00:14Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.
00:21Albert Einstein
00:23Albert Einstein was born at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany, on March the 14th, 1879.
00:32Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Leopold Gymnasium.
00:41Later they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Ereau, Switzerland.
00:48And in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics.
00:58In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship, and as he was unable to find a teaching post,
01:07he accepted a position as technical assistant at the Swiss patent office.
01:13In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.
01:17During his stay at the patent office, and in his spare time he produced much of his remarkable work,
01:24and in 1908 he was appointed Privat Docent in Bern.
01:30In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich.
01:35In 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post.
01:44After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the world government movement.
01:51He was offered the presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined.
01:56And he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
02:04At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics,
02:11and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field.
02:22He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory.
02:31This led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules.
02:36He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density,
02:42and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.
02:48In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation.
03:01And in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity.
03:08During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.
03:15In the 1920s Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories,
03:22although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory,
03:28and he persevered with this work in America.
03:32He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monotonic gas,
03:40and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.
03:50After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics,
03:57taking the opposite approach, geometrization, to the majority of physicists.
04:03During the 1920s he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East,
04:10and he was awarded fellowships or memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world.
04:18Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude,
04:25and for relaxation music played an important part in his life.
04:31He married Mileva Marek in 1903, and they had a daughter and two sons.
04:37Their marriage was dissolved in 1919, and in the same year he married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal.
04:46He died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey.
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