Ruby's Read/April

Albert Einstein.....Genius of the Twentieth Century

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm,Germany in 1879. When he was a toddler, his parents worried about his non-talking, but Albert said he knew how to talk, he was simply waiting to speak in complete sentences.

When Albert was 5 years old, his mother hired a tutor and a violin teacher for him, she thought that discipline would help him act in a more normal way. But a simple gift from his father was that truly sparked Albert's mind and imagination. The little compass made a deep and lasting impression on Albert Einstein, he believed that " Something deeply hidden had to be behind things."

When Albert was 7, he went to school, since hi was the only Jewish child in his class, he was teased about his religion, and he didn't like sports also, the boys in his class ignored him. For Albert's part, he didn't like his strict teachers or how they taught, he only paid attention to the subjects that interested him, especially math and science, but even with his rebelling, he got good grades.

Albert found many ways on his own to test his mind, and his determination knew no bounds. When he first learned geometry, he spent the next three weeks reworking the book's math equations! He liked to do "thought experiments". For these hi linked his science knowledge with his imagination. As Albert's imagination grew his impatience with school grew as well, when he was 15 years old, he was asked to leave school because his teachers had finally had enough of his independent learning style. Now Albert's family no longer worried about his mental abilities, they worried about his future.

The business of Albert's father was not doing well, the family had no extra money to help Albert in the years ahead, Albert announced that he wanted to become a science teacher, and he found a excellent school that would prepare him for that career. Even at this school, he chose to learn in his own way, and that kept him from getting a job. He searched for several years, and he was hired by the patent office finally. He loved his job, it also gave him time to work on his own scientific projects.

In 1905, Albert published some articles in a famous German physics journal, " Photons and energy quanta","E = mc² " ,"General theory of relativity", his years of reading,questions and thought experiments were the building blocks for some discoveries that turned out to be groundbreaking.

In 1909, Albert's successes meant he could leave the patent office, he was finally a science teacher, but the success didn't help his family life, he spent much of his time working and writing scientific papers, he and his wife were divorced in 1919. Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, in spite of this prize and his fame, his religion caused him problem once again. In 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected to be the leader of Germany, in the same year, Albert and his second wife were visiting in the United States. He knew if they returned to Germany, his wife would be in danger, so he accepted a job at Princeton University, and he and his second wife decided to make the United States their home.

Albert Einstein believed in a child's power of imagination and sense of wonder, he also felt that his own imagination and sense of wonder were responsible for his success. He died in 1955, even today people think of Albert Einstein's successes as monumental.

Ruby