The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
Einstein, Albert
(EYEN-steyen) A twentieth-century physicist; Einstein was born in Germany in 1879 and moved to the United States in the 1930s. Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity. His equation E = mc2 led to the development of nuclear fission and the atomic bomb.
‡ In 1939, a group of scientists, including Edward Teller, received evidence that Germany, then controlled by the Nazis, was planning to build an atomic bomb to use against the United States. These scientists persuaded Einstein to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and urge that the United States develop an atomic bomb first. (SeeManhattan Project.)
‡ In his last years, before his death in 1955, after the atomic bomb had been used in war (seeHiroshimaandNagasaki), Einstein sought to educate the public on how nuclear weapons had changed the world situation.
‡ Einstein believed strongly in the regularity of nature. He said, “God does not play dice with the universe,” and “God is subtle, but he is not malicious.”
‡ It is important to distinguish between the theory of relativity, in which the laws of nature are the same for all observers anywhere in the universe, and the philosophical doctrine of relativism, which holds that there are no absolute truths. The similarity in their names has been a source of confusion.
