20th Century Genius

Essay by RectifierUniversity, Bachelor's December 2005

download word file, 6 pages 0.0

20th Century Genius Award.

Einstein has become a symbol of the modern science, a figure that has subverted all the patterns of the American definition of the hero. Einstein was the first intellectual superstar and he has gained his popularity via the only way Americans will accept it: an intuitive non-academical intelligence, and by applying the discoveries of his brilliant mind to pragmatic things (such as rockets and the atomic bomb).

Einstein was enormously helped by the fact that he wasn't associated with any renowned educational university or institution. His statute wasn't dependent on an official crediting, things towards which society have a dual attitude: they insist upon them, and, on the other hand, they don't trust them. On the contrary, Einstein was the scientist that won the congeniality of the crowds, of the common people, even though he spoke the obscure language of mathematics.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14th, 1879 in Ulm, a modest town in Germany.

His father, Hermann Einstein, was an electrician who had stray impulses of an inventor. His mother, Pauline Koch, had a serious nature and a musical inclination that Albert inherited. The brother of his mother, Caesar Koch, an engineer who lived with the family, had a great influence upon the child, mostly in what exact sciences are concerned. Einstein's uncle revealed to him the fascinating side of mathematics, saying, "It's an amusing science. When we run after an animal and we can't catch it, we name it for a moment x, and we continue to pursue it until we put it into the sack."

As a schoolboy at the primary school of the parish his family belonged to, Einstein excelled far from his classmates at mathematics, but had poor results in other subjects. Einstein had begun to talk late, to the...