Adventures in history · 65 years ago, Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century, died

Few figures have been more famous and relevant, from the scientific world, than Albert Einstein, the German physicist known for The Theory of Relativity. Responsible for the popularization of physical knowledge, the researcher was not orthodox while living, and was even responsible for the “world’s most famous equation” (E = M.c²).

Einstein began his studies in 1900, experiencing difficulties from the beginning. Not because he was a bad student, as commonsense rumors reproduce, but because “his questioning stance and aversion to authority did not please his ETH teachers. [Politécnica Nacional, em Zurique], and none of them offered the assistant position, the normal route to an academic career, “says Stephen Hawking in The Universe in a Nutshell.

The fact is, it took Einstein a long time to participate in the academy, managing to start his career at the Swiss patent office, where he began to stand out negatively for confronting the relevant consensus of Victorian Science. Quickly, his interest was in the area for which he became famous: time. His studies allowed him to visit the United States on several occasions, including in 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany and began to persecute the Jews. As a consequence, Einstein did not return to his home country.

Although famous for relativity, Einstein’s Nobel Prize predates his studies in cosmology. The scientist received the medal in 1921, thanks to the determination of the photoelectric effect, which was able to explain the structure of light from an understanding of the chemistry of materials.

According to Einstein, metals mainly emit electrons when exposed to sufficient electromagnetic radiation. This radiation can be light, which has been understood as a collection of discrete waves that carry energy. That is, in the discussion that light was a particle or wave (in which the second predominated), Einstein showed that it was between the two.

Soon after, Einstein’s dedication of work led him to understand the Theory of Relativity, which is divided between General, Restricted or Space. In short, they belong to the same theory, but they are divided into two revolutionary explanations.

According to the theory of special relativity, in a vacuum, the speed of light is always the same and the highest possible to reach. This establishes that time and space are relative units.

Therefore, since nothing exceeds the speed of light, time would be an individual reference that changes according to the position and speed of the reference (called time dilation). This means that the energy used to accelerate a body, which was intended to reach the speed of light, ended up turning into mass, making it difficult to accelerate. The physicist concluded that the energy of this movement was equivalent to the mass of the object multiplied by the speed of light multiplied by itself, that is, E = M.c².

His ideas led him to understand the operation of universal space-time, leading him to the Theory of General Relativity, which basically states that matter has the ability to double time, and vice versa. The fabric of the space was moldable according to the gravitation of the bodies that fill it. It is the same as thinking of a ball on top of a well stretched cloth, in which the object changes the shape of the surface.

The proof of this theory occurred in one of the most interesting passages in Einstein’s life, as was possible with the observations made in Brazil. The scientist witnessed the folding of space-time during an eclipse observed in the city of Sobral, in Ceará, when it was possible to see sunlight deviate from the body of light, caused by the curve generated by its gravity.

Einstein’s contributions were many and have applications ranging from interesting theoretical postulations to practical objects, from telescopes to atomic bombs. At the end of his life, Einstein attempted to come up with a General Theory of the Universe, explaining the origin of all energies, but was never successful (nor was he successful). As an elder, he died in Princeton, in 1955, in a hospital after an aneurysm. His last words were lost: the nurse present did not speak German.

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