20th Century Figure -- Albert Essay

Einstein was already publishing papers on magnetic fields, and he decided to apply to the Hochschule in Zurich, Switzerland instead of High School, but he failed the entrance exam. Instead, he went to Aarau to finish school, then in 1896 enrolled in the math and physics program at the Polytech in Zurich, graduating in 1890. In 1891 he was granted Swiss citizenship, which he held for the rest of his life (Isaacson, 2008). After graduation, Einstein was unable to find a teaching post, but he was able after almost two years of searching to get a job in the Berne Patent Office. During this time he had no personal contact with the professional physics community, but in 1905 had four papers published in the leading physics journals of the time. In 1915, after some work with other physicists, Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity, in a form still used today -- explaining gravitation as a distortion of the structure of space-time by matter. (Isaacson, 2008).

Einstein spent the World War I years in Berlin, continuing to publish and gain attention from the worldwide scientific community. In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"(Lieber, 2008). From then on Einstein was in demand as a lecturer, teacher, and colleague (not always agreed with). He used his previous work to continually work on what he called his Unified Field Theory, which attempted to bring numerous disciplines together in one solid theory of the universe. Still, his work was seminal for much of modern physics, and his work remains the basis for current work in the Grand Unification Theory (Weinberg, 1999).

As our person of the century, Einstein shines out with his thoughts on politics, religion, philosophy, Zionism, human nature, and his unending work for global peace. It is ironic, though, that although his work in physics led to the development of the atomic bomb, again, one of the central events of the 20th century that changed the world forever. It was in 1939 that Einstein wrote an impassioned letter to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, urging that the work on a new weapon using fission be developed by the United States before Nazi Germany was able to launch one. This letter eventually resulted in the Manhattan Project,