爱因斯坦年轻时

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青年节，为大家分享一段爱因斯坦年轻时的经历，祝广大青年读者节日快乐！

Albert Einstein

the man who was responsible for the Theory of Relativity

In 1891, when I was fifteen years old, we moved to Pavia, Italy. I now had to learn a new language and I knew that sitting in a classroom was not the way to do it. I learnt Italian by meeting people, talking in cafés and doing little jobs. I wanted to learn about technical subjects but I didn't have good enough grades to get into the local school. Instead, I went to Aarau in Switzerland to finish high school and then I enrolled at the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. That year I gave up my German citizenship and for the next few years I did not ‘belong’ to any country. I had been born into a Jewish family but I didn't like the rules that religion forced people to follow. I couldn't see why we had to lead the lives chosen for us by our parents, so I gave up Judaism. 

ETH Zurich (Wikipedia)

At college, I noticed an attractive girl called Mileva Maric, who had just arrived from Serbia. She had some problems in speaking Swiss German, which I was able to help her with, and we also studied together. We became close friends. At the age of twenty-two, I decided to apply for, and was given Swiss citizenship. I was supposed to do my military service but because of a few physical problems, which were not serious, I was excused. This suited me extremely well as thoughts were more important to me than physical action. I returned to Italy for a while to stay with my parents and Mileva came with me. My parents welcomed her as part of the family and we lived with them.

I wanted to become a physics teacher but did not have the necessary qualifications so I applied to be a patent examiner instead. A patent is a document that gives you the right to make or sell a new invention. I was given a job by the Swiss Patent Office. This meant I now had a steady income and could set up a home in Bern, so I asked Mileva to marry me. Being married was the start of a new way of life for me and within a year, our son Hans Albert was born. My home life, work and research were all moving fast.

After work, in the evening, I would study physics and always discussed my ideas with my friend Michele Besso. He was an excellent listener, asking questions that really made me think deeply. We started our own organization called the Olympia Academy – we had to because nobody else would take us seriously. There was no money for me to set up a laboratory, so I studied research that had already been published and then coordinated all the results. This actually suited me because I believed that evidence was better than opinion. Since I was no better with words now than when I was a child, I preferred something that was both solid and abstract. Words had many different meanings and interpretations but symbols were real to me.

It was obvious that we were part of a universe that was beyond words. How could we describe what we could not see? How could we see what we could not measure? Yet it was quite clear that we were influenced by these unseen forces. Our tides moved with the moon and our earth with the sun. Beyond that there was the cosmos – the universe – working to its own timetable. I was working on the relationship between time, space and movement, which later became known as the theory of relativity. I wrote four papers about it – one of which was published in a leading German physics publication. Then, at the age of twenty-six, I proposed the equation e=mc². This meant that if you measured the mass of any object and multiplied it by the speed of light, you discovered the amount of energy it could produce. Previously, scientists had thought that there was no relation between mass and energy.

The response, as I expected, was huge, with a great deal of discussion taking place. Before long, professors at various universities wanted to meet me. To me it was amazing that my work should be recognized, considering that I had been an average student and had never really followed a formal system of education. However, studying mainly by myself had its advantages. I was able to think in a wider way, allowing me to form my theories. Academic job offers started coming in and I worked for a time in Zurich.

以上内容摘自“柯林斯名人故事集第四级”《了不起的科学家》。

正文部分用简明清晰的英文讲述人物生平故事，并以脚注形式提供重点词汇解释，文后附该著名人物生平大事记。

书后附英文词汇表，提供重点词汇的英语释义。全书英文原音朗读，提供点读和二维码音频播放功能。

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