What Kind of Work Did Albert Einstein Do?

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According to About.com, Albert Einstein started out working as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. After his received his doctorate in 1905 and had several articles published, he began to rise as the scientist he is known as today. Starting in 1909, he accepted teaching positions at the University of Zurich, University of Prague and later the University of Berlin.

Even though Einstein’s day job was as a clerk and later a teacher, he continued his research and writing. In 1905, he wrote four articles that laid groundwork for modern physics and gained him respect from fellow scientists, as well as his position as a college professor. He researched and wrote about quantum physics and used the theory of relativity to model the behavior of the universe in 1917. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics with a paper on the photoelectric effect. Einstein’s third significant paper introduced the theory of relativity and the famous equation “E-mc2.”

When Hitler took power in Germany, Einstein moved to the United States, where he began work as a guest professor at Princeton University in 1933. In 1939, he sent his famous letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt regarding how nuclear fission could be used for military purposes. While his research on this subject led to the Manhattan Project, Einstein was not a part of this effort. He did go on to do more work on the universal law of gravitation and electromagnetic force. After World War II, Einstein was offered the position of President of Israel, but he declined. He died of an aneurysm in 1955.

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