Albert Einstein

By Nicole Cash

Albert Einstein was born to Hermann Einstein and the former Pauline Koch ,middle-class
German-Jews, on March 14, 1879 at Ulm, in Wuerttemberg, Germany. Weeks later the family
moved to Munich. Albert began schooling there at Luitpold Gymnasium. Where at the age of 12
he discovered a geometry book, calling it his “sacred little geometry book”. He also became
very religious at this age but that began to change after reading science books the contridicted
his beliefs. When attending Luitpold, Einstein felt victimized by a Prussian-style educational
system that he said “stifled originality and creativity.” One teacher told him that he would
never be anything.

At 15 Einstein dropped out of school and followed his family to Italy. After half a year,
he attended a congenial Swiss school. The next year he entered the Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich. Einstein graduated with a horrible record after skipping lectures. So for
two years he could only find the odd jobs but finally became a patient examiner. Where he
obtained his docter’s degree in 1905. Einstein married Mileva Maric in 1903, and they had a
daughter and two sons; they divorced in 1919, and that same year he married his cousin Elsa
Lowenthal, who died in 1936.

Einstein became a german citizen in 1914 and lived in Berlin until 1933. He won a Nobel
Prize for Physics in 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery
of the law of the photoelectric effect." He moved to America after Adolf Hitler came into
power.Once in America, he took the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton.
On August 2,1939, he wrote a letter to Roosevelt encourgaging his to start a nuclear program.
He became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and retired in 1945. Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in New
Jersey. Element 99 was named einsteinium (Es) in his honor.