§ V — The Worldline
Timeline
In relativity, the path an object traces through spacetime is its worldline. This is his.
- Life
- Science
- Public Life
- World
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Born in Ulm
Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, to Hermann Einstein and Pauline Koch. Source
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The Family Moves to Munich
His father and uncle set up a business building electrical equipment. Source
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The Compass
His father shows him a pocket compass. He later recalls the sense of wonder that something unseen moved the needle. Source
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First Violin Lessons
He begins the violin at about six, and grows to love it in his teens through Mozart's sonatas. Source
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Left Behind in Munich
The family business fails and his parents move to Italy. He stays to finish school, then leaves without a diploma and follows them. Source
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Aarau
After falling short on the Zurich Polytechnic entrance examination, taken two years early, he enrolls at the cantonal school in Aarau. Source
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Stateless
He gives up his German citizenship and remains without a nationality for five years. Source
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Enters the Zurich Polytechnic
He graduates from the school in Aarau and begins training as a teacher of mathematics and physics. Source
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Graduates, and Finds No Job
He receives his teaching diploma and fails to obtain an assistantship at the Polytechnic. Source
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Swiss Citizen
He becomes a citizen of Switzerland, and remains one for life. Source
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Lieserl
A daughter is born to Mileva Marić before their marriage. Her fate after 1903 is unknown. Source
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The Patent Office
He starts work at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern as a technical expert, third class. Source
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Marries Mileva Marić
The wedding takes place in Bern. Source
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Hans Albert Is Born
His first son, later a professor of hydraulic engineering at Berkeley. Source
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The Miracle Year
In seven months he completes papers on light quanta, Brownian motion, special relativity, and mass–energy equivalence, plus his doctoral thesis. Source
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The Happiest Thought
He realizes that a person in free fall does not feel their own weight, the seed of general relativity. Source
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Professor at Last
He leaves the patent office for his first academic post, at the University of Zurich. Source
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Eduard Is Born
His second son, known as Tete. Source
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Prague, and the First Solvay Conference
He becomes a full professor in Prague and joins the leading physicists of Europe in Brussels to discuss the quantum. Source
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Back to Zurich
He returns to his old Polytechnic as a professor and begins work on gravity with Marcel Grossmann. Source
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Berlin
He takes up a research position at the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Mileva and the boys return to Zurich within months. Source
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Against the War
He signs a manifesto calling for European unity, in answer to one by ninety-three German intellectuals defending the war. Source
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General Relativity
He presents the final field equations of gravitation to the Prussian Academy. Source
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Predicts Gravitational Waves
He shows that his equations allow ripples in spacetime that travel at the speed of light. Source
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The First Model of the Universe
He applies general relativity to the cosmos as a whole and introduces the cosmological constant. Source
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Divorce
He and Mileva divorce. The settlement promises her the money from a Nobel Prize he has not yet won. Source
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The Eclipse
British expeditions to Brazil and the island of Príncipe photograph stars near the eclipsed Sun. Source
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Marries Elsa
He marries his cousin Elsa Löwenthal in Berlin. Source
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World Fame
The eclipse results are announced in London: light bends as he predicted. He becomes the most famous scientist alive. Source
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Attacks Begin
An organized antisemitic campaign against relativity holds public rallies in Berlin. Source
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First Visit to America
He tours the United States with Chaim Weizmann to raise funds for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Source
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The Nobel Prize
He is awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, especially for the law of the photoelectric effect. The award is announced while he is travelling to Japan; the news reaches him in Shanghai. Source
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Palestine
On his only visit, he lectures on Mount Scopus at the site of the future Hebrew University. Source
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Bose–Einstein Statistics
Building on a paper sent by Satyendra Nath Bose, he predicts a new state of matter at extremely low temperatures. Source
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The Debate With Bohr
At the fifth Solvay Conference he begins his long argument with Niels Bohr over the meaning of quantum mechanics. Source
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A Refrigerator Patent
He and Leo Szilard are granted a United States patent for a refrigerator with no moving parts. Source
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Eduard Falls Ill
His younger son develops schizophrenia at about twenty, and spends much of his life in a Zurich clinic. Source
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The FBI Opens a File
A women's patriotic organization tries to have him barred from the United States. The file is kept until his death. Source
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Exile
With Hitler in power, he resigns from the Prussian Academy and applies to give up his German citizenship. He never returns to Germany. Source
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Princeton
He arrives in the United States and joins the Institute for Advanced Study. Source
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The EPR Paper
With Podolsky and Rosen he argues that quantum mechanics is incomplete, bringing entanglement to the attention of physics. Source
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Elsa Dies
His second wife dies at their home in Princeton. Source
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A Guest at Mercer Street
When the singer Marian Anderson is refused a hotel room in Princeton, he invites her to stay at his home. Source
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The Letter to Roosevelt
He signs a letter warning the President that uranium could be used to build extremely powerful bombs. Source
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American Citizen
He takes the oath of United States citizenship, keeping his Swiss citizenship as well. Source
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Lincoln University
He visits a historically Black university in Pennsylvania to accept an honorary degree and speaks out against racism. Source
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The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists
He becomes its chairman, campaigning for international control of nuclear weapons. Source
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Mileva Dies
His first wife dies in Zurich. Source
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"Why Socialism?"
His essay appears in the first issue of the magazine Monthly Review. Source
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The Tongue
On his seventy-second birthday a photographer catches him sticking out his tongue. He likes the picture and orders copies. Source
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Offered the Presidency of Israel
After the death of Chaim Weizmann he is offered the largely ceremonial post, and declines. Source
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Defying McCarthy
The New York Times prints his advice to a teacher called before a congressional committee: refuse to testify. Source
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The Russell–Einstein Manifesto
In one of his last acts he signs Bertrand Russell's appeal to governments to renounce war in the nuclear age. Source
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Dies in Princeton
He dies at seventy-six of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, having declined surgery. He is cremated the same day. Source
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Einsteinium
Element 99, discovered in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb test, is named in his honor. Source
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The First Laser
Theodore Maiman operates the first laser, a device that works by stimulated emission. Source
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Centenary
A memorial statue is unveiled at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, in the hundredth year since his birth. Source
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The Condensate Is Made
Seventy years after his prediction, physicists in Colorado create the first Bose–Einstein condensate. Source
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The Cosmological Constant Returns
Astronomers find that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, reviving the term he had abandoned. Source
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Person of the Century
TIME magazine names him the most important person of the twentieth century. Source
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World Year of Physics
The United Nations declares an International Year of Physics, one hundred years after the miracle year. Source
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Gravitational Waves Detected
LIGO records the merger of two black holes, ninety-nine years after his prediction. Source
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A Black Hole Is Photographed
The Event Horizon Telescope releases the first image of a black hole's shadow, matching general relativity. Source
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A Nobel Prize for Entanglement
The physics prize honors the experiments that tested the question he raised in 1935. Source