What an extraordinary human being Albert Einstein was!
Not only was he a genius, he was someone with a strong moral compass, who, in spite of sustained persecution, always fought for what he believed was right.
He epitomised what it is, to be a truly original thinker.
His countless discoveries in the fields of theoretical physics, secured his global fame and earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
What I find particularly interesting, is the times, during which he lived and worked.
Born 1879, he was 35 years old, at the outbreak of WW1.
In spite of significant pressure from his scientific colleagues at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, he refused to apply his genius, to the development of weapons.
Indeed, he was horrified, when he discovered that one of his close friends and colleagues had developed a poison gas, which was deployed at key battles during WW1.
His attitude was different during WW2, owing to the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people and the very real possibility that Germany would succeed in developing an atomic bomb before the allies.
For fear of Hitler winning the atomic arms race, Einstein alerted Franklin Roosevelt to the dangers, which the allies faced and lent his support to leading physicists, such as Nils Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer, who ultimately succeeded in developing the first atomic bomb.
During the Cold War, Einstein advocated strongly for the containment of nuclear weapons development, on the basis that proliferation would greatly increase the likelihood of world destruction.
If you're reading this and are yet to have read Walter Isaacson's book or watched the wonderful National Geographic series, I would invite you to do so.
