Robert Piccioni, PhD

   If at first you fail and then fail, and fail again, keep on trying.  That’s the success story of Albert Einstein, as told to us Robert Piccioni, PhD from Stanford and author of the book, Everyone’s Guide to Atoms, Albert Einstein and the Universe.  Dr. Piccioni’s mission is making science accessible.

  Einstein’s time line begins in 18979 when he was born in Ulm, Germany, and ends in 1955 when he died in Princeton, New Jersey at age 76.  Along the way, he had his “miracle year” of 1905, Annus Mirabilis, when at age 26 he published five major papers, which solved all the open issues in physics, and received his PhD from the University of Zurich.

  But before that could happen, as a child he was slow to talk, expelled from the second grade for failing to be attentive, dropped out of high school because he rebelled at the rote method of learning, and was termed “bright but lazy.”

  His family moved to Switzerland where in 1900 he got the second worst grade in his class in physics.  He got a job in the Swiss patent office, in Bern, a job created for him so he would have financial support while he worked independently in physics. He met and married Mileva Marik, the only women among six men pursuing math and physics diplomas.  After twenty years of marriage and two sons, they divorced (His second wife, Elsa, died in 1936 after they emigrated to the United States).

   He persisted in seeking a teaching position, and in 1907, when he was thirty years old, he finally got a junior teaching job.  By 1909 he was recognized as a leading thinker in science.  His revolutionary ideas about light and the atom went beyond Newtonian physics, and new ideas take a while to be accepted.

   In 1913 Max Planck, the biggest name in science, took notice of him and in 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to theoretical physics and especially to the laws of photoelectric effect, which was pivotal to establishing the quantum theory in physics.

   His discoveries include 1) proof that the atom exists, after 2500 years of debate; 2) photoelectric cells and solar cells which led to practical applications in cameras and the telescope. 3) He discovered the laser, which is now used, for example, in making CD’s DVD’s, and many military weapons and 4) the theory of relativity, which we use practically today in our GSP’s;

  The fifth development, for which he is most famous, is his formula for the equivalence of mass and energy.  It is E (Energy) = m (the mass) times C2, the square of the speed of light (186,000 miles per hour).  This formula unlocked the secret of atomic and nuclear power for the military, and peaceful uses for smarter energy.

  The last vivid facts that professor Picccini left us with were, 1) Einstein never did discover the comb, and 2) an plain wooden desk stood for Einstein’s “lab.” Einstein never did an experiment in his professional life.  All his work was theoretical and he left it to others to make the practical proofs and applications. 

  Einstein reversed our thinking about atoms, light, gravity and mass.    Edwin Hubbell, was investigating his theories about energy and the origin of the universe independently here in Southern California with the giant 100 inch telescope on Mt. Wilson, six thousand feet above the Los Angeles Basin.  In 1931 Einstein came to Mt. Wilson to confer with Hubbell whose photographs of stars corroborated Einstein’s “big bang” theory of the origin of what proved to be our expanding universe. While here in the United States, in 1933, Hitler became chancellor in Germany and Einstein never returned to his post at the Berlin Academy.  He became a U.S. citizen in 1940.

  The world is in great need of developing a source of power that will supplant petro fuels, such as coal and oil, and the energy produced by nuclear reactors is 4 billion times more efficient.

 The stars’ explosive deaths seed the cosos.  90% of our atoms Carbon and Oxygen were made in a star.