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Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Albert Einstein Growing Up

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                                                       Albert Einstein at age 3, in 1882.  

Born (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) , Albert was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest physicists of all time.

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879 into a family of secular Ashkenazi Jews. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.                                     

                                         1947 at age 68

Albert Einstein was supposed to have the I.Q. of 180.  That's super-high.  He was an exceptional child. Other references say his I.Ql was 160.  A score of 135 or above puts a person in the 99th percentile of the population. News articles often put Einstein's IQ at 160, though it's unclear what that estimate is based upon. It's possible he was never tested. 

 I knew a man who was tested, an M.D; radiologist, with an I.Q. of 165.  He was also super-intelligent and deficient in certain social ethics, actually with similar problems like Einstein had.  

Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich in 1884, from the age of five, for three years. At the age of eight in 1887, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium (now known as the Albert Einstein Gymnasium), where he received advanced primary and secondary school education until he left the German Empire seven years later in in 1894.

                                              


Einstein excelled at math and physics from a young age, reaching a mathematical level years ahead of his peers. The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer. Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12. A family tutor, Max Talmud,  says that after he had given the 12-year-old Einstein a geometry textbook, after a short time "[Einstein] had worked through the whole book. He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics... Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow." His passion for geometry and algebra led the 12-year-old to become convinced that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure". Einstein started teaching himself calculus at 12, and as a 14-year-old in 1893, he says he had "mastered integral and differential calculus"

                                              

                                  1893, Einstein at age 14.

At age 13, when he had become more seriously interested in philosophy (and music), Einstein was introduced to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher, his tutor stating: "At the time he was still a child, only thirteen years old, yet Kant's works, incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, seemed to be clear to him."

                                               

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy.  Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew.  So Kant learned Hebrew and probably Einstein never did.  

At age 13, observant Jewish families have their sons bar-mitzvahed.  Einstein was observant for a time, but never had a bar mitzvah.  A Jewish medical student and family friend — ironically named Max Talmud — introduced Einstein to science books, which Einstein saw as contradicting religious teachings. Einstein did not believe in the commonly accepted anthropomorphic conception of God. “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all being, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men,” he wrote to a rabbi in 1929.                       

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardi origin. One of the early thinkers of the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy.                                  

                                  Einstein in 1904 (age 25)

In 1896, he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, graduating in 1900 and receiving his doctorate from Zurich in 1905. Unable to get an academic position, he took a post with the patent office in Bern while continuing to pursue his concern with the fundamental problems of physics.                 

                                        1921 at age 42
During the 1920s Einstein travelled widely in EuropeAmerica and Asia and identified himself with various public causes such as pacifism, Zionism, the League of Nations and European unity. Einstein was asked by WZO president and fellow scientist Chaim Weizmann to raise money for the organization and for Hebrew University

Einstein worried the establishment of a Jewish state would provoke conflict with the Arabs, but, like Herzl before him, the anti-Semitism he faced in Europe  convinced him of the need for a Jewish state. In 1921, he went on a fundraising tour of the United States. The following year, he stopped in Palestine for 12 days on the way back from a trip to Asia and gave the first-ever scientific lecture at Hebrew University. Einstein said he was proud of how Jews were becoming “a force in the world,” but never visited again.

When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Einstein was at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

and he never returned to Germany, being almost immediately deprived of his posts in Berlin and his membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His property was seized, a price was put on his head by Nazi fanatics and his books were among those burned publicly on May 10, 1933, as manifestations of the un-German spirit. 

Einstein and his wife Elsa returned to Europe in March and stopped in Belgium where he renounced his German citizenship. He returned to the U.S. and never again set foot in Germany. A lifelong opponent of nationalism, Einstein regarded the Third Reich as a catastrophe for civilization and became an outspoken opponent of National Socialism, making his name became synonymous with treason in the Third Reich.                                         

                Einstein and David Ben Gurion

Four years after the creation of Israel in 1949, Einstein, at age 70, was offered the Presidency of Israel by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Though moved by the offer, Einstein declined, offering the following statement:   I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel [to serve as President], and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions. For these reasons alone I should be unsuited to fulfill the duties of that high office, even if advancing age was not making increasing inroads on my strength. I am the more distressed over these circumstances because my relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.   

 Einstein's official portrait after receiving the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics

Because of Einstein's travels to the Far East, he was unable to personally accept the Nobel Prize for Physics at the Stockholm award ceremony in December 1922. In his place, the banquet speech was made by a German diplomat, who praised Einstein not only as a scientist but also as an international peacemaker and activist.

On his return voyage, he visited Palestine for 12 days, his only visit to that region. He was greeted as if he were a head of state, rather than a physicist, which included a cannon salute upon arriving at the home of the British high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel. During one reception, the building was stormed by people who wanted to see and hear him. In Einstein's talk to the audience, he expressed happiness that the Jewish people were beginning to be recognized as a force in the world.

He died in 1955 at age 76.  



  



Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant 

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/albert-einstein

https://www.biography.com/news/albert-einstein-iq

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