Albert Einstein was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He died in 1955 in Princeton, USA. He won the Nobel Prize in 1921 and is known as one of the most important scientists of all time. His theories of Special Relativity (1905) and General Relativity (1915) are among the most important scientific ideas ever.
Einstein was a very important scientist, but he was also something of a 20th-century icon, thanks to the picture of him with his wild white hair and tongue poking out.
During his life, the great thinker became known and respected around the world, but he also had his share of enemies. When Einstein said in 1933 that he would never go back to Germany again, a Berlin newspaper ran a story that said, “Good news from Einstein: he’s not coming back!”
Here are 10 interesting facts about Albert Einstein’s life.
1. When he was 16, he wrote his first science work.
Some people say that Einstein wasn’t the smartest student in school, but this isn’t quite true. One of his teachers did tell him he wouldn’t amount to much, but this was possibly because he wanted to question everything and wouldn’t accept things as they were. This influenced how he studied the world later on.
Einstein did drop out of school when he was 15 and failed some tests, but this was because he didn’t know enough French when he was young. He was a child genius, though, and was great at Latin, geometry, and math. He was also a great violin player.
Einstein wrote his first science paper when he was 16. It was called “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields” and he was only 16 years old.
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2. He and Oppenheimer were friends
Einstein was friends with the American scientist Robert Oppenheimer for many years. Oppenheimer is known as the “father of the atom bomb” At a talk he gave in Paris in 1966, Oppenheimer talked about his friendship with Einstein. He also talked about the mistaken belief that Einstein was the one who made the atomic bomb happen.
Einstein wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 to tell him that the Nazis might make an atomic bomb and that it would be better if the US did it first.
After the war, Oppenheimer said that the letter had “very little effect” on the Manhattan Project, which was the American effort to make the first atomic bomb, and that “Einstein himself is really not responsible for all that came later” (i.e., the making and use of the bombs).
Einstein regretted the letter he sent to Roosevelt after the war. He said, “If I had known the Germans wouldn’t be able to make an atomic bomb, I wouldn’t have done anything.”
Einstein could see that nuclear weapons could cause terrible things to happen. He once said, “I don’t know what weapons will be used in World War III, but sticks and stones will be used in World War IV.“
3. He might have dated Marilyn Monroe.
People often say that Einstein had a relationship with Marilyn Monroe. There is no proof that they ever met, but Shelley Winters, who shared an apartment with Marilyn Monroe in the 1940s, said that Monroe wrote down the name of the old scientist when they were making a list of dream lovers. Winters said that Monroe told her, “That has nothing to do with it” when she said that Einstein was an old man. I’ve heard he’s in great shape.‘ A picture of him was also said to have been on Monroe’s piano.
Monroe may have admired Einstein’s intelligence, though, since she was a voracious reader with a personal library of hundreds of first copies and her third husband, Arthur Miller, was a writer.
4. When he lived in Berlin, he spoke out against World War I.
Einstein’s work in science was more than enough to make the modern world what it is, but he was also involved in politics. He even said that his life was “split between equations and politics.”
He didn’t hide the fact that he didn’t like the First World War while he was working in Berlin. He even told Germans to protest in public and refuse to join the army. He once called nationalism “the measles of humanity” because he thought it was like a sickness.
5. The FBI kept a lot of information on him.
In the early 1930s, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) started a file on Einstein to keep track of him and learn more about him.
The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, was worried about Einstein’s public work for peace and other left-leaning causes. Hoover thought Einstein was a “extreme radical,“ and he tried, but failed, to stop him from coming to the United States. Einstein’s huge FBI case file finally had more than 1,400 pages.
6. He turned down the chance to be president of Israel.
Near the end of his life, Einstein, a well-known scientist with a long career, was asked to become Israel’s second leader. Einstein helped start the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with Chaim Weizmann in 1918. Weizmann died in November 1952.
Einstein was born into a Jewish family, so he stayed in the US after 1933 to avoid Nazi persecution. He turned down the offer reluctantly, saying that he lacked “experience and natural aptitude.”
7. 100 Authors Against Einstein is the name of a book that was written.
In Germany, a book called 100 Authors Against Einstein came out in 1931.
The work was an attack on Einstein’s scientific ideas, but top thinkers at the time (and since) laughed at it as incorrect and embarrassing. Einstein replied that if he were wrong, there would have only needed to be one author, not 100.
8. He married his closest relative.
Einstein married Elsa Lowenthal in 1919. She was his second wife. Elsa had been married before, and her marriage name was Lowenthal. Her birth name, however, was Einstein. This was because she was the first cousin of Albert Einstein.
9. He went to a séance once.
Einstein once said that he wouldn’t believe in ghosts even if he saw one. Einstein went to a séance at the home of author Upton Sinclair in California in 1930. The séance was led by a psychic named Nostradamus. An attendee later said that not much happened during the séance, and Einstein didn’t seem to be affected by this extrasensory evening.
10. He thought that Newton was the best.
People often think that Isaac Newton’s work was no longer needed because of Albert Einstein’s ideas. But even though Einstein’s ideas were important and new, they didn’t make Newton’s laws of nature useless.
Einstein himself said, “No one should think that this [Theory of Relativity] or any other theory can really overthrow Newton’s great idea.” His clear and wide-ranging ideas will always be important because they are the basis for how we think about physics today.
