Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
First in a Series of 6 Medals "Jewish Contributors to World Culture"

Albert Einstein, physicist, mathematician, and one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time, was bom in Germany in 1879.

During his childhood, Einstein did not display any special abilities and he even dropped out of school. In 1905, without any collaboration with the academic community, he published a series of original articles that caused a major breakthrough in physics. One article put forth a molecular explanation for Brownian motion. Another proposed what would be later referred to as "The Theory of Relativity". In a different article, he negated the accepted wave theory of light. For this work he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.
In 1907, he published the famous equation which bound energy to mass, providing the basic understanding of radioactivity.
With Hitler's rise to power, Einstein left Germany for the United States and in 1933 was appointed as Professor of Mathematics in the Graduate Program at Princeton University.
From the U.S., he joined with Chaim Weizmann in Zionist pursuits. He worked to establish the Hebrew University inJerusalem and Haifa's Technion. The palm tree which he planted
in 1923 in the courtyard of the Technion still blooms today. ln 1952, after the death of Chaim Weizmann, Einstein was invited to become Israel's second president, an offer which he declined.
Albert Einstein was known for his good humor and absentmindedness. He opposed dogmatism in science and politics, war, and extreme nationalism. He passed away in 1955 in New Jersey.

Einstein's theory is still in use since its publication some 90 years ago. lt has brought the huוnan race to new and revolutionary understandings about our real'ity and the way the world in which we live was formed.