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ALBERT EINSTEIN
(Physicist, Institute for Advanced Study)
People > Scientists
Albert Einstein, undoubtedly the most famous scientist of the 20th century, was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. In 1896, he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, training to be a teacher of mathematics and physics. Unable to find a teaching job upon graduating in 1901, Einstein, who had become a Swiss citizen, instead found work at the patent office in Berne, focusing on patent applications for electromechanical devices. While working at the patent office, Einstein published four papers in 1905 that cemented that year as his annus mirabilis, or "year of miracles." These papers would generally be considered as the beginning of modern physics, though at the time they were barely noticed. The first paper provided a foundation for quantum mechanics, by describing the basis for a description of light using particles rather than waves. The significance of this was that each particle of light, or photon, contained a discrete quantity of energy, rather than having a continuous distribution of energy as the wave theory of light would suggest. The second paper described the motion of small particles, or "Brownian motion," greatly strengthening the case for the still-controversial existence of atoms as real entities. The third paper introduced Einstein's special theory of relativity, which described motion at speeds approaching the speed of light. The fourth and final paper of that year extended the special theory of relativity to demonstrate an equivalence between energy and mass, captured in the famous equation E=mc2. Later, when nuclear physicists discovered that fission results in a net loss of mass, this equation would describe how that process of mass loss could yield tremendous amounts of energy in the form of a bomb. 
In 1914, Einstein was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He also became a German citizen. While in Berlin, he developed his general theory of relativity, which gave a new framework for studying gravitation. As the winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics, he was one of the leading physicists in Germany and in the world. However, the rise of the Nazis in Germany threatened Einstein, who was Jewish and a spokesperson for Jewish and left-leaning causes. He also had declared himself a pacifist during the First World War. Outspoken proponents of "German Physics" allied with the Nazis to denounce Einstein's theories. By 1933, when the Nazis took power, Einstein already had decided to emigrate to the United States. He renounced his German citizenship and took a non-teaching position in Princeton, New Jersey, at the Institute for Advanced Study. By 1941, more than 100 physicists fleeing Europe, most of them Jewish and including eight past and future Nobel Laureates, found academic positions in the United States. Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, James Franck, and Eugene Wigner all left their posts in German universities and crossed the Atlantic. Concerned that the Germans were working on the bomb and eager to start an American program, Szilard, with the help of Wigner and Teller, in summer 1939 enlisted Einstein to draft a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the threat. The letter was delivered on October 11 to Roosevelt by Alexander Sachs, Wall Street economist and longtime friend and unofficial advisor to the President. Convinced by the letter-"a milestone in the American atomic energy program"-and Sachs' persuasive presentation, Roosevelt created a committee on uranium research, from which the Manhattan Project gradually evolved. After signing the letter, Einstein was to have minimal contact with the Manhattan Project. He was invited to attend the initial meeting of the uranium committee, but he did not accept. He wrote a letter to Sachs in March 1940 summarizing the uranium research situation and suggesting that information concerning new evidence of German interest in atomic energy be forwarded to the President. Sachs did this and included Einstein's recommendations that steps be taken to halt publication of articles on atomic subjects and that a "general policy… [be] adopted by the Administration with respect to uranium." No White House response was forthcoming, however, and when Einstein was invited to the committee meeting in April, he again did not accept. Einstein was to do some minor theoretical calculations for the Navy, and in March 1945 when Szilard asked for a written introduction to Roosevelt in pursuit of international control he complied, although to no effect. 
Einstein excluded himself from the Manhattan Project, but it was a mutual exclusion. The government deliberately did not ask Einstein to participate. As Vannevar Bush, who essentially oversaw the uranium program until the Army took over in 1942, told the director of the Institute for Advanced Study early in the war, "I am not at all sure that if I place Einstein in entire contact with his subject he would not discuss it in a way that it should not be discussed." Bush wanted to "place the whole thing before him," but this was "utterly impossible in view of the attitude of people here in Washington who have studied into his whole history." Einstein, in other words, was a security concern, especially given his politics and pacifism. After the war, Einstein advocated for placing nuclear technology under international control and for ending nuclear testing. "I made one great mistake in my life," he told Linus Pauling in 1954, "when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them." His left-leaning political views made him suspect during the Cold War, and his search for a unified theory of physics pushed him to the margins of the vibrant postwar boom in particle physics research. Nevertheless, to the general public he remained the face of 20th century physics. He died in Princeton on April 18, 1955.
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The text for this page is original to the Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources. Major sources consulted include the following. Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The New World, 1939-1946: Volume I, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972), 16-17, 20, 21, 23, 342; Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1988), 6, 13-14, 21, 23, "milestone" quote from p. 14, Einstein's recommendations quote on p. 23. Much has been written about Albert Einstein. See Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (Avon, 1971), Bush quote on p. 685, Einstein quote on p. 752, and Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). An overview of physics during Einstein's life is Helge Kragh, Quantum Generations: A History of Physis in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). The image of Einstein and Szilard is courtesy the Federation of American Scientists. The portrait of Albert Einstein is courtesy the Library of Congress; it was taken in 1947 by Oren Jack Turner; its copyright was not renewed.