Einstein: the lecture
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Bob Lambourne, Head of the Open University Physics and Astronomy Department, tells the story of Albert Einstein's life and explains why his contribution to science is so important.
Although these brilliantly original papers eventually established Einstein as a physicist of the first rank, three more years were to elapse before he obtained his first academic post. During that time he worked on a variety of topics and did pioneering work on the quantum physics of solids.
In 1909 he was finally appointed to a lecturing post at the University of Bern, in 1911 he became a professor at the University of Prague and in 1912 he returned to Zurich, as Professor of Theoretical Physics at ETH. By this time his attention was focused on the search for a general theory of relativity that would extend his earlier work on the special theory.
The principle of equivalence which he formulated in 1907 had convinced Einstein that a general theory of relativity would also be a new theory of gravity, and it was from the gravitational point of view that the problem of general relativity was attacked.
In 1914 Einstein moved to Berlin, the main centre of scientific research in the German speaking world, to take up a research professorship that would free him from teaching duties. He and his wife separated soon after the move, and were eventually divorced.
Einstein continued to work on general relativity and in 1916 produced the first systematic treatment of the subject in a long paper entitled Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativätstheorie (The foundations of general relativity theory). The creation of general relativity was one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the twentieth century; it led on to the study of black holes and the prediction of gravitational waves, and it provided a firm basis for future investigations in cosmology and the study of the Universe as a whole. Observations carried out in 1919, during a total eclipse of the Sun, confirmed one of the key predictions of general relativity - the gravitational deflection of starlight passing close to the edge of the Sun.
This quantitative success of Einstein’s theory was widely reported, and did more than any other event to make Einstein into an instantly recognized icon of scientific genius.
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Content last updated: 08/10/2004
