DOC.
445
JUNE
1913
337
A.
Einstein,
born
in
March
1879
in Ulm,
raised
in
Munich,
citizen
of Zurich
since
1901, was
already
actively
writing
and
publishing
scientific
papers
long
before
receiving
his
doctoral
degree,[3]
first in
Zurich,
then
in
Bern,[4]
where
he
was
employed
as a
technical
expert
at
the Federal Patent
Office from 1902
to 1909.
He
was
awarded
the
doctoral
degree at
the
University
of
Zurich[5]
only
in
1905,
he
habilitated
in
1908
in
Bern,[6]
accepted
an
appointment
as
Extraordinary
Professor of Theoretical
Physics
at
the
University
of
Zurich
in
1909[7]
and
as
Ordinary
Professor
at
the German
University
in
Prague[8]
the
following year,
and from
there
he
was won
back
by
Zurich for the Federal
Polytechnical
Institute
in
1912.[9]
Thanks
to his
papers
in
theoretical
physics,
published
for
the most
part
in
the
Annalen der
Physik,
Einstein
already
achieved
a
worldwide
reputation
at
a young age
within
the
circle
of
scientists
working
in his
specialty.
His
name
became
most
widely
known
thanks
to
the
principle
of
relativity,
laid down in his
famous
paper
on
the
electrodynamics
of
moving
bodies
(1905),[10]
according
to
which
the contradiction between
Lorentz's otherwise
extremely
well
proved theory
of the
stationary
ether and the
experimentally
verified fact
that
electrodynamical-optical processes
involving
terrestrial
bodies
are
independent
of Earth's motion
has its
radical
explanation
in
the circumstance
that
an
observer
moving
with
the Earth
uses
another
way
of
measuring
time
than
an
observer
at
rest in
the heliocentric
system.
The
revolutionary consequences
of
this
new
conception
of
time,
which extend
to
the
whole
of
physics,
first
of
all also
to mechanics,
and
beyond
that
deep
into
epistemology, were
subsequently
formulated
by
the
mathematician
Minkowski in
a
way
that
gives
the
whole
system
of
physics
a
new
unified
character,
in
that the dimension of
time
appears
in it
as completely
equivalent
with
the
three
spatial
dimensions.
Fundamental
as
this
idea of Einstein's
has
proved
to be for
the
development
of
the
principles
of
physics,
its
applications
are
for the
present
still at
the
very
limit
of
the
measurable.
His
tackling
of
other
questions
that
are
at
the
moment at
the
center
of
attention has
proved to
be much
more
significant
for
applied
physics.
Thus, above all
else,
he
was
the
first
to
demonstrate the
significance
of
the
quantum hypothesis
also for
the
energy
of atomic and molecular
motions,
in
that
he
derived
from this
hypothesis
a
formula for the
specific
heats
of
solid
bodies,
and
even
though
this
formula
subsequently
did
not prove
correct in
every
detail,
it
nevertheless
correctly
indicated the foundations
for
the further
development
of the
new
kinetic
atomistics.
He
also
put
the
quantum
hypothesis
in context
by establishing
new
interesting relationships
verifiable
by
measurement,
and
he
was one
of
the first to
point
out
the
close
relationship
between the
constants
of
elasticity
and
those of
optical
proper
vibrations
of
crystals.
In
sum,
it
can
be said
that
among
the
important problems,
which
are so
abundant
in
modern
physics,
there
is
hardly one
in which
Einstein
did not
take
a
position
in
a
remarkable
manner.
That
he
might
sometimes
have
overshot the
target
in his
speculations,
as
for
example
in his
light
quantum
hypothesis,
should
not
be
counted