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Unit 5 Great Scientists ----- Reading The Father of Modern Physics Albert Einstein was born of Jewish parents in 1879 in Germany. He did badly in most subjects at school, but was fascinated by mathematics, which he did quite well. When he was fifteen, his family moved to Italy, and from there he went to Switzerland to attend a polytechnic school. After gaining a teaching qualification from the polytechnic, Einstein took a post as a junior clerk in an office. Einstein was happy to get such an easy job, because it gave him plenty of time to think about physics. It was the “thought experiments” that he carried out in his head that led to a new understanding of space, time and gravity. In 1905, when he was twenty-six years old, Einstein began to publish his thoughts. One of his theories provided an explanation for a puzzling effect, called the photoelectric effect (光电效应), which had been noticed some years earlier. It was in 1921 that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect. In 1914, Einstein became a professor of physics at the University of Berlin and all went well until Hitler came to power in 1933. Einstein, who was Jewish, spoke out against Nazi crimes. As a result, he had to leave Germany and spent the rest of his life teaching in the United States at Princeton University. In the long course of research, Einstein developed his theories of relativity. These theories were so different and new that most scientists could not believe or understand them, and it took a long time for them to be accepted. Einstein’s theories also predicted that solid objects can be changed into pure energy. This did lead to the development of nuclear power and the atomic bomb. However, Einstein himself protested against nuclear weapons, and became involved in the peace movement after the First World War. Einstein passed away in 1955 at the age of seventy-six. What he left behind is a wealth of ideas that form the foundation of modern physics tod