Albert Einstein

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Albert Einstein Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest mind ever to have walked the face of the earth, was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. As a boy, he hated school, and felt that the regimented and repetitive nature of schooling in Germany at that time had any promise of helping his future. He did not do well in school, mainly because he did not care to learn what was being taught to him. While he seemed to be a bright child, his schoolwork did not interest him, but at the same time the simple compass that his father owned fascinated him. Albert constantly harassed his father and his Uncle Jake with questions concerning how the compass worked, and what caused it to work. The answers about gravitation and magnetism kept him up at nights as he attempted to obtain a better grasp of the meaning of these concepts. After hearing of his fascination with these scientific concepts, Max Talmey, a family friend, lent young Einstein books on mathematics and natural science. Upon reading these books, Albert was hooked. From that time on, he was constantly reading about science, geometry, and other areas of math. Even with his newfound knowledge, school was still not interesting, and it was actually worse than it had been before. Now, along with his dislike of the teaching methods, his classmates disliked him for being somewhat of a loner, and because he was so much more intelligent than any of them. His lone passion outside of science was playing the violin, which he continued to do throughout his life. His love of the violin stemmed from his love of classical music, which his mother encouraged him to listen to. But because of his difficulties associating with his teachers and fellow students, he dropped out of school at the age... ... middle of paper ... ...te a letter to President Roosevelt revealing to him the possibility of building the atomic bomb. His pacifist background kept reminding him of how he was betraying himself by writing the letter, but after all, it was his theories which had made it possible. After the end of World War II, Einstein became one of the foremost advocates of world peace, and disarmament of all atomic weapons. The end of the war in 1945 also brought his retirement from the Institute. He always maintained a simple lifestyle, never desiring to be famous, or be hounded by journalists, but he usually could not turn them down. Being the simple man he was, he even turned down an invitation from David Ben-Gurion in 1952 to be the President of Israel. His work and his constant demand for interviews always kept him busy, and he lived in New Jersey until his death at the age of 76 on April 18, 1955.

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