Albert Einstein, one of those scientists who changed the way people used to think about the universe, was born on 14th March, 1879.
We all know the achievements of this German-American scientist, the proponent of relativity theory, often considered as the most prominent scientist of 20th century. However, how was his personal life? Was it different from others?
In this article, you will get some of these answers. On the 145th birth anniversary of Albert Einstein, we will discuss about some unknown details of his personal life.
Mileva Marić, the first wife of Albert Einstein, was the only woman student in his section at Zürich Polytechnic. Being passionate about science and math, Mileva wanted pursue research as career. However, she gave up her passion after marrying Albert Einstein. After couple of years, she became a homemaker.
Surprisingly, Einstein anticipated about winning a Nobel Prize. After receiving it, he offered the prize money to his first wife, Mileva Marić. Later, she agreed to give him a divorce. The prize money was approximately $32,250 at that time. It was ten times higher than the annual salary of any university professor.
After getting the divorce with first wife, Mileva Marić, Einstein got engaged to Elsa. She was the daughter of his mother’s own sister. So, Albert Einstein actually married his first cousin.
Margot, Einstein’s stepdaughter, introduced him to Margarita Konenkova in 1935. As per some historians, they were in relationship. In 1998, during auction of Sotheby’s, nine love letters written between Einstein and Konenkova were discovered that surprised the world. All those letters were written between 1945 and 1946, a critical geopolitical time. As per writings by Russian spy master (real name not yet known), Konenkova was recruited to get important scientific information by Russia. However, even after lot of research, historians are still not sure about the identity of Konenkova.
Einstein, after renouncing his German citizenship in 1896, admitted at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. That's where, his relationship with Mileva Maric started. After graduation, the couple got married and gave birth to an ‘illegitimate daughter’ named ‘Lieserl’. Einstein, budding scientist that time, never informed about that girl to his family. Surprisingly, nobody knew about it till 1980s. Extensive research by some biographers made this shocking discovery by observing private papers Einstein. There are two theories about her life. The first one is Lieserl died suffering from scarlet fever in 1903. However, the second theory told that, Lieserl survived and someone from Serbia adopted her.
As Oppenheimer got worldwide recognition since last year, we all know how Einstein felt after seeing the initial research of atomic bomb. He first came to know that a group of German scientists are preparing the atom bomb. Understanding the potential of solving energy crisis, he partnered with the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, who convinced and helped Einstein to write a special letter requesting the then American President Franklin D. Roosevelt to conduct the atomic research. Einstein, although never participated in the famous Manhattan Project directly, but, he expressed his regrets multiple number of time about his tiny role behind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings incidents. He believed that, he could have stopped the bombings. In a statement before death, he mentioned: “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I never would have lifted a finger.”
After the devastating incident in Japan, Einstein became an ‘impassioned advocate of nuclear disarmament,’ according to some historians.
Einstein talked with philosopher Bertrand Russell and signed Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955, where he suggested to “find peaceful means for the settlement of all disputes between them.”
Aren't those facts about the great scientist interesting?
