A Truly Beautiful Mind Story – Summary

Summary

Albert Einstein was born on 14 March in the year 1879 in the German city of Ulm. For about two and a half years, he could not speak and when he did learn to speak, he uttered every word twice. His playmates called him ‘Brother Boring’, and his mother regarded him a freak because of the abnormally large size of his head. At school, his headmaster regarded him as stupid and good for nothing. But he proved them all wrong.

At the age of 6, at the behest of his mother, he learned to play the violin. He became a gifted violinist. At the age of 15, his family shifted to Munich. He did not feel at ease with the strict regimentation of the school and left it for good. Later on, for higher education, he joined the University in Zurich because the atmosphere there was more liberal and amenable to new ideas and concepts. He showed more interest in Physics and Mathematics. He met a fellow student, Mileva Maric at the University- equally intelligent and clever. Later on they married and had 2 sons but unfortunately their marriage did not survive and were divorced in 1919.

After completing his education, Albert worked as a technical expert in the patent office at Bern. Here, he worked secretly on his idea of relativity. In 1915, he published his paper on special theory of relativity, followed by the world famous equation E = mc2.

In 1915, he published his paper on General Theory of Relativity, which gave an absolutely new definition to the concept of gravity. This theory made him a known personality. In 1919, during the solar eclipse, his theory came out to be accurate and revolutionized physics. In 1933, he emigrated to USA as Nazis had come to power in Germany. He did not want his finding and research to be used for destruction. In 1938, when Germany discovered the principle of Nuclear Fission, he was the first person to write to the American President about the dangers of the atomic bombs.

In 1945, when America dropped the Atomic Bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he was deeply hurt and wrote to the United Nations for the formation of a world government to prevent recurrence of such destruction. He spent his later days in politics advocating world peace and democracy. He died at the age of 76 in the year 1955.