What is the history of Einstein's struggle?

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, southwest Germany on March 1879, and moved to Munich with his family a year later. When Einstein was in primary school and middle school, his homework was normal. Because he is slow and doesn't like people, his teachers and classmates don't like him. 1900, Einstein graduated from Zurich University of Technology. He was refused to stay in school because he was not enthusiastic about some courses and indifferent to the teachers. He couldn't find a job and made a living as a tutor and substitute teacher. At the age of sixteen, I applied for the engineering department of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, but failed in the entrance examination. He accepted the suggestion of Professor Weber, the president of the Federal Institute of Technology and a famous physicist in the school, and completed the middle school course in Arau, Switzerland, with a view to obtaining a middle school degree. 1902 February 2 1 day, Einstein obtained Swiss nationality and moved to Bern, waiting for the recruitment of the patent office. 1902 On June 23rd, Einstein was officially employed as a third-class technician by the Patent Office, whose job was to examine all kinds of technological inventions applying for patent rights. 1903 married mileva Malik, a college classmate.

From 1900 to 1904, Einstein wrote a paper every year and published it in the German journal of physics. The first two articles are about the thermodynamics of liquid level and electrolysis, trying to give chemistry a mechanical basis. Later, it was found that this road was not feasible, and the mechanical basis of thermodynamics was studied instead. 190 1 put forward some basic theories of statistical mechanics, and three papers from 1902 to 1904 all belong to this field.

1904 seriously discusses the fluctuation phenomenon predicted by statistical mechanics and finds that energy fluctuation depends on Boltzmann constant. It not only applies this result to mechanical systems and thermal phenomena, but also boldly applies it to radiation phenomena, and obtains the fluctuation formula of radiation energy, thus deducing Wien's displacement law. The study of fluctuation phenomenon made him make a major breakthrough in both radiation theory and molecular motion theory in 1905.

From 65438 to 0905, Einstein created an unprecedented miracle in the history of science. This year, he wrote six papers. During the half year from March to September, he made four epoch-making contributions in three fields in his spare time besides working eight hours a day in the patent office. He published four important papers on quantum theory of light, molecular size measurement, Brownian motion theory and special relativity.

1905 In March, Einstein sent the paper he thought was correct to the editorial department of the German Journal of Physics. He said shyly to the editor, "I will be very happy if you can find room for me to publish this paper in your annual report." This "embarrassing" paper is called "a speculative view on the generation and transformation of light".

In this paper, the quantum concept put forward by Planck in 1900 is extended to the propagation of light in space, and the optical quantum hypothesis is put forward. It is considered that: for time average, light behaves as fluctuation; For instantaneous values, light appears as particles. This is the first time in history to reveal the unity of fluctuation of microscopic objects and particles, that is, wave-particle duality. 192 1 year, Einstein won the nobel prize in physics for his achievement of "the discovery of the law of photoelectric effect".

Three years later, French physicist Perrin confirmed Einstein's theoretical prediction with accurate experiments. This justifies the objective existence of atoms and molecules, which also makes ostwald, the German chemist who is most firmly opposed to the founder of atomism and energy theory, take the initiative to announce in 1908 that "the atomic hypothesis has become a scientific theory with a solid foundation".

1In June, 905, Einstein finished his long paper "On Electrodynamics of Transport Bodies" which initiated a new era in physics, and put forward the special theory of relativity completely. This is the result of Einstein's brewing and exploration in 10, which largely solved the crisis of classical physics at the end of 19, changed the space-time view of Newtonian mechanics, exposed the equivalence of matter and energy, and created a brand-new world of physics, which is the greatest revolution in the field of modern physics.

1905 In September, Einstein wrote a short article, is the inertia of an object related to the energy it contains? ",as an inference of relativity. Mass-energy equivalence is the theoretical basis of nuclear physics and particle physics, and it also paved the way for the release and utilization of nuclear energy in the 1940s. After the establishment of the special theory of relativity, Einstein was not satisfied and tried to extend the application of the principle of relativity to non-inertial systems. He found a breakthrough from Galileo's discovery that the acceleration of objects in the gravitational field is the same, and put forward the equivalence principle in 1907.

This year, Minkowski, his university teacher and famous geometer, put forward the four-dimensional spatial representation of special relativity, which provided a useful mathematical tool for the further development of relativity. Unfortunately, Einstein didn't realize its value at that time.

The discovery of the principle of equivalence was regarded by Einstein as the happiest thought in his life, but his later work was very hard and he took a big detour. 19 1 1 year, he analyzed the rigid rotating disk and realized that Euclidean geometry in the gravitational field was not strictly effective. At the same time, it is found that Lorentz variation is not universal, and the equivalence principle is only effective in an infinitesimal region. At this time, Einstein already had the idea of general relativity, but he still lacked the necessary mathematical foundation to establish it.

19 12, Einstein returned to his alma mater in Zurich. With the help of his classmate Grossman, a professor of mathematics at his alma mater, he found a mathematical tool to establish general relativity in Riemannian geometry and tensor analysis. After a year of hard cooperation, they published an important paper "Outline of General Relativity and Gravity Theory" in 19 13, and put forward the gauge field gravity theory. This is the first time to combine gravity with scale, which makes Riemann geometry have real physical significance.

However, the gravitational field equation they got at that time was covariant only for linear transformation, and it was not covariant under any coordinate transformation required by the principle of general relativity. This is because Einstein was not familiar with tensor operation at that time, and mistakenly thought that as long as the conservation law was observed, the choice of coordinate system would be limited, and in order to maintain causality, the requirement of universal covariation would be abandoned.

The three years from 19 15 to 19 17 were the second peak of Einstein's scientific achievements, similar to 1905, and he also made historic achievements in three different fields. Except for the general theory of relativity, which is recognized as one of the greatest achievements in the history of human thought, it was finally established in 19 15. 19 16 put forward gravitational wave theory in radiation quantum, and 19 17 started modern cosmology.

During the 30 years from 1925 to 1955, except for the completeness of quantum mechanics, gravitational waves and general relativity, Einstein devoted almost all his scientific creative energy to the exploration of unified field theory.

1937, with the cooperation of two assistants, he deduced the equation of motion from the gravitational field equation of general relativity, further revealing the unity of time and space, matter and motion, which was a major development of general relativity and the last major achievement Einstein made in scientific creation activities.

He never succeeded in the same theory. He never gets discouraged and always starts from scratch with confidence. Because he was far away from the mainstream of physics research at that time, he went alone to overcome the problems that could not be solved at that time. So contrary to the situation in the 1920s, he was very isolated in physics in his later years. However, he is still fearless and unswervingly follows his own path. Until the day before his death, he was still in his hospital bed preparing to continue his mathematical calculation of the unified field theory.