When is Albert Einstein

Mathematical physicists of this century and. indeed,.one of the greatest scientists of all time. His Theory of Relativity has transformed scientist's notions of time and space. Belief in the practicability of the atomic bomb was produced largely by his famous equation stating that energy was related to mass. Born in Germany of Jewish parents, he went to Switzerland in his early youth . For a while, he taught mathematics and physics in Zurich and obtained Swiss citizenship in 1941. having settled in the United States. he became an American citizen. His contribution to modern science is monumental and his work is all the more remarkable in that it rested very little on elaborate laboratory experiments but was based very largely on pure reasoning and mathematics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921. His writings for the layman are few, but they include an introduction to the general theory of relativity, which demonstrates. like the essay below. that had an admirable talent for straight forward expositions.

What an extraordinary situation is of us mortals! Each of us stayed here for a short time; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow -men - in  the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us  personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times, every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labours of other men.living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple lite and am often oppressed by the felling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow -men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and in the last resort, based on force . I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

In human freedom in the philosophical sense, I am definitely a disbeliever. Everyone not only acts under external coercion, but also under internal need.' Schopenhauer's saying that 'a man can do as he will.but not will as he will' has been an inspiration to me since my since my youth, and a constant consolation and unfailing well- spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life. my own and other.this feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility, which so easily become paralysing, it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously:it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all.has its due place 

To inquire after the meaning or object of one'the axistence or of creation has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet, everybody has certain ideals, which determine the direction of his endeavours and his judgment.