10 Things You Didn't Know About Einstein - HowStuffWorks
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You know you're permanently established in the pop culture pantheon when people pose in front of your Lego likeness. Clemens Bilan/AFP/Getty Images Einstein at age 3 Apic/Getty Images 10 Things You Didn't Know About Einstein by Nicholas Gerbis 10 Things You Didn't Know About Einstein Everyone knows Albert Einstein as a wildhaired, violinplaying genius who revolutionized physics, and many have heard how he arrived at his groundbreaking theories via one ingenious thought experiment, or gedankenexperiment, after another. But did you know that he was also an eccentric who gleefully eschewed socks, dodged German military service and spurned social conventions? Or that he was an enthusiastic but thirdrate sailor? Ever since solar eclipse observations in 1919 made him frontpage news, we haven't been able to get enough of this guy. And why not? Einstein's influence extended beyond the scientific fields he revolutionized. His theories of relativity, which departed from the classical Newtonian view of the cosmos, came to symbolize a broader societal shift away from Enlightenmentinfluenced concepts of art, literature, morality and politics. More than that, thanks to his strong political and social views, often distilled into playful, philosophical and pithy quotes, he's been a mainstay of dormroom posters and pop culture for decades. But with the revelations that accompanied the release of his private papers 30 years after his death, do we finally have too much of Einstein? Do they remind us to never meet our heroes, or merely that all geniuses are, finally, human? As we explore the many facets of this extraordinary man, we might find that the answer changes relative to our reference frame. 10: He Took Up Speaking Late as a Child Einstein did not speak until comparatively late in childhood, and he remained a reluctant talker until the age of 7 [source: Wolff and Goodman]. This fact, combined with his singleminded devotion to physics, his imposition of routines on his wife, his musical talent and other factors have led some to argue that Einstein had Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that affects language and behavioral development in children. Other historical talents, including physicists Isaac Newton and Marie Curie and artists like Wassily Kandinsky and J.M.W. Turner, have received similar postmortem armchair diagnoses [source: James]. Departing from this view, Stanford economist and author Thomas Sowell coined the term "Einstein Syndrome" to describe nonautistic gifted people with delayed speech. How his ideas are viewed by child development experts, or how they differ from the more commonly known phenomenon of asynchronous development, in which gifted children develop faster than average in some areas and more slowly in others, remains unclear. In the end, Einstein, a lifelong visual thinker, might simply have had a rich inner life and no need for speech because, as one famous anecdote claims he said, "up to now everything was in order."
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10 hal yang tidak kamu ketahui tentang Einstein
Transcript of 10 Things You Didn't Know About Einstein - HowStuffWorks
You know you're permanently established in the pop culture pantheon when people pose in front of your Legolikeness.Clemens Bilan/AFP/Getty Images
Einstein at age 3Apic/Getty Images
10 Things You Didn't Know About Einstein
by Nicholas Gerbis
10 Things You Didn't Know AboutEinstein
Everyone knows Albert Einstein as a wildhaired,violinplaying genius who revolutionized physics, andmany have heard how he arrived at his groundbreakingtheories via one ingenious thought experiment, orgedankenexperiment, after another. But did you knowthat he was also an eccentric who gleefully eschewedsocks, dodged German military service and spurnedsocial conventions? Or that he was an enthusiastic butthirdrate sailor?
Ever since solar eclipse observations in 1919 madehim frontpage news, we haven't been able to getenough of this guy. And why not? Einstein's influenceextended beyond the scientific fields he revolutionized.His theories of relativity, which departed from theclassical Newtonian view of the cosmos, came tosymbolize a broader societal shift away fromEnlightenmentinfluenced concepts of art, literature,morality and politics. More than that, thanks to hisstrong political and social views, often distilled intoplayful, philosophical and pithy quotes, he's been amainstay of dormroom posters and pop culture fordecades.
But with the revelations that accompanied the release of his private papers 30 years after his death, do we finally have too much of Einstein? Do they remind us tonever meet our heroes, or merely that all geniuses are, finally, human? As we explore the many facets of this extraordinary man, we might find that the answerchanges relative to our reference frame.
10: He Took Up Speaking Late as a Child
Einstein did not speak until comparatively late inchildhood, and he remained a reluctant talker until theage of 7 [source: Wolff and Goodman]. This fact,combined with his singleminded devotion to physics,his imposition of routines on his wife, his musicaltalent and other factors have led some to argue thatEinstein had Asperger's syndrome, an autismspectrum disorder that affects language and behavioraldevelopment in children.
Other historical talents, including physicists IsaacNewton and Marie Curie and artists like WassilyKandinsky and J.M.W. Turner, have received similarpostmortem armchair diagnoses [source: James].Departing from this view, Stanford economist andauthor Thomas Sowell coined the term "EinsteinSyndrome" to describe nonautistic gifted people withdelayed speech. How his ideas are viewed by childdevelopment experts, or how they differ from the morecommonly known phenomenon of asynchronousdevelopment, in which gifted children develop fasterthan average in some areas and more slowly in others,remains unclear.
In the end, Einstein, a lifelong visual thinker, mightsimply have had a rich inner life and no need forspeech because, as one famous anecdote claims hesaid, "up to now everything was in order."
Grades get kind of confusing when school officials turn F's into A's and vice versa. A switcheroo like that mayhave been responsible for the rumor that Einstein flunked math.nuiiko/iStock/Thinkstock
He was 17 and she was almost 21, but despite the difference in age and world experience, Albert Einstein andMileva Marić fell very much in love. The two are pictured here on Jan. 1, 1905.Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images
9: He Did Not Actually Do Poorly inSchool
We love to swap ironic facts about famous people,especially in our clickbaitdriven Internet culture. Soit's no surprise that the notions that Einstein struggledwith math and that he failed his college entranceexams have such staying power. In truth, he excelledin physics and math from a young age and studiedcalculus while only 12 years old. He also knew his wayaround Greek conjugation and Latin declension. Sohow did the idea that he failed math gain traction?Possibly because, during one year of Einstein'seducation, school officials reversed the gradingsystem, turning the numerical equivalent of A's into F's(and confusing unwary future biographers).
Einstein did fail his first round of entrance exams due to extenuating circumstances. When the youngman applied to the Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology, he was a 15yearold dropout who lackedthe equivalent of a high school diploma. Moreover, therigid educational system that he grew up in did notprovide him the background in French, chemistry andbiology that he needed to pass the institute's exams.He scored so highly on his mathematics and physicstests, however, that the university accepted him
anyway, on the condition that he complete his secondary education soon after.
8: He Had an Illegitimate Daughter With aMysterious Fate
While attending university in Zurich, Einstein fell inlove with an older physics student, Mileva Marić, whowould eventually become his first wife. By thestandards of late 19thcentury Europe, theirs was amodern love affair. They soon grew quite close andgave one another nicknames: He called her "Dollie,"and she nicknamed him "Johnnie."
Marić was a remarkable woman, having overcomeenormous social resistance to earn a place as the fifthwoman accepted to the prestigious university[sources: PBS]. But for years after graduation,Einstein remained too poor to marry her. Moreover, hisparents rejected Marić as a tooold, bookish EasternOrthodox Serb, and his father did not approve themarriage until just before his death in 1902 [sources:Golden; Kaku; PBS].
Earlier that year, in January, the couple had a daughternamed Lieserl (diminutive for Elisabeth). Marićreturned to her parent's home near Novi Sad, a Serbcultural center then located in the Kingdom of Hungarybut today part of Serbia's rural Vojvodina region. There
she gave birth to the child, after which the couple never spoke of their daughter to others, even friends. Lieserl's fate remains a mystery to this day. The twoprevalent theories hold that she died of scarlet fever or was given up for adoption [sources: Golden; Kaku; PBS].
7: He Was a Cad With a TumultuousFamily Life
Whatever closeness Einstein and Marić shared did notsurvive long into their marriage, as theircorrespondence makes clear. Indeed, his own letterspaint him as an unkind philanderer who neglected andmistreated her while openly enjoying several flirtationsand affairs [sources: Golden]. One mistress, hiscousin Elsa, would eventually become his secondwife, although he also considered marrying herdaughter, his future stepdaughter. This must havemade family reunions both uncomfortable andconfusing, especially since Elsa was Einstein's first
And here's Einstein with his second wife (and cousin) Elsa on April 1, 1921. The two wed on June 2, 1919.© Bettmann/Corbis
Yep, 1905 was the year that E = mc burst onto the scene, too.flytosky11/iStock/Thinkstock
cousin on his mother's side and his second cousin onhis father's side [sources: Golden; Kaku]. He cheatedon Elsa as well, but she allowed it as long as he kepthis affairs quiet.
Meanwhile, because he could not afford to supporthimself and his first wife in the case of a divorce,Einstein struck a deal with Marić: She would grant hima divorce, and he would give her and their two sons theprize money from his presumably imminent Nobel.Finally, after five years living apart, Marić divorcedAlbert in 1919. Thereafter, he grew estranged from hissons, one of whom was schizophrenic, leaving Marićto care for them and her own crumbling family[sources: Golden; Kaku; PBS].
6: He Had One Heck of a Year
In 1905, Einstein published four papers that rockedcontemporary views of space, time, mass and energyand helped set the stage for modern physics, all whilewriting a doctoral dissertation and working as a thirdclass examiner in the Swiss patent office.
After graduation, Einstein had applied for numerousacademic posts, but school after school had rebuffedhim. Their rejections stemmed in part from a letter ofrecommendation that Einstein had foolishly requestedfrom Heinrich Weber, a professor whose classes hehad regularly ditched [sources: Kaku]. As decisionsgo, it was an object lesson in the difference betweenintelligence and wisdom. But the clerkship left Einsteinenough daydreaming time to conceive his fourlandmark Annals of Physics journal papers, allpublished in a single annus mirabilis:
1. "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning theProduction and Transformation of Light" explained thephotoelectric effect using quantum theory (and wouldeventually earn him the Nobel Prize, see below).
2. "On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended inStationary Liquids Required by the MolecularKinetic Theory of Heat" experimentally proved the existence of atoms.
3. "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" established the mathematical theory of special relativity.
4. "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" explained how relativity theory led to a massenergy equivalence of E = mc .
5: He Mediated a Hostage Negotiation
Einstein was willing to put his pacifism andcommitment to peace into action, even at the risk ofhis own hide. In 1914, he and three colleagues inGermany singled themselves out by daring to sign astatement protesting the thenempire's militarism andinvolvement in World War I [source: Kaku]. The fourissued the declaration in reply to the "Manifesto to theCivilized World," a governmentsponsored documentthat defended Germany's invasion of neutral Belgiumand which nearly 100 eminent German intellectualssigned. While many of his colleagues offered the fruitsof their genius to the war effort, Einstein refused.
The war left Germany devastated, deeply in debt andfacing social upheaval. During the turmoil that
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August 1914: Bavarian soldiers head out to the war front. Unlike some of his academic peers, Einstein did notsupport the war and was a lifelong pacifist.© dpa/dpa/Corbis
Einstein and three of his fellow Nobel Prize cronies including (left to right) Sinclair Lewis, Frank Kellogg, Einsteinand Irving Langmuir. The four, along with others, had gathered for a formal celebration on the 100th anniversaryof Alfred Nobel's birth in 1933.© Bettmann/Corbis
followed, radical students at the University of Berlintook the rector and several professors hostage, and noone wanted to take their chances finding out how thepolice would resolve the standoff [sources: Bolles;Kaku]. Both students and professors respectedEinstein, so he and Max Born, a Germanborn pioneerof quantum mechanics, found themselves in a positionto defuse the situation, which they did [source: Kaku].In later years, Einstein would recall with amusedwonder how naïve they had been for never consideringthat the students might have turned on them [source:Bolles].
4: He Didn't Win the Nobel Prize forRelativity
As with most scientific revolutions, Einstein'sbreakthrough insights on special relativity in 1905 didnot arise out of a vacuum. His genius lay in how hetransformed previous work by scientists like HenriPoincaré and Hendrik Lorentz into a new, unifiedtheory, one that removed the friction betweenNewtonian physics and James Clerk Maxwell's theoryof light.
Published in 1916, Einstein's theory of generalrelativity completed special relativity by bringinggravity and acceleration into the picture through theconcept of warped spacetime. Unfortunately, it tookyears to prove one of its key predictions, the lensingeffect of gravity. When astronomers finally confirmedthe bending of starlight during observations of a 1919solar eclipse, it launched Einstein into overnightcelebrity, but three more years would pass before theNobel committee retroactively awarded him the 1921Nobel Prize in physics in 1922.
Einstein received the prize for "the discovery of thelaw of the photoelectric effect." The photoelectriceffect refers to the release of electrically chargedparticles (ions or electrons) from (or within) a materialthat absorbs electromagnetic radiation (such as light).Einstein's crucial work in this area resolved perplexingquestions regarding the particlewave duality of light.Nevertheless, Einstein's acceptance speech focusedon his work in general relativity, a problem that hadoccupied him for nearly a decade, and whoseimportance would not be fully appreciated for decadesto come.
3: He Coinvented a Refrigerator
Between gas in the pipes and arsenic in the paint andwallpaper, households in the 1920s packed more thantheir share of deadly substances. Thus it seems
Einstein and physicist buddy Leo Szilard came up with an absorption refrigerator that's getting renewed interestdecades later.belchonock/iStock/Thinkstock
Einstein declares his opposition to the Hbomb and to the arms race between the USA and the USSR on Feb. 14,1950, during a TV broadcast that created a considerable stir in the U.S. and all over the Western world.AFP/Getty Images
appropriate that the transition from the traditionalicebox (literally, an insulated wooden box with ice in it)to electrical refrigerators added to the peril byoccasionally leaking volatile chemical coolants likemethyl chloride, ammonia or sulfur dioxide to poisonhapless homeowners.
One such incident in 1926 inspired Einstein to enlistthe help of Hungarian physicist Léo Szilàrd indesigning a new kind of appliance called anabsorption refrigerator that required only ammonia,butane and water, plus a heat source for the pump.Patented in 1930, their device relied on the principlethat liquids boil at lower temperatures when exposed tolower atmospheric pressures. As pressure in the pipeabove the butane reservoir dropped, the butane wouldboil off, drawing in heat from its surroundings andlowering temperatures in the fridge. Because it had nomoving parts, the appliance would last as long as itscasing [sources: Jha].
Einstein and Szilàrd's refrigerator lost out to moreefficient competitors and to the introduction ofchlorofluorocarbons, which replaced more hazardouscoolants and rendered the compressor fridge safer forpeople, if not the ozone layer. But new technologies
and growing environmental concerns have today sparked renewed interest in their approach, particularly as a means of providing refrigeration in remote and ruggedareas.
2: He Was Offered the Presidency ofIsrael
Although Einstein made his mark primarily as aphysicist, his political views have grown nearly asfamous as his scientific achievements. But they werealso more complex than many realize.
Einstein was a lifelong pacifist, except when it came totaking up defensive arms against the Nazis, whosingled him out for persecution. Moreover, when herealized that scientists in Nazi Germany might beworking on nuclear chain reactions with bombpotential, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelturging that the U.S. government coordinate its ownresearch in the area. The letter may have contributedto the formation of the Manhattan Project, to whichEinstein much to his relief was not invited; thegovernment considered him a security risk due to hismany associations with peace causes andmemberships in social advocacy groups like theNAACP [sources: Kaku]. Nevertheless, his E = mcequation was essential to their successful efforts inmaking the first atomic bombs [sources: Kaku].Einstein also helped fund the war effort by auctioninghis manuscripts, and worked after the war to oppose
the development of the hydrogen bomb and to control nuclear proliferation.
In 1952, Israeli premier David BenGurion offered Einstein the presidency of the newly established state of Israel. Einstein politely turned him down, citing advancingage and stating that his lifelong focus on objective matters had left him unsuited to politics [sources: Einstein; Kaku].
1: His Brain and Eyes Were Stolen
Einstein intended that his body be cremated and hisashes scattered secretly, so as to avoid the possibilityof admirers making a shrine of his grave. But whenpathologist Dr. Thomas Harvey walked into thePrinceton morgue on April 18, 1955, all of that went outthe window. Presented with the opportunity to studythe brain of one of the great geniuses of the age, andwithout permission, authority or experience as aneuroscientist, he absconded with 2.7 pounds (1.2kilograms) of Einstein's gray matter. He also removedthe deceased physicist's eyeballs and gave them toEinstein's eye doctor, Henry Adams. They remain in a
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The New York WorldTelegram blares the news of Einstein's passing. The 20th century's most famous scientistdied on April 18, 1955.© Underwood & Underwood/Corbis
New York City safe deposit box to this day [sources:Schifrin; Toland].
A tragicomic series of road trips ensued, with Harveystoring slices and chunks of the brain in jars, first inhis basement, then in a cider box squirreled awaybeneath a beer cooler as he relocated after losing hismedical license, then in the backseat of a reporter'scar. He apparently intended to study the brain anddetermine what made it so smart, but in 43 years henever got around to it, perhaps because he movedaround so much or because lacked the expertise andfunding. Ultimately, he returned most of the brain toPrinceton, bringing the physicist's postmortemperegrination full circle [sources: Schifrin; Toland].
Lots More Information
Author's Note: 10 Things You Didn't Know About EinsteinHistorical views of great men and women undergo pendulum swings, and Einstein is no different. I've done my best to occupy the middle ground throughout thisarticle, which unfortunately is no guarantee of being correct, only of minimizing the damage if my sources have erred. Consequently, I may have left out theoccasional juicy tidbit or sidestepped some of the wilder assertions of armchair analysts, which I think is just as well.
Two of the most unrealistic expectations we have of our heroes are that they achieve everything singlehandedly, without precursor or colleague, and that theysomehow engage in obsessive pursuit of their goals without cost to themselves or to those around them. I have yet to find a case in which either held true, let aloneboth. If Einstein was a flawed genius, then he was in good company.
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