“Thermodynamics is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown.”

Einstein also developed a model for the heat capacity in solids and gases, and, together with Indian physicist Satyendra Bose, developed a variation of statistics allowing for the description of the behavior of bosons. [2]

Thermodynamics
According to Google Books analysis of key term usage as found in the collected papers of Einstein, the mindset of his twenties, from 1900 to 1909, was most dominated by the word "entropy". [14] In fact, 25 of Einstein’s first 30 published papers, of over 300 in total, were in thermodynamics. [12] Thermodynamics played a special role in Einstein's early search for a unified theory of physics. [13]

Seed of drive
In his last Autobiographical Note, Einstein recalled the first crucial insight that led to his special theory of relativity. It came to him unexpectedly, while he was daydreaming, at the age of sixteen: [4]


Through this conjecture, a number of scientific insights, e.g. that no object with mass can be moved at the speed of light because it would take an infinite about of energy, that time is relativistic, that matter and energy are equivalent, that radiation consists of light quanta, etc., emerged or naturally fell out into plain view. [5]

Education
At age 5, Einstein received his first compass, and began to investigate the natural phenomenon. At age 10, he set into a program of self-education and began reading as much about science as he could. At age 12, he had decided to devote himself to solving the riddle of the ‘Huge World.’ In 1895, at age 16, Einstein attempts to skip high school, by taking an entrance exam to the Swiss Polytechnic, a top technical university, but fails the arts portion. The following year, age 17, he finishes high school and enrolls at ETH Zurich in the mathematics and physics program. In 1900, age 21, he graduated from college, with a degree in mathematical physics.

For the next two years, Einstein searched unsuccessfully for a teaching post, settling, in circa 1902, for a job at the patent office in Bern, evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. He published his first scientific paper in 1901 on intermolecular forces, followed by two papers in 1902 on thermodynamics of potential differences in metals and of the second law in the context of kinetic theory. Over the next two years, he published two papers: “A Theory of the Foundations of Thermodynamics” (1903) and “On a General Molecular Theory of Heat” (1904)”. The following year he published 25 papers, mostly on thermodynamics, five of which functioned to catapult him into scientific stardom. The following key term mapping gives an indication to the weight of different terms in the mind of Einstein during his first thirty years of life:

Significance of key terms from Einstein's collected papers (1879-1902) indicating that "temperature" was the most dominate scientific term of this period.	Significance of key terms from Einstein's collected papers (1900-1909) indicating that "entropy" was the most dominate scientific term of this period.

Einstein gained worldwide prominence in 1919, when British astronomers verified predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity through measurements taken during a total eclipse. Einstein's theories expanded upon, and in some cases refuted, universal laws formulated by Newton in the late seventeenth century.

Some of the books in Einstein's personal library.

On the shoulders of giants
Born the year of Scottish physicist James Maxwell's death, Einstein was so inspired by Maxwell's mathematics - which he'd had to teach himself because his teachers didn't include it in their curriculums - that he put a photograph of Maxwell on his study wall, alongside pictures of Michael Faraday and Isaac Newton. These three men were Einstein's great intellectual influences. [6]

Maxwell, who had built on the work English chemist and physicist Michael Faraday and his conception of "lines of force" (or field lines), through the publication of his 1873 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, had established that light or all forms of electromagnetic radiation consisted of electromagnetic waves. Subsequently, by 1905 the wave nature of light was an established, incontrovertible fact. Einstein, however, proposed that light was not continuous but consists of localized particles. As Einstein wrote in the introduction to his March 1905 paper: [9]

“According to the assumption to be contemplated here, when a light ray is spread from a point, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever-increasing spaces, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta that are localized in points in space, move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as a whole.”

These “energy quanta” were later terms labeled as “photons” a 1926 coinage of American physical chemist Gilbert Lewis to describe a “particle” of light. [10]

Three-meter-tall sculpture of Einstein's E = mc² formula at the 2006 Walk of Ideas, Germany.

Mass-energy equivalence
In 1905, with respect to the development of "relativistic thermodynamics", German-born American physicist Albert Einstein showed that energy is proportional, according to the speed of light squared, to matter. [7] Specifically, in his September 27 paper "Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content?", Einstein proposed that the equivalence of mass and energy is a general principle, which is a consequence of the symmetries of space and time. [8]

On love
The following are Einstein's thoughts on the subject of love: [11]



In respect to gravitation and love, Einstein was off logic a bit. Female sexual heat, for instance, is mediated by the lunar cycle which is a gravitational phenomenon. In general, however, Einstein knew that human movement was controlled by "forces" an opinion he stated in 1929:

"Everything is determined … by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust—we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."

Other
In an end of the millennium 1999 poll of 100 of the world’s top physicists, Einstein was voted as the greatest physicist of all-time, pushing Isaac Newton into second place. [3]

References
1. (a) Muller, Ingo. (2007). A History of Thermodynamics - the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy. New York: Springer.
(b) Albert Einstein (definition) – Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 2000, version 2.5, CD-Rom.
2. Perrot, Pierre. (1998). A to Z of Thermodynamics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Staff writer. (1999). “Einstein the Greatest”, BBC News Online, Monday, 29 Nov.
4. (a) Wenger, Win and Poe, Richard. (1996). The Einstein Factor, (pg. 11). Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing.
(b) Pais, Abraham. (1982) Subtle is the Lord, The Life and Science of Albert Einstein, (pg. 131). New York: Oxford University Press.
5. Rigden, John S. (2005). Einstein 1905 - the Standard of Greatness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
6. (a) Arianrhod, Robyn. (2006). Einstein’ Heroes: Imagining the World through the Language of Mathematics. Oxford University Press.
(b) Arianrhod, Robyn. (2003). “Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World through the Language of Mathematics”, The Sydney Morning Herald, November, 10th.
7. (a) Bodanis, David. (2000). E = mc² - a Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation. New York: Berkley Books.
(b) Muller, Ingo. (2007). A History of Thermodynamics - the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy, (ch. 10: Relativistic Thermodynamics, pgs. 289-305). New York: Springer.
8. Einstein, A. (1905), "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?", Annalen der Physik 18: 639–643 (English).
9. Einstein, Albert. (1905). “On a Heuristic Point of View about the Creation and Conversion of Light”, Annalen der Physik March 18.
10. (a) Ball, David W. (2001). The Basics of Spectroscopy, (pg. 13). SPIE Press.
(b) Gribbin, John. (2000). Q is for Quantum – An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics. New York: Touchstone Books.
11. (a) Among the letters Einstein received in England was one from a man who had a theory that gravity meant that as the earth rotated people were sometimes upside down or horizontal. Perhaps, reasoned the man, this led people to do foolish things, like falling in love. This prompted Einstein to scribble on the letter: “falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do … but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”
(b) Source: Isaacson, Walter. (2007). Einstein, (pg. 423). Simon and Schuster.
(c) In the late 1920s at the California Institute of Technology, as recorded by Henry Borsook (1956), physical chemist Edwin Cohn asked geneticist Thomas Morgan what is research plans were? Morgan answer was: “I am not doing any genetics. I am bored with genetics. But I am going out to Cal Tech where I hope it will be possible to bring physics and chemistry to bear on biology.” Shortly after Morgan arrived at Cal Tech, Einstein visited the laboratory and posed almost the same question. Morgan answered similarly as before. In response, Einstein shook his head and said: “No, this trick won’t work. The same trick does not work twice. How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
(d) Source: Kang, Manjit. (2002). Quantitative Genetics, Genomics, and Plant Breeding, (pg. 12). CABI Publishing.
12. List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein – Wikipedia.
13. Klein, Martin J. (1967). “Thermodynamics in Einstein’s Thought: Thermodynamics Played a Special Role in Einstein’s Early Search for a Unified Foundation of Physics.”, Science 4, August. pgs. 509-16.
14. (a) Einstein, Albert. (1987). The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: The Early Years, 1879-1902, Volume 1. Translator: Anna Beck, Compiler: Peter Havas. Princeton University Press.
(b) Einstein, Albert. (1989). The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: The Swiss Years, Writings, 1900-1909, Volume 2. Translator: Anna Beck, Compiler: Peter Havas. Princeton University Press.

External links
● Albert Einstein – Wikipedia.