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6. Time Magazine's Person of the Century in 1999

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6. Time Magazine's Person of the Century in 1999

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PHILIPPE HALSMAN

He was the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliche in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed.

Even now scientists marvel at the daring of general relativity ("I still can't see how he thought of it," said the late Richard Feynman, no slouch himself). But the great physicist was also engagingly simple, trading ties and socks for mothy sweaters and sweatshirts. He tossed off pithy aphorisms ("Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it") and playful doggerel as easily as equations. Viewing the hoopla over him with humorous detachment, he variously referred to himself as the Jewish saint or artist's model. He was a cartoonist's dream come true. (See 20 things you need to know about Albert Einstein.)

Much to his surprise, his ideas, like Darwin's, reverberated beyond science, influencing modern culture from painting to poetry. At first even many scientists didn't really grasp relativity, prompting Arthur Eddington's celebrated wisecrack (asked if it was true that only three people understood relativity, the witty British astrophysicist paused, then said, "I am trying to think who the third person is"). To the world at large, relativity seemed to pull the rug out from under perceived reality. And for many advanced thinkers of the 1920s, from Dadaists to Cubists to Freudians, that was a fitting credo, reflecting what science historian David Cassidy calls "the incomprehensiveness of the contemporary scene--the fall of monarchies, the upheaval of the social order, indeed, all the turbulence of the 20th century."

Einstein's galvanizing effect on the popular imagination continued throughout his life, and after it. Fearful his grave would become a magnet for curiosity seekers, Einstein's executors secretly scattered his ashes. But they were defeated at least in part by a pathologist who carried off his brain in hopes of learning the secrets of his genius. Only recently Canadian researchers, probing those pickled remains, found that he had an unusually large inferior parietal lobe — a center of mathematical thought and spatial imagery — and shorter connections between the frontal and temporal lobes. More definitive insights, though, are emerging from old Einstein letters and papers. These are finally coming to light after years of resistance by executors eager to shield the great relativist's image.

Unlike the avuncular caricature of his later years who left his hair unshorn, helped little girls with their math homework and was a soft touch for almost any worthy cause, Einstein is emerging from these documents as a man whose unsettled private life contrasts sharply with his serene contemplation of the universe. He could be alternately warmhearted and cold; a doting father, yet aloof; an understanding, if difficult, mate, but also an egregious flirt. "Deeply and passionately [concerned] with the fate of every stranger," wrote his friend and biographer Philipp Frank, he "immediately withdrew into his shell" when relations became intimate.

See the Person of the Century issue.

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He was the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliche in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood.

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Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, among other feats. He is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century.

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Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the general theory of relativity. He is considered one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century.

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4. 22 Surprising Facts About: Albert Einstein

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4. 22 Surprising Facts About: Albert Einstein

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22 Surprising Facts About: Albert Einstein

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Explore C♥naa Photografies®'s photos on Flickr. C♥naa Photografies® has uploaded 178 photos to Flickr.

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Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. During Einstein's childhood, he was taught how to play the violin by his mother, Pauline. He was a very slow learner. He was so slow that he did not learn how to talk until he was two years old. All of his teachers thought that he would never succeed because of how slow he was. He could barely pronounce the words without mouthing them silently first. A compass that his father, Hermann had given to him. He was fascinated by the way it worked. Ever since he had that compass, he wanted to see how it worked and he always tried to figure it out. This small compass had an impact on him that changed his life. He gave up on the violin and started to learn more about science. He learned so much that he wanted to become a scientist himself and make great discoveries; such as figuring out how to put sound into a motion picture and writing 3 famousoks. Iturns out even though Albert Einstein was a very slow learner and his teachers said he couldn't succeed, however he did and he is known for being one of the greatest scientists that ever lived.

When Albert was little, he loved building blocks. He liked to play by himself, or with his little sister. One day Hermann gave his five years old son a compass. Albert fascinated by the fact that the needle usually pointed in the direction." i can't forget ... that this experiment made a deep and lasting impression upon me," he later wrote." Something deeply hidden had to be behind things."

When Albert was six years old, Albert began local catholic elementary school. The Einstein did not actively practice their faith and chose the school for its educational quality rather than its religious affiliation. Albert hated to school, the students were wearing uniforms, but he was not. Refusing to unthinkingly accept everything his teacher said, he received mediocre grades.

In many respects, Albert 's schooling began when he back home. His mother taught him to play the violin, and Albert usually played algebra games with his dad and uncle. He also came in contact with Max Talmud, a college student and family friend who know Albert peppered his household elders with questions on such topics as light and movement. At he was 12, Albert astonished his dad and uncle by producing an original proof for the Pythagorean theorem.

In 1894, Albert began his high school, his family to move to a town near Milan of Italy. After the spending a year at a Swiss high school, Albert was 17, he finally admitted to Zurich Polytechnic, where he study wish of becoming a teacher of science. If you haven't seen pictures of him as a young man well his lady friends would say that he had the male beauty that, especially at the beginning of the century, caused such havoc.

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Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. During Einstein's childhood, he was taught how to play the violin by his mother, Pauline. He was a very slow learner. He was so slow that he did not learn how to talk until he was two years old.

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1. 20 Things You need to know about Einstein's Childhood

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1. 20 Things You need to know about Einstein's Childhood

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Einstein was slow in learning how to speak. His parents even consulted a doctor. He also had a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one headmaster to expel him and another to amuse history by saying that he would never amount to much. But these traits helped make him a genius. His cocky contempt for authority led him to question conventional wisdom. His slow verbal development made him curious about ordinary things — such as space and time — that most adults take for granted. His father gave him a compass at age five, and he puzzled over the nature of a magnetic field for the rest of his life. And he tended to think in pictures rather than words.