Health Beat: 5 lifestyle changes to guard aging brain against Alzheimer's

Michael Gendy of King, N.C. Gendy continues to exercise after participating in a Wake Forest School of Medicine study that found aerobic activity may lower a risk factor for developing Alzheimer's. (Cagney Gentry/Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center via AP)

WASHINGTON -- The latest Alzheimer's research has a clear theme: Change your lifestyle to protect your brain.

It will take several years for scientists to prove whether some experimental drugs could at least delay Alzheimer's disease, and an aging population is at risk now.

Whatever happens on the drug front, there are generally healthy everyday steps people can take -- from better sleep to handling stress to hitting the books -- that research suggests just might lower the risk of Alzheimer's.

Here are five tips to guard your brain against memory loss, based on research at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference:Making these lifestyle changes "looks more promising than the drug studies so far," said Dr. Richard Lipton of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, whose lab researches what makes up healthy aging. The findings on stress prompted Lipton to take up yoga.

Get better shut-eye

Studies of more than 6,000 people linked poor sleep quality -- and especially sleep apnea -- to early memory problems called mild cognitive impairment, which in turn can raise the risk of later Alzheimer's. Other research showed poor sleep can spur a brain-clogging protein named amyloid that's a hallmark of Alzheimer's.

Talk to your doctor if you're having sleep problems, advises Dr. Kristine Yaffe of the University of California, San Francisco: "Sleep disorders are so common, and we think many are quite treatable."

Exercise your gray matter

Seniors often are advised to work crossword puzzles, take music lessons or learn a new language to keep the brain engaged. The protective effects of learning may start decades earlier in life.

In Sweden, researchers at the Karolinska Institute unearthed school report cards and work histories of more than 7,000 older adults. Good grades as young as age 10 predicted lower risk of dementia later in life. So did getting a job that required expertise with numbers or, for women, complex interactions with people -- occupations such as researchers or teachers.

Why? Learning and complex thinking strengthen connections between nerve cells, building up "cognitive reserve" so that as Alzheimer's brews, the brain can withstand more damage before symptoms become apparent.

Get moving

What's good for the heart is good for the brain, too, and physical activity counters a list of damaging problems -- high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol -- that can increase the risk of memory impairment later in life.

Get started early: One study tracked the habits of 3,200 young adults for 25 years, and found those who were the least active had the worst cognition when they were middle-aged. Sedentary behaviours like TV watching played a role. Yaffe -- who just had her desk raised so she can spend more time standing -- worries about kids' screen time.

Don't forget mental health

Late-life depression is a risk factor for Alzheimer's. Harvard researchers found loneliness is, too, accelerating cognitive decline in a study that tracked more than 8,000 seniors for over a decade.

Stress is bad for the brain as well, Lipton said. It's not just experiencing stress -- we all do -- but how we cope with it. Brooding over stressful events, for example, prolongs the harmful effects on brain cells. One study found seniors with the poorest coping skills were much more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment over nearly four years than seniors who could shrug off the stress.

Eat healthy

Diets high in fruits and vegetables and lower in fat and sugar are good for the arteries that keep blood flowing to the brain. Type 2 diabetes, the kind linked to excess weight, raises the risk of dementia later in life.

Weight aside, Lipton's lab recently found a healthy diet lowered seniors' risk of impaired "executive function" as they got older -- how the brain pays attention, organizes and multitasks.

Soccer legend Pelé leaves hospital after back surgery

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian soccer legend Pelé left the hospital on Monday after undergoing back surgery, the latest in a series of health complications for the 74-year-old former star striker.

Pelé, whose given name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento, spent the weekend at Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo after a procedure to relieve pressure on a nerve in his spine, an aide told Reuters. The hospital announced his release in a statement.

This is the third time Pelé has been hospitalized since November. He spent two weeks in November at the Einstein facility with kidney problems and in May he underwent prostate surgery at the same hospital.

With more than 1,280 career goals and an unequaled three World Cup titles during his playing career, Pelé is considered by many to be the greatest soccer player of all-time.

Mass of energy as more than 300 Albert Einstein lookalikes celebrate his genius

Lookalikes: Benny Wasserman, 81, (C) stands with other people dressed as Albert Einstein as they gather to establish a Guinness world record for the largest Einstein gathering

Here's a mass of energy Albert Einstein would have been proud of – a huge gathering of his lookalikes.

Fans dressed as the German-born theoretical physicist in a bid to beat the world record of 319.

One, Benny Wasserman, 81, was at the get-together in Los Angeles to raise cash for School on Wheels homeless children’s education group in America.

It's all relative: Benny Wasserman, 81, (C) stands with other people dressed as Albert Einstein

The current record of 319 Einstein lookalikes was set by students at Black Pine Circle School, Berkeley in America in March.

March 6 was the 100th anniversary of Einstein's theory of relativity.

The physicist received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

Einstein was visiting America when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

Mass of energy: People dressed as Albert Einstein

Being Jewish, he did not return to Germany and became a US citizen in 1940.

As well as his theory of relativity, Einstein also led research into the atom bomb, but later highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons.

Einstein was the son of an engineer and worked as a lecturer.

His name has now become synonymous with genius.

Relative triumph: Einstein impersonators set new world record

People dressed as Albert Einstein gather to establish a Guinness world record for the largest Einstein gathering, to raise money for School on Wheels and homeless children's education, in Los Angeles, California, United States, June 27, 2015. (Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

Einstein's characteristic features abounded in the City of Angels, most of which looked like they were purchased from a party store.Although he died 60 years ago, Albert Einstein was alive and well in Los Angeles on Sunday. More than 300 look-a-likes gathered to break the world record for the most Einsteins in one place, sporting unruly white hair and mustaches.

But one man stood out from the crowd, capturing the true essence of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

Benny Wasserman, 81, stands with other people dressed as Albert Einstein as they gather to establish a Guinness world record for the largest Einstein gathering, to raise money for School on Wheels and homeless children's education, in Los Angeles, California, United States, June 27, 2015. (Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

Dressed in a suit and tie that Einstein likely would have approved of, 81-year-old Benny Wasserman could have been the genius's twin brother. In fact, he's a professional Einstein impersonator and actor.

Despite being significantly older than most of the participants, Wasserman seemed to be having just as much fun as the rest of them. A group photo showed him sticking his tongue out with his younger counterparts, mimicking Einstein's most famous photograph.

The new world record breaks the previous one of 319 Einsteins in one location, set in March by elementary students at Black Pine Circle School in Berkeley, California.

But the event wasn't just about beating the previous record holders – it was actually for a good cause, benefitting School on Wheels, a homeless children's education group.

People dressed as Albert Einstein gather to establish a Guinness world record for the largest Einstein gathering, to raise money for School on Wheels and homeless children's education, in Los Angeles, California, United States, June 27, 2015. (Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

Although the non-profit group said on their Twitter account that the world record was indeed beaten on Sunday, it remains unclear just how many Einsteins turned up.

Albert Einstein: A Driven, Curious and Innovative Mind That Changed the Course of History

FILED UNDER: World, Science, Albert Einstein, American history, History, U.S. History, Science and Math, mathematics, world history

This article appears in the Newsweek's special edition, 100 People Who Shaped Our World, by Issue Editor Tim Baker.

Everything is relative. It’s a statement made across cultures, languages and geographical barriers. Despite being a profoundly abstract statement, it somehow explains a great deal about subjectivity, objectivity, measurement and observation—in short, the human experience. And Albert Einstein, a former patent clerk originally from Ulm, Germany, set out to prove with mathematics that relativity extended not just to the subjective observations of men but also to the mechanisms of the universe itself.

What has since become known as Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity” actually refers to two separate groundbreaking discoveries by Einstein. In 1905, he postulated “special relativity,” which describes the behavior of matter and, more importantly, light at high speeds using the now famous equation E=MC2. His 1915 follow-up, which came to be known as “general relativity,” asserted the equivalence of gravity and inertia.

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By 1921, Einstein was recognized as one of the most talented minds of his generation, if not in history, when he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. That same year, he traveled for the first time to Princeton University, where he would eventually become a professor. Einstein would settle permanently in the New Jersey town in 1932, when Nazism’s grip on his native Germany began to tighten.

Jewish by birth and a decidedly secular scientist by choice, Einstein became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and was among the thinkers who urged Franklin Roosevelt to beat Nazi Germany to the atomic bomb. Wary of the bomb’s destructive possibility, Einstein feared a world in which the Nazis were nuclear and his adopted home country was unprepared.

But the U.S. was not the only country Einstein held close to his heart. During his first visit to Princeton in 1921, Einstein delivered a series of lectures on relativity, as well as made speeches advocating for the Zionist cause. In 1952, the state of Israel offered Einstein its presidency, which the aging scientist declined.

Call for Sanity on Sixtieth Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

It was exactly 60 years ago that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered together with a group of leading intellectuals in London to draft and sign a manifesto in which they denounced the dangerous drive toward war between the world's Communist and anti-Communist factions. The signers of this manifesto included leading Nobel Prize winners such as Hideki Yukawa and Linus Pauling.

They were blunt, equating the drive for war and reckless talk of the use of nuclear weapons sweeping the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, as endangering all of humanity. The manifesto argued that advancements in technology, specifically the invention of the atomic bomb, had set human history on a new and likely disastrous course.

The manifesto stated in harsh terms the choice confronting humanity:

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto forced a serious reconsideration of the dangerous strategic direction in which the United States was heading at that time and was the beginning of a recalibration of the concept of security that would lead to the signing of the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 and the arms control talks of the 1970s.

But we take little comfort in those accomplishments today. The United States has completely forgotten about its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty, and the words "arms control" have disappeared from the conversation on security. The last year has seen the United States confront Russia in Ukraine to such a degree that many have spoken about the risks of nuclear war.

As a result, on June 16 of this year Russia announced that it will add 40 new ICBMs in response to the investment of the United States over the last two years in upgrading its nuclear forces.

Similar tensions have emerged between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Isles and between the United States and China over the South China Sea. Discussions about the possibility of war with China are showing up in the Western media with increasing frequency, and a deeply disturbing push to militarize American relations with Asia is emerging.

But this time, the dangers of nuclear war are complemented by an equal, or greater, threat: climate change. Even the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, told the Boston Globe in 2013 that climate change "is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen... that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.''

More recently, Pope Francis issued a detailed, and blunt, encyclical dedicated to the threat of climate change in which he charged:

It is remarkable how weak international political responses (to climate change) have been. Consequently the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.

As the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto drew near, I became increasing disturbed by the complete inaction among the best-educated and best-connected in the face of the most dangerous moment in modern history and perhaps in human history, grimmer even than the catastrophe that Russell and Einstein contemplated. Not only are we facing the increased likelihood of nuclear war, but there are signs that climate change is advancing more rapidly than previously estimated. Science Magazine recently released a study that predicts massive marine destruction if we follow the current trends, and even the glaciers of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula, once thought to be the most stable, are observed to be melting rapidly. And yet we see not even the most superficial efforts to defend against this threat by the major powers.

I spoke informally about my worries with my friend John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus and associate of the Asia Institute. John has written extensively about the need to identify climate change as the primary security threat and also has worked closely with Miriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies on efforts to move the United States away from a military economy. Between the two of us we have put together a slightly updated version of the manifesto that highlights climate change -- an issue that was not understood in 1955 -- and hereby have published it in the form of a petition that we invite anyone in the world to sign. This new version of the manifesto is open to the participation of all, not restricted to that of an elite group of Nobel Prize winners.

I also spoke with David Swanson, a friend from my days working on the Dennis Kucinich campaign for the Democratic nomination back in 2004. David now serves as director of World Beyond War, a broad effort to create a consensus that war no longer has any legitimate place in human society. He offered to introduce the manifesto to a broad group of activists and we agreed that Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute and World Beyond War would co-sponsor the new manifesto.

Finally, I sent the draft to Noam Chomsky who readily offered to sign it and offered the following comment.

Last January the famous Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest it has been since a major war scare 30 years ago. The accompanying declaration, which warned that the constant threat of nuclear war and "unchecked climate change"severely threaten human civilization, brings to mind the grim warning to the people of the world just 60 years ago by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, calling on them to face a choice that is "stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?" In all of human history, there has never been a choice like the one we face today.

The declaration on the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto is displayed below. We urge all people who are concerned about humanity's future and about the health of the Earth's biosphere to join us in signing the declaration, and to invite friends and family members to sign. The statement can be signed at the petition page on DIY RootsAction website:

http://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/manifesto-on-the-future-of-war-and-climate-change

Declaration on the 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 9, 2015

In view of the growing risk that in future wars weapons, nuclear and otherwise, will be employed that threaten the continued existence of humanity, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.

We also propose that all governments of the world begin to convert those resources previously allocated to preparations for destructive conflict to a new constructive purpose: the mitigation of climate change and the creation of a new sustainable civilization on a global scale.

This effort is endorsed by Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute, and World Beyond War, and is being launched on July 9, 2015.

You can sign, and ask everyone you know to sign, this declaration here:

http://diy.rootsaction.org/p/man

Why is this declaration important?

Exactly 60 years ago today, leading intellectuals led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered in London to sign a manifesto voicing their concern that the struggle between the Communist and anti-Communist blocs in the age of the hydrogen bomb guaranteed annihilation for humanity.

Although we have so far avoided the nuclear war that those intellectuals dreaded, the danger has merely been postponed. The threat, which has reemerged recently with the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, has only grown more dire.

Moreover, the rapid acceleration of technological development threatens to put nuclear weapons, and many other weapons of similar destructiveness, into the hands of a growing circle of nations (and potentially even of "non-state actors"). At the same time, the early possessors of nuclear weapons have failed to abide by their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to destroy their stockpiles.

And now we are faced with an existential threat that may rival the destructive consequences even of a full-scale nuclear war: climate change. The rapacious exploitation of our resources and a thoughtless over-reliance upon fossil fuels have caused an unprecedented disruption of our climate. Combined with an unmitigated attack on our forests, our wetlands, our oceans, and our farmland in the pursuit of short-term gains, this unsustainable economic expansion has brought us to the edge of an abyss.

The original 1955 manifesto states: "We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings," members of the human species "whose continued existence is in doubt."

The time has come for us to break out of the distorted and misleading conception of progress and development that has so seduced us and led us towards destruction.

Intellectuals bear a particular responsibility of leadership by virtue of their specialized expertise and insight regarding the scientific, cultural, and historical forces that have led to our predicament. Between a mercenary element that pursues an agenda of narrow interests without regard to consequences and a frequently discouraged, misled, and sometimes apathetic citizenry stand the intellectuals in every field of study and sphere of activity. It falls to us that it falls to decry the reckless acceleration of armaments and the criminal destruction of the ecosystem. The time has come for us to raise our voices in a concerted effort.

Initial Signers

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus, MIT

Last January the famous Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest it has been since a major war scare 30 years ago. The accompanying declaration, which warned that the constant threat of nuclear war and "unchecked climate change"severely threaten human civilization, brings to mind the grim warning to the people of the world just 50 years ago by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, calling on them to face a choice that is "stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?" In all of human history, there has never been a choice like the one we face today.

Helen Caldicott, author

It was the Russell Einstein manifesto on the threat of nuclear war 60 years ago that started me upon my journey to try to abolish nuclear weapons. I then read and devoured the three volumes of Russell's autobiography which had an amazing influence upon my thinking as a young girl.

The manifesto was so extraordinarily sensible written by two of the world's greatest thinkers, and I am truly amazed that the world at that time took practically no notice of their prescient warning, and today we are orders of magnitude in greater danger than we were 60 years ago. The governments of the world still think in primitive terms of retribution and killing while the nuclear weapons in Russia and the US are presently maintained on hair trigger alert, and these two nuclear superpowers are practicing nuclear war drills during a state of heightened international tension exacerbated by the Ukrainian situation and the Middle East. It is in truth sheer luck that we are still here on this lovely planet of ours.

Larry Wilkerson, retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

From central Europe to Southwest Asia, from the South China Sea to the Arctic, tensions are on the rise as the world's sole empire is roiled in peripheral activities largely of its own doing and just as largely destructive of its power and corruptive of its leadership. This, while humanity's most pressing challenge-planetary climate change-threatens catastrophe for all. Stockpiles of nuclear weapons add danger to this already explosive situation. We humans have never been so powerfully challenged-and so apparently helpless to do anything about it.

Benjamin R. Barber, president, Global Parliament of Mayors Project

Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything

David Swanson, director, World Beyond War

John Feffer, director, Foreign Policy in Focus

Emanuel Pastreich, director, The Asia Institute

Leah Bolger, chair, coordinating committee, World Beyond War

Ben Griffin, coordinator, Veterans For Peace UK

Michael Nagler, founder and president, The Metta Center for Nonviolence

John Horgan, science journalist & author of The End of War

Kevin Zeese, co-director, Popular Resistance.

Margaret Flowers, M.D., co-director of Popular Resistance

Dahr Jamail, staff reporter, Truthout

John Kiriakou, associate fellow, Institute for Policy Studies and CIA Torture Whistleblower

Kim Hyung yul, president of the Asia Institute and professor of history, Sook Myung University

Choi Murim, professor of medicine, Seoul National University

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel

Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former US diplomat

Mike Madden, vice president, Veterans For Peace, Chapter 27 (veteran of the US Air Force)

Chante Wolf, 12 year Air Force, Desert Shield/Storm veteran, member of Chapter 27, Veterans For Peace

William Binney, former NSA technical director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis and co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center.

Jean Bricmont, professor, Université Catholique de Louvain

Even Albert Einstein needed more than curiosity to become a great physicist

Albert Einstein ‘was recognised as a physicist of the first rank very early in his career’. Photograph: Arthur Sasse/Bettmann/Corbis

While I agree with Maulfry Worthington (Letters, 19 June) that our schools should encourage more curiosity, it is unfortunate that she repeats the near-calumny that Einstein was a “patent clerk” who would “become” a great physicist. In fact Einstein worked as a technical examiner at the Eidgenössisches Institut für Geistiges Eigentum (the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office) in 1902-09 to support himself while he completed his PhD thesis in physics and did his early work on quantum mechanics and special relativity. He was already published inAnnalen der Physik before joining the patent office. Einstein did not have good academic connections, which made it hard to secure a teaching post, but was recognised as a physicist of the first rank very early in his career.

While curiosity is absolutely a necessary trait for success in science, the hard work has also to be done, and the exams passed, even by Einstein.

A Quick Life Chat with Kim Kardashian, Albert Einstein, and Others

One day not long ago, some of the greatest minds of all time met at Kim Kardashian’s California home for a cup of tea, and the conversation got heavy quickly.  Kim obviously had something to say, and her friends were not shy about speaking up.  This conversation might seem farfetched, but these are actually quotes from all the people contributing to the life pow wow.  Though the timing might be a little off, what they had to say was pretty interesting…

Kim Kardashian: “When there’s so many haters and negative things, I really don’t care.”

Bob Marley: “Truth is,” Kim, “everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.”
Martin Luther King: You’re right Bob. “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Curt Cobain: “I’m so happy because today I found my friends – they’re in my head.”

Jimi Hendrix: I hear that! “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.”
Albert Einstein: Be careful, Jimi. “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
Alan Watts: Agreed. As I’ve always said, “Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.”

Woody Allen: I’m confused. What do we command? “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
William Shakespeare: “To be, or not to be,” Woody, “that is the question.”
Thomas Jefferson: There’s no need to mope around and ask questions, Bill. “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
Shi Labeouf: “I don’t know,” Tom, “I just want to be happy. I could be in a hole somewhere. Or I could completely lose it and be some hippy living in the woods with my dad.”
Zuanghzi: “Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.”
Hellen Keller: I never really had a choice. “Once I knew only darkness and stillness…my life was without past or future…but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.”

Jeff Bridges: “The more space and emptiness you can create in yourself, then you can let the rest of the world come in and fill you up.”
Jewel: “Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous, there’s really nothing to lose. There’s no wrong you can’t make right again, so be kinder to yourself, you know, have fun, take chances. There’s no bounds.”
Jennifer Lawrence: Ok enough of this deep shit. “Where’s the pizza?!”

*OK so this may not have really happened, but all of these quotes are real. So let’s live this fantasy world forever. 

TIỂU SỬ

Albert Einstein was born as the first child of the Jewish couple Hermann and Pauline Einstein, nee Koch, in Ulm on March 14, 1879. When Albert’s grandmother saw him for the first time she is said to have cried continuously: "Much too thick! Much too thick!" But despite all fear the development of young Albert was a normal one. In November 1881 Albert’s sister Maria – calledMaja – was born.

A short time later the Einstein family went to Munich where Albert first attended elementary school and subsequently Luitpold grammar school. He was an "average" pupil but already very early interested in science and mathematics. He did not like lessons in grammar school as they were held with strict discipline and as he was forced to learn. When he turned 15 he left school without any degree and followed his family to Milan. To make up for the missed degree he attended school in Aarau (Switzerland) from 1895 to 1896 when he successfully took his A-levels and began to study in Zurich. His ambition was to obtain the diploma of a subject teacher for mathematics and physics. He successfully finished his studies in July 1900.

He moved to Bern and was given work at the Patent Office. In his leisure time he worked in the area of theoretical physics. In 1905 he published several of his important scientific works. One of them deals with the ground-breaking special theory of relativity. Another work contains the most famous formula of the world "E = m · c²". This formula states that matter can be converted into energy.

Einstein’s famous formula:     

In this mathematical equation, E stands for energy, m for mass and c for the speed of the light in a vacuum (ca. 300,000 km/s).

In 1903 he married his college mate Mileva Maric. One year later Einstein’s first son, Hans Albert, was born and his second sonEduard followed in 1910. In 1909 he became professor for theoretical physics at the University of Zurich. After that time he was given a professorship in Prague and then again in Zurich. In 1914 Einstein was called to Berlin to work there scientifically. In the same year World War I broke out.

1 Albert Einstein, 1916	2 Light deflection (here amplified) in the gravitational field of the sun

After Einstein had separated from his wife Mileva he married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal in 1919. From 1909 to 1916 Albert Einstein worked on a generalisation of the special theory of relativity, the general theory of relativity. After this theory was proven right in an experiment in 1919 (deflection of light by the sun’s gravitational field) Einstein became famous over night. He received invitations and honours from all over the world. There was hardly any magazine which did not report about him and praise his work to the skies. For the year 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics.

When the 12-year-old Eduard asked his father why he was so famous he got the answer: "When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved. I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice." quoted in Max Flückiger, Albert Einstein in Bern, Bern 1974

Through the political situation in Nazi Germany Einstein left the country in December 1932 and never again entered German ground. From 1933 Einstein and his family lived in Princeton, USA. At the "Institute for Advanced Study" he found ideal working conditions. In December 1936 Einstein’s wife Elsa died. In 1939 World War II broke out. Because of his fear that Germany was working on atomic bombs he wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States of America, to tell him about the possibility of atomic weapons. In 1946 he proposed a world government in which he saw the only way to achieve continuous peace.

3 Albert Einstein in Princeton, ca. 1950

Einstein spent the last years of his life reclusively in Princeton. Until his last breath he worked on a new theory, the unified field theory, which however was not successful. Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955. He was 76 years old.

Albert Einstein Biography

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

Synopsis

Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. He died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Early Life

Born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany, Albert Einstein grew up in a secular, middle-class Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who, with his brother, founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment in Munich, Germany. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him.

Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. He enjoyed classical music and played the violin. However, he felt alienated and struggled with the rigid Prussian education he received there. He also experienced a speech difficulty, a slow cadence in his speaking where he’d pause to consider what to say next. In later years, Einstein would write about two events that had a marked effect on his childhood. One was an encounter with a compass at age five, where he marveled at the invisible forces that turned the needle. The other was at age 12, when he discovered a book of geometry which he read over and over.

In 1889, the Einstein family invited a poor Polish medical student, Max Talmud to come to their house for Thursday evening meals. Talmud became an informal tutor to young Albert, introducing him to higher mathematics and philosophy. One of the books Talmud shared with Albert was a children’s science book in which the author imagined riding alongside electricity that was traveling inside a telegraph wire. Einstein began to wonder what a light beam would look like if you could run alongside it at the same speed. If light were a wave, then the light beam should appear stationary, like a frozen wave. Yet, in reality, the light beam is moving. This paradox led him to write his first "scientific paper" at age 16, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields." This question of the relative speed to the stationary observer and the observer moving with the light was a question that would dominate his thinking for the next 10 years.

In 1894, Hermann Einstein’s company failed to get an important contract to electrify the city of Munich and he was forced to move his family to Milan, Italy. Albert was left at a relative's boarding house in Munich to finish his education at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Faced with military duty when he turned of age, Albert allegedly withdrew from school, using a doctor’s note to excuse himself and claim nervous exhaustion, making his way to Milan to join his parents. His parents sympathized with his feelings, but were concerned about the enormous problems that he would face as a school dropout and draft dodger with no employable skills.

Fortunately, Einstein was able to apply directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (Swiss Federal Polytechnic School) in Zürich, Switzerland. Lacking the equivalent of a high school diploma, he failed much of the entrance exam but got exceptional marks in mathematics and physics. Because of this, he was admitted to the school provided he complete his formal schooling first. He went to a special high school run by Jost Winteler in Aarau, Switzerland, and graduated in 1896 at age 17. He became lifelong friends with the Winteler family, with whom he had been boarding, and fell in love with Wintelers' daughter, Marie. At this time, Einstein renounced his German citizenship to avoid military service and enrolled at the Zurich school.

Marriage and Family

Einstein would recall that his years in Zurich were some of the happiest of his life. He met many students who would become loyal friends, such as Marcel Grossmann, a mathematician, and Michele Besso, with whom he enjoyed lengthy conversations about space and time. He also met his future wife, Mileva Maric, a fellow physics student from Serbia.

After graduating from the Polytechnic Institute, Albert Einstein faced a series of life crises over the next few years. Because he liked to study on his own, he cut classes and earned the animosity of some of his professors. One in particular, Heinrich Weber, wrote a letter of recommendation at Einstein’s request that led to him being turned down for every academic position that he applied to after graduation. Meanwhile, Einstein's relationship with Maric deepened, but his parents vehemently opposed the relationship citing her Serbian background and Eastern Orthodox Christian religion. Einstein defied his parents and continued to see Maric. In January, 1902, the couple had a daughter, Lieserl, who either died of sickness or was given up for adoption—the facts are unknown.

At this point, Albert Einstein probably reached the lowest point in his life. He could not marry Maric and support a family without a job, and his father's business had gone bankrupt. Desperate and unemployed, Einstein took lowly jobs tutoring children, but he was unable to hold on to any of them. A turning point came later in 1902, when the father of his lifelong friend, Marcel Grossman, recommended him for a position as a clerk in the Swiss patent office in Bern, Switzerland. About this time, Einstein’s father became seriously ill and just before he died, gave his blessing for him to marry. With a small but steady income, Einstein married Maric on Jan. 6, 1903. In May, 1904 they had their first son, Hans Albert. Their second son, Eduard, were born in 1910.

Miracle Year

At the patent office, Albert Einstein evaluated patent applications for electromagnetic devices. He quickly mastered the job, leaving him time to ponder on the transmission of electrical signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization, an interest he had been cultivating for several years. While at the polytechnic school he had studied Scottish physicist James Maxwell's electromagnetic theories which describe the nature of light, and discovered a fact unknown to Maxwell himself, that the speed of light remained constant. However, this violated Isaac Newton's laws of motion because there is no absolute velocity in Newton's theory. This insight led Einstein to formulate the principle of relativity.

In 1905—often called Einstein's "miracle year"—he submitted a paper for his doctorate and had four papers published in the Annalen der Physik, one of the best known physics journals. The four papers—the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy—would alter the course of modern physics and bring him to the attention of the academic world. In his paper on matter and energy, Einstein deduced the well-known equation E=mc2, suggesting that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, foreshadowing the development of nuclear power. There have been claims that Einstein and his wife, Maric, collaborated on his celebrated 1905 papers, but historians of physics who have studied the issue find no evidence that she made any substantive contributions. In fact, in the papers, Einstein only credits his conversations with Michele Besso in developing relativity.

At first, Einstein's 1905 papers were ignored by the physics community. This began to change when he received the attention of Max Planck, perhaps the most influential physicist of his generation and founder of quantum theory. With Planck’s complimentary comments and his experiments that confirmed his theories, Einstein was invited to lecture at international meetings and he rose rapidly in the academic world. He was offered a series of positions at increasingly prestigious institutions, including the University of Zürich, the University of Prague, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and finally the University of Berlin, where he served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1913 to 1933.

As his fame spread, Einstein's marriage fell apart. His constant travel and intense study of his work, the arguments about their children and the family’s meager finances led Einstein to the conclusion that his marriage was over. Einstein began an affair with a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, whom he later married. He finally divorced Mileva in 1919 and as a settlement agreed to give her the money he might receive if he ever won a Nobel Prize.

Theory of Relativity

In November, 1915, Einstein completed the general theory of relativity, which he considered his masterpiece. He was convinced that general relativity was correct because of its mathematical beauty and because it accurately predicted the perihelion of Mercury's orbit around the sun, which fell short in Newton’s theory. General relativity theory also predicted a measurable deflection of light around the sun when a planet or another sun oribited near the sun. That prediction was confirmed in observations by British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington during the solar eclipse of 1919. In 1921, Albert Einstein received word that he had received the Nobel Prize for Physics. Because relativity was still considered controversial, Einstein received the award for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.

In the 1920s, Einstein launched the new science of cosmology. His equations predicted that the universe is dynamic, ever expanding or contracting. This contradicted the prevailing view that the universe was static, a view that Einstein held earlier and was a guiding factor in his development of the general theory of relativity. But his later calculations in the general theory indicated that the universe could be expanding or contracting. In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble found that the universe was indeed expanding, thereby confirming Einstein's work. In 1930, during a visit to the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, Einstein met with Hubble and declared the cosmological constant, his original theory of the static size and shape of the universe, to be his "greatest blunder."

While Einstein was touring much of the world speaking on his theories in the 1920s, the Nazis were rising to power under the leadership of Adolph Hitler. Einstein’s theories on relativity became a convenient target for Nazi propaganda. In 1931, the Nazi’s enlisted other physicists to denounce Einstein and his theories as "Jewish physics." At this time, Einstein learned that the new German government, now in full control by the Nazi party, had passed a law barring Jews from holding any official position, including teaching at universities. Einstein also learned that his name was on a list of assassination targets, and a Nazi organization published a magazine with Einstein's picture and the caption "Not Yet Hanged" on the cover.

Move to the United States

In December, 1932, Einstein decided to leave Germany forever. He took a position a the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, which soon became a Mecca for physicists from around the world. It was here that he would spend the rest of his career trying to develop a unified field theory—an all-embracing theory that would unify the forces of the universe, and thereby the laws of physics, into one framework—and refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics. Other European scientists also fled various countries threatened by Nazi takeover and came to the United States. Some of these scientists knew of Nazi plans to develop an atomic weapon. For a time, their warnings to Washington, D.C. went unheeded.

In the summer of 1939, Einstein, along with another scientist, Leo Szilard, was persuaded to write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility of a Nazi bomb. President Roosevelt could not risk the possibility that Germany might develop an atomic bomb first. The letter is believed to be the key factor that motivated the United States to investigate the development of nuclear weapons. Roosevelt invited Einstein to meet with him and soon after the United States initiated the Manhattan Project.

Not long after he began his career at the Institute in New Jersey, Albert Einstein expressed an appreciation for the "meritocracy" of the United States and the right people had to think what they pleased—something he didn’t enjoy as a young man in Europe. In 1935, Albert Einstein was granted permanent residency in the United States and became an American citizen in 1940. As the Manhattan Project moved from drawing board to testing and development at Los Alamos, New Mexico, many of his colleagues were asked to develop the first atomic bomb, but Einstein was not one of them. According to several researchers who examined FBI files over the years, the reason was the U.S. government didn't trust Einstein's lifelong association with peace and socialist organizations. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover went so far as to recommend that Einstein be kept out of America by the Alien Exclusion Act, but he was overruled by the U.S. State Department. Instead, during the war, Einstein helped the U.S. Navy evaluate designs for future weapons systems and contributed to the war effort by auctioning off priceless personal manuscripts. One example was a handwritten copy of his 1905 paper on special relativity which sold for $6.5 million, and is now located in the Library of Congress.

On August 6, 1945, while on vacation, Einstein heard the news that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. He soon became involved in an international effort to try to bring the atomic bomb under control, and in 1946, he formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists with physicist Leo Szilard. In 1947, in an article that he wrote for The Atlantic Monthly, Einstein argued that the United States should not try to monopolize the atomic bomb, but instead should supply the United Nations with nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of maintaining a deterrent. At this time, Einstein also became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He corresponded with civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and actively campaigned for the rights of African Americans.

After the war, Einstein continued to work on many key aspects of the theory of general relativity, such as wormholes, the possibility of time travel, the existence of black holes, and the creation of the universe. However, he became increasingly isolated from the rest of the physics community. With the huge developments in unraveling the secrets of atoms and molecules, spurred on by the development to the atomic bomb, the majority of scientists were working on the quantum theory, not relativity. Another reason for Einstein's detachment from his colleagues was his obsession with discovering his unified field theory. In the 1930s, Einstein engaged in a series of historic private debates with Niels Bohr, the originator of the Bohr atomic model. In a series of "thought experiments," Einstein tried to find logical inconsistencies in the quantum theory, but was unsuccessful. However, in his later years, he stopped opposing quantum theory and tried to incorporate it, along with light and gravity, into the larger unified field theory he was developing. 

In the last decade of his life, Einstein withdrew from public life, rarely traveling far and confining himself to long walks around Princeton with close associates, whom he engaged in deep conversations about politics, religion, physics and his unified field theory.

Final Years

On April 17, 1955, while working on a speech he was preparing to commemorate Israel's seventh anniversary, Einstein suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm and experienced internal bleeding. He was taken to the University Medical Center at Princeton for treatment, but refused surgery, believing that he had lived his life and was content to accept his fate. "I want to go when I want," he stated at the time. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." Einstein died at the university medical center early the next morning—April 18, 1955—at the age of 76.

During the autopsy, Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain, seemingly without the permission of his family, for preservation and future study by doctors of neuroscience. His remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location. After decades of study, Einstein's brain is now located at the Princeton University Medical Center.