6 Chapter 5 Albert Hits High Gear

Chapter 5 Albert Hits High Gear "If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keeping your mouth shut." —Albert Einstein In 1913, a famous university offered to pay Albert more money than he had ever made before. And all he had to do was come to the school and think. He would teach only when he felt like it. It was a dream come true … almost. The one drawback was that the university was in Berlin, Germany.

Although it had been nearly twenty years since Albert last lived in Germany, he hadn't forgotten his awful high school years. And Albert's wife, Mileva, didn't like Berlin or the people there. She thought they were mean and unfriendly. Mileva was also jealous of Albert's success. She was a brilliant scientist. But the world only cared about Albert. The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to leave Zurich and their many friends. Albert had to make a decision: Would he go off to Berlin to think, or stay in Zurich and be a good husband and father? Albert needed brilliant people around him who could help him think about his ideas. At the time, a scientist said, "Only a dozen men in the world understand relativity, and eight of them live in Berlin." Albert

remembered his hikes through Italy and the promises he had made to himself. He decided to go to Berlin. Albert left Mileva and their two children behind in Switzerland. Albert once admitted, "I treat my wife as an employee whom one cannot fire." It was not surprising that Mileva and Albert soon got divorced. Thereafter, Albert had little to do with her or their two sons. Years later, when Albert won the Nobel Prize in 1922, he sent the prize money to Mileva and their sons. Perhaps this made him feel less guilty for having abandoned his family.

Albert's oldest son, Hans Albert, grew up to become a distinguished science professor in California. Occasionally he visited with his father.

Eduard, born in 1910, the younger son—whom Albert nicknamed "Tedel," which means "little bear"—was gifted in music and literature but suffered from mental illness. After his mother's death, Eduard lived in a hospital for the rest of his life. Albert once congratulated his son Hans Albert—whose birthday he never remembered—for being just like himself when it came to family. "It is a joy for me to have a son who has inherited the main trait of my personality: the ability to rise above mere existence by sacrificing oneself through the years for an impersonal goal. This is the best, indeed the only way in which we can make ourselves independent from personal fate and from other human beings." Albert never questioned his decision to choose scientific discovery over family. Albert and the Tube In 1922, Albert won a Nobel Prize—the most important award a scientist can ever win—for the thinking he did about "the photoelectrical effect." Albert's thinking about

the photoelectrical effect then led to the invention of TV. (You can thank Albert for the boob tube.) As for moving to Berlin, Mileva had good reason for not wanting to live in Germany. In the early 1900s, the countries of Europe were struggling with each other for power. Some countries had a lot of land, but little money. Many people were not allowed to worship as they wished. Several countries had large populations but weak armies. They all wanted what the others had, and they were willing to fight for it. The tension grew and grew. There was so much hatred, Europe felt like it was going to burst. Germany was one of the scariest countries. The government wanted to build the most powerful army in Europe to get rid of all of Germany's enemies.