The greatest scientist of the 20th Century, as is well known, was Albert Einstein. Besides his accomplishments as a scientist, he was also a violinist and played the violin as a favorite pastime.
In the area of gravitation, in spite of the explanation advanced by Sir Isaac Newton, as to how it worked, there was still the question of how clearly one body could pull another without touching it. In this connection, Einstein wrote a new explanation of gravity which he called the theory of relativity. In later years, he published yet another theory explaining different motions, such as movement of electricity and light by gravitation.
As a Jew, he was stripped of his German citizenship and his property confiscated. One must wonder how and why a genius of his caliber could fall a victim to sheer racial hatred. The senseless animosity against Jews made no exception regardless of any intellectual potential, as reflected in the person of Einstein.
Two of Einstein’s striking characteristics were his long, flowing hair and sad face that made him a subject of painters and photographers.
Sadly, Einstein’s reputation as having once been a director of theoretical physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, in 1914, was unjustly dishonored and spurned. This was at a time when the Nazi movement was still in its infancy, but was gradually emerging as a force to reckon with in the future.
In 1905, Einstein set forth his theory of relativity, indicating that an object’s speed must be measured against some other object, moving or standing still. All matters are in motion and that all matters have energy. He showed that the highest speed that anything can reach is the speed of light. He proved that motion changes in weight and size and from solid to liquid. He was known as a theoretical physicist, as he thought of ideas that were tested later by experiments carried out by other scientists, known as experimental scientists.
Einstein traveled extensively as well as lectured in places that he visited, including the United States where he lectured at the California Institute of Technology. Shortly thereafter,
he settled in the United States and was subsequently appointed as a professor of physics at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, paving the way to his becoming a citizen in 1940. The rest of his life in the United States was considered to be providentially productive. There was no doubt that as an eminent scientist, the United States had provided, not only a safe haven for Einstein, but an opportunity to allow his worthy contributions to benefit humanity around the world.
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