ALBERT EINSTEIN G206

 ALBERT EINSTEIN

Although Princeton, New Jersey, has a world-famous university, it is still a small quiet town. It is not a place where anyone would expect to see strange characters on the street. That is why one woman will never forget the day in 1940 when, as a child, she suddenly saw a funny-looking man coming toward her. "I remember," she tells her children now, "how wild his white hair looked—as if it had been electrified. He was short. His clothes seemed to be just pulled on to keep him covered, like a blanket to keep one warm. He had a big nose, a short, thick moustache, and deep-set eyes. He was staring, thinking. He almost knocked me down before he saw me. He gave me a friendly smile, then he walked on and went on thinking. I noticed he had on bedroom slippers. He had forgotten to put on his shoes. He looked as if he had just stepped out of my book of fairy tales and had passed me like a spirit. That night at dinner when I told my family about the strange, funny man I had seen, my father put down his knife and fork, looked at me and said, "My child, remember this. Today you saw the greatest man in the world!"

That man was Albert Einstein. How and why he had come to Princeton, New Jersey is a story of struggle, success, and sadness.

Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany in 1879. When he was a boy, he liked to ask questions. By the time he was fourteen years old, he had learned advanced mathematics all by himself. By then he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to be a physicist and devote himself to abstract research.

The Einsteins, however, could not pay for the advanced education that young Albert needed. But the family did manage to send him to a technical school and later to the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland. After graduation, he went to work, first as a teacher, then in a government office. With the pay that he received and saved, he was later able to go on with his education at the University of Zurich, where he received a doctor's degree in 1905. This was the period when he first began the research and studies which led to his famous Theory of Relativity.

His theory was so advanced that few people could understand it at that time and even fewer would accept it. Many scientists laughed at it. But Einstein stuck to his theory and went on with his research.

(To be continued)