Einstein

In November 1956, my family moved from the eastside of Oswego, New York (30 East Oneida Street) to its westside (327 West Seneca Street).  As a result, in January 1957 (at 11 years of age) I transferred to the Kingsford Park School (from the Fitzhugh Park School) for the second half of the sixth grade.  Three years later, I graduated after completing the ninth grade.

On my first day at the Kingsford Park, my mother drove me to school, but insisted I go in by myself.  I was very nervous, but in retrospect, I'm glad she did.    

I remember being escorted to my classroom.  Our teacher asked my new class a lot of questions.  I raised my hand multiple times and always provided the correct answer.  One of my classmates (Billy Richards) was so impressed he referred to me as "Einstein."  Who?

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879 (142 years ago today).  His parents were non-observant Jews.  

At the age of seventeen, Einstein enrolled at the Zurich Polytechnic School in Switzerland.  There he met Mileva Maric, a Serbian woman and a fellow student.  They married in 1903.

After graduation, Einstein got a job in the Swiss patent office evaluating patent applications.  His specialty was "the transmission of electrical signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time."

In 1905, Einstein "published four groundbreaking papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy."  He was only 26 years old.  

In 1908, Einstein was appointed a lecturer at the University of Bern.  The following year, he became an Associate Professor in Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich.

Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics."

Also in 1921, Einstein visited the United States for the first time.  He wrote his observations.  "What strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive attitude to life...The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic and without envy."

In 1935, with the rise of Nazi Germany, Einstein applied for American citizenship.  He took a position at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey.

In 1939, Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt "recommending the US engage in nuclear weapons research."  This was the beginning of the eventual development of the Atomic Bomb which effectively ended World War II in August 1945 (when I was born).

Albert Einstein became so famous for his theory of relativity that strangers stopped him on the street to ask for its explanation.  He got around this problem by denying he was "professor Einstein."