In 1922 Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921 Noble Prize in Physics, [1] "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". This refers to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", which was well supported by the experimental evidence by that time. The presentation speech began by mentioning "his theory of relativity [which had] been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles [and] also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time".
It was long reported that in accord with the divorce settlement, [2] the Nobel Prize money had been deposited in a Swiss bank account for his wife Mileva Marić to invest for herself and their two sons, while she could only use the capital by agreement with Einstein. However, personal correspondence made public in 2006 [3] shows that he invested much of it in the United States, and saw much of it wiped out in the Great Depression. Ultimately, however, he paid Marić more money than he received with the prize. [4]
On November 12, 1913, Einstein was granted full membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences. On March 28, 1933, he resigned membership, explaining in a letter to the academy that he did not want to be associated with the Prussian government of the time. [5]
On November 12, 1919, the University of Rostock awarded an honorary doctorate of medicine (Dr. med. h.c.) to Einstein, on the occasion of its 500th anniversary and following a suggestion by Moritz Schlick. This is the only honorary doctorate he received from a German university. [6]
In 1921, Einstein accepted a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Manchester. In addition to receiving the degree, Einstein gave a lecture in Manchester on June 9. [7]
In 1925 the Royal Society awarded Einstein the Copley Medal. [8]
In 1926, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. [9]
In 1929, Max Planck presented Einstein with the Max Planck medal of the German Physical Society in Berlin, for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. [10]
In 1931, he received the Prix Jules Janssen, In 1934 Einstein gave the Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture. [11] [12]
In 1936, Einstein was awarded the Franklin Institute's Franklin Medal for his extensive work on relativity and the photo-electric effect. [10]
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics named 2005 the "World Year of Physics" in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the annus mirabilis papers. [13]
The chemical element 99, einsteinium, was named for him in August 1955, four months after Einstein's death. [14] [15] 2001 Einstein is an inner main belt asteroid discovered on 5 March 1973. [16]
In 1999 Time magazine named him the Person of the Century, [17] [18] ahead of Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt, among others. In the words of a biographer, "to the scientifically literate and the public at large, Einstein is synonymous with genius". [19] Also in 1999, an opinion poll of 100 leading physicists ranked Einstein the "greatest physicist ever". [20] A Gallup poll recorded him as the fourth most admired person of the 20th century in the U.S. [21]
In 1990, his name was added to the Walhalla temple for "laudable and distinguished Germans", [22] which is located in Donaustauf in Bavaria. [23]
The United States Postal Service honored Einstein with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 8¢ postage stamp.
In 2008, Einstein was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. [24]
In 2018, Einstein was an inaugural inductee into the Royal Albert Hall's Walk of Fame. In October 1933 he made a speech before a packed out British audience in the Hall on his fear of the looming crisis in Europe, and in recognition of this his name was among those viewed as "key players" in the building's history. [25] [26]
The bust of Albert Einstein, installed in Mexico City's Parque México, commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. [27]
Mount Einstein, a massive mountain in Alaska, was named in his honor in 1955. [28]
The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes called the Albert Einstein Medal because it is accompanied with a gold medal) is an award in theoretical physics, established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein's 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and included a prize money of $15,000, [29] [30] which was later reduced to $5,000. [31] [32] The winner is selected by a committee (the first of which consisted of Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann and Weyl [33] ) of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administers the award. [30] The Albert Einstein Medal is an award presented by the Albert Einstein Society in Bern, Switzerland. First given in 1979, the award is presented to people who have "rendered outstanding services" in connection with Einstein. [34] The Albert Einstein Peace Prize is given yearly by the Chicago, Illinois-based Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation. Winners of the prize receive $50,000. [35]
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. The Albert Einstein Science Park is located on the hill Telegrafenberg in Potsdam, Germany. The best known building in the park is the Einstein Tower which has a bronze bust of Einstein at the entrance. The Tower is an astrophysical observatory that was built to perform checks of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. [36] The Albert Einstein Memorial in central Washington, D.C. is a monumental bronze statue depicting Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. The statue, commissioned in 1979, is located in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue.
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held as one of the most influential scientists. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein broadly synonymous with genius.
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour.
Max Born was a German-British physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s. Born was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function".
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the combined electric and magnetic forces acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. Lorentz was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency, resulting in abnormal refractive indices.
Albert Abraham Michelson FFRS FRSE was a Prussian-born American physicist of Jewish descent, known for his work on measuring the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in a science. He was the founder and the first head of the physics departments of Case School of Applied Science and the University of Chicago.
Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard was a Hungarian-born German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his work on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties. One of his most important contributions was the experimental realization of the photoelectric effect. He discovered that the energy (speed) of the electrons ejected from a cathode depends only on the frequency, and not the intensity, of the incident light.
Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.
Johannes Stark was a German physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields". This phenomenon is known as the Stark effect.
The Albert Einstein Award was an award in theoretical physics, given periodically from 1951 to 1979, that was established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein's 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and, in addition to a gold medal of Einstein by sculptor Gilroy Roberts, it also included a prize money of $15,000, which was later reduced to $5,000. The winner was selected by a committee of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administered the award. Lewis L. Strauss used to be one of the trustees of the institute.
Willem de Sitter was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.
William Wallace Campbell was an American astronomer, and director of Lick Observatory from 1901 to 1930. He specialized in spectroscopy. He was the tenth president of the University of California from 1923 to 1930.
General relativity is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. According to general relativity, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of space and time by those masses.
Roy Patrick Kerr is a New Zealand mathematician who discovered the Kerr geometry, an exact solution to the Einstein field equation of general relativity. His solution models the gravitational field outside an uncharged rotating massive object, including a rotating black hole. His solution to Einstein's equations predicted spinning black holes before they were discovered.
Since 2003, the Einstein Prize is a biennial prize awarded by the American Physical Society. The recipients are chosen for their outstanding accomplishments in the field of gravitational physics. The prize is named after Albert Einstein (1879–1955), who authored the theories of special and general relativity. The prize was established by the Topical Group on Gravitation at the beginning of 1999. As of 2013, the prize is valued at $10,000. The 2005 prize for Bryce DeWitt was announced shortly before his death, and awarded posthumously.
Reinhard Genzel is a German astrophysicist, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor at LMU and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy", which he shared with Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose. In a 2021 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Genzel recalls his journey as a physicist; the influence of his father, Ludwig Genzel; his experiences working with Charles H. Townes; and more.
Bernard F. Schutz FInstP FLSW is an American and naturalised British physicist. He is well known for his research in Einstein's theory of general relativity, especially for his contributions to the detection of gravitational waves, and for his textbooks. Schutz is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is a professor of physics and astronomy at Cardiff University, and was a founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, where he led the Astrophysical Relativity division from 1995 to 2014. Schutz was a founder and principal investigator of the GEO gravitational wave collaboration, which became part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). Schutz was also one of the initiators of the proposal for the space-borne gravitational wave detector LISA, and he coordinated the European planning for its data analysis until the mission was adopted by ESA in 2016. Schutz conceived and in 1998 began publishing from the AEI the online open access (OA) review journal Living Reviews in Relativity, which for many years has been the highest-impact OA journal in the world, as measured by Clarivate.
Alessandra Buonanno is an Italian-American theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. She is the head of the "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" department. She holds a research professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park, and honorary professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Potsdam. She is a leading member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which observed gravitational waves from a binary black-hole merger in 2015.
Jürgen Renn is a German historian of science, and since 1994 Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Albert Einstein: