I have chosen to research Albert Einstein for several reasons: he is a scientist that I admire, kids used to call me Einstein because of my last name (Ebenstein), and my husband is portraying Einstein in a play. Albert Einstein is famous for the equation E = mc2 and for the theory of relativity. He is also often considered the father of the atomic bomb since the idea of nuclear fission derives loosely from E = mc2, but Einstein’s only connection to the bomb was that he signed a letter to President Roosevelt warning that the Germans were working to develop it. Many facts surprised me about Einstein. I have always thought of Einstein as German, but he did not like the militarization of Germany as he was growing up there, and renounced his citizenship in favor of Switzerland. Although commonly considered a genius, Albert Einstein was a poor student overall and was disliked by teachers because he constantly questioned them. He was not a very good experimentalist and preferred “thought experiments,” imagining situations and theories rather than performing physical experiments. He hated to be thought of as a genius, and when he won the Nobel Prize for his work in electromagnetism, he gave the prize money to his ex-wife and lectured on relativity instead, which he considered more important. Another surprise about Einstein is that he was pro-Zionism and was asked to be President of Israel but declined.
I think the overarching theme of Einstein’s life is that he was always curious and wanted to understand the natural world. This began when his uncle gave him a compass, which led to him investigating electromagnetism and eventually winning a Nobel Prize in the area. Relativity resulted from his dissatisfaction with the widely-accepted ideas of mechanics (Newton’s) and his desire to find a unifying theory of the universe, though he never achieved his ultimate goal. To summarize, Einstein was a man in conflict with himself: a genius who did not want to be called a genius; a pacifist often considered the father of the atomic bomb; a non-practicing Jew who supported the Jews’ search for a homeland but declined to be president of Israel; a German-born who hated Germany; a Nobel Prize winner for an area that he did not consider his most important work; and an old man who still looked at the world with the wonder of a small child. It is some of these conflicts that I hope to communicate through my sculpture.