this experience made a deep and lasting impression

  • on me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.”

  • Einstein became a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. However, in 1933 he was

  • visiting America just as Hitler came into power back in Einstein’s home country of

  • Germany. Being born to Jewish parents he rightly thought it would not be a good idea to return

  • to Germany. The Nazis were so offended by Einstein’s intellect that they burned all

  • his books still remaining in Germany and included him on a list of enemies of the Nazi state

  • entitlednot yet hangedand put a $5,000 bounty on his head. Einstein responded to

  • the Nazis by calling their actions a “spontaneous emotional outburstand stating that "more

  • than anything else in the world, they fear the influence of men of intellectual independence."

  • Einstein was granted refugee status and became a citizen of the United States of America,

  • where he stayed for the remainder of his life.

  • Einstein considered himself to be agnostic, not an atheist. He criticised personal gods,

  • i.e. gods that are believed to resemble a human form. Einstein instead had pantheistic

  • beliefs. Which is the idea that the universe and nature itself, is equal to divinity, as

  • apposed to an anthropomorphic, or human-like, god.

  • Einstein was well known for his iconic shabby look. Which consisted of wild, uncombed

  • hair and baggy, oversized clothes. Also he never wore socks. He saw socks as unnecessary

  • and got frustrated that whenever he wore socks he got holes in them. He wouldn’t even wear

  • socks or comb his hair when visiting the White House.

  • Also part of Einstein’s “lookwas his pipe. Einstein loved to smoke, whether

  • it be cigarettes, cigars or his iconic pipe, which was his favourite method of tobacco

  • inhalation. When he walked between his house and his office at Princeton University, he

  • would almost always be seen leaving behind a trail of smoke. Einstein once had the following

  • to say on the matter: “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and

  • objective judgment in all human affairs.”

  • It was well known by everyone that knew him that Einstein had an incredibly bad memory.

  • He couldn’t remember most people’s names and couldn’t remember any phone numbers,

  • including his own.

  • In 1952, after Israel’s first President, Israel Chaim Weizmann, died, Einstein was

  • offered the position of Israel’s presidency, because the Israelis believed him to be the

  • greatest Jew alive. Einstein, then aged 73, politely declined the offer. He said he lacked

  • thenatural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people”.

  • Einstein used to charge people for his autograph then donate all the money to charity.

  • Einstein was a prolific adulterer. During his first marriage to Mileva Marić, Albert

  • had at least six affairs with other women. Knowing that his marriage was falling apart,

  • Einstein made one final attempt at keeping the marriage together, for the sake of this

  • children. So what did he do exactly? He demanded his wife signed a contract he drew up in order

  • to maintain the impression that they were a happily married couple. The contract included

  • the following clauses:

  • You will make sure… - that my clothes and laundry are kept in

  • good order; - that I will receive my three meals regularly

  • in my room;

  • You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary

  • for social reasons. Specifically, you will forego

  • - my sitting at home with you; - my going out or traveling with you.

  • You will obey the following points in your relations with me

  • - you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

  • - you will stop talking to me if I request it;

  • - you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.”

  • Way to be tactful Albert. Amazingly his wife actually agreed to the terms, after much persuasion.

  • After he divorced Mileva Marić in 1919, Einstein married his cousin, Elsa Loewenthal.

  • She was very closely related to Einstein; he was actually related to her on both sides

  • of his family. They had played together as kids but their romance didn’t flourish until

  • later on in their lives.

  • Einstein’s favourite hobbies were sailing and playing the violin. But neither came close

  • to his love for theoretical physics. Einstein would play the violin to himself when he became

  • stuck in the thinking process whilst practicing physics.

  • The prestigious Nobel Prize was awarded to Albert Einstein in 1921. But not for his

  • work on the theory of relativity. He actually got it for his work on helping to discover

  • the photoelectric effect. Which is the now, well known phenomenon, that metals emit electrons

  • when light is shined upon them.

  • However all of Einstein’s Nobel Prize money went to his ex-wife, Mileva, as a divorce

  • settlement.

  • About a week after Einstein died in 1955 at Princeton, before being cremated, an autopsy

  • was performed on his body by Thomas Harvey, a pathologist at Princeton University. He

  • removed Einstein’s brain for study, which he intended to kept permanently as a keepsake

  • and personal research project. Harvey was eventually fired from Princeton after refusing

  • to hand over Einstein’s brain. After finding it wasn’t any different to a normal brain,

  • Harvey dissected it into over 200 pieces, some of which he sent off to other researchers

  • for examination. It was eventually discovered that Einstein’s parietal lobes, the parts

  • of the brain responsible for mathematical, visual and spatial cognition, were 15% larger

  • than the average person’s.

  • Einstein’s brain was eventually transferred and put on display at thetter Museum in

  • Philadelphia. His eye’s however were also removed and handed to Henry Abrams, Einstein’s

  • eye doctor. To this day they remain in a safe deposit box in New York City.

  • Einstein’s last words are not known because he said them in German and the only

  • person that heard them was a night nurse who only spoke English.

  • But all these facts pale in comparison to the most amazing fact about Albert Einstein.

  • In 1905 whilst working in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein published a paper on his Special

  • Theory of Relativity”. Which challenged the world’s idea of how space and time behaves

  • in the universe and set the tone of theoretical physics for the next century, and counting.

  • The ideas Einstein put forward in this revolutionary paper had enormous consequences that completely

  • changed the way we think about, mass, energy, space and time.

  • Oh and by the way, Einstein published over 300 scientific papers over his lifetime.

  • His paper on the Special Theory of Relativity also included, what has become the most famous

  • equation in the world, E=mc2, otherwise known as the mass-energy equivalence. On a very

  • basic level it is the concept that the mass of any object is a measure of how much energy

  • is contained within it. There were actually numerous scientists who all claimed to have

  • discovered the equation around the same time. But it was eventually decided that Albert

  • Einstein should be given the credit for it as he put the most effort into its discovery.

  • E=mc2 gave rise to the atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race. Knowing that he was

  • mostly responsible for causing the atomic bomb’s eventual discovery, Einstein slipped

  • into a period of great depression. He believed himself to be a pacifist.

  • In 1915, Einstein completed his General Theory of Relativity, which implied the existence

  • of black holes and gravitational waves and many other things, up until which point had

  • been nothing more than hypotheses. Together with his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein’s

  • General Theory of Relativity formed the Theory of Relativity. The cornerstone of modern physics

  • and arguably the most important discovery in physics of the past century.

  • Sure the Theory of Relativity is used every day by physicists in their increasingly

  • complex endeavours. But its effects can be seen in our everyday lives too. None of the

  • following things would be possible without Einstein’s two theories of relativity: GPS

  • systems, televisions, nuclear power plants, remote control devices, lasers, DVD-players

  • and many others. Oh and I nearly forgot to mention, the universe itself.

As a child Albert Einstein was a slow learner and spoke very slowly. So much so that his

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