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ALBERT EINSTEIN The German-American physicist Albert Einstein, contributed
more than any other scientist to the 20th-century . Born in the town of Ulm,
Germany, Mar. 14, 1879, HE then later died in Princeton, N.J., Apr. 18, 1955. In
the wake of World War I, Einstein's theories, especially his theory of
relativity, seemed to many people to point to a pure quality of human thought,
one far removed from the war and its aftermath. Seldom has a scientist received
such public attention for having the ability for learning thet he had. in 1905,
Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which
electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in quantities
that were ultimately discrete.
The energy of these emitted quantities--the
so-called light-quanta--was directly proportional to the frequency of the
radiation. This circumstance was perplexing because classical electromagnetic
theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics, had assumed
that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves propagating in a hypothetical,
all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether, and that the waves could
contain any amount of energy no matter how small. Einstein used Planck's quantum
hypothesis to describe visible electromagnetic radiation, or light. According to
Einstein's heuristic viewpoint, light could be imagined to consist of discrete
bundles of radiation. Einstein used this interpretation to explain the
photoelectric effect, by which certain metals emit electrons when illuminated by
light with a given frequency. Einstein's theory, and his subsequent elaboration
of it, formed the basis for much of quantum mechanics. Another of Einsteins
theories concerned statistical mechanics, a field of study that had been
elaborated by, among others, Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Unaware
of Gibbs' contributions, Einstein extended Boltzmann's work and calculated the
average trajectory of a microscopic particle buffeted by random collisions with
molecules in a fluid or in a gas. Einstein observed that his calculations could
account for Brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of pollen in
fluids, which had been noted by the British botanist Robert Brown. Einstein's
paper provided convincing evidence for the physical existence of atom-sized
molecules, which had already received much theoretical discussion. His results
were independently discovered by the Polish physicist Marian von Smoluchowski
and later elaborated by the French physicist Jean Perrin. Albert has contributed
more theories that help us during everyday life then anyone ever has. He has
explaned what was expaned before him in an incorrect way. If he was never born,
we would think of the world in a completly different manner. In my opinion, he
has benifitted the world more then anyone has ever did.
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