History UsefulNotes / AlbertEinstein

-->'''Krukov:''' We now have... ''two'' mortal enemies?

Einstein died in 1955. He spent most of the time after his arrival at the United States attempting to explain the then-modern physics with field theories. He never believed in quantum theories and remained their opponent until his death (see "God does not play dice"). The task was completed more then 10 years after his death in 1967 with the introduction of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model Standard Model]].

** In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'', set after the original time travel event, the Russians use a new time machine to erase Einstein in 1927, before the original time travel event, but after Einstein removed Hitler from time itself (1924).

Born in Ulm, Germany, Einstein was the son of an engineer. He was gifted in math and science from an early age. The urban legend that he failed mathematics in high school is completely untrue. He did fail the entrance examination to The Zürich Institute of Technology first time around, [[CripplingOverspecialization but that was because the exam was in French, a language he read poorly]].[[note]]On the other hand, [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker Wernher von Braun]] did fail ninth-grade algebra, so you can use that to cheer your kid up about bad grades if you like. UsefulNotes/ThomasEdison and Creator/StanleyKubrick also did poorly in school, so they're also good for encouragement.[[/note]]) [[TeenGenius He first started thinking about relativity at the age of 16]], as he tried to imagine how a light wave would look if he traveled with it at the speed of light.[[note]]The idea of relativity was sort of "in the air" when Einstein was growing up in TheGayNineties, as the similarly-multitalented Austrian Ernst Mach was articulating it at the time. There is no question, however, that Einstein's contributions were revolutionary [[/note]]

[[quoteright:333:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/FFPOFP31.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:333: The man who shaped the whole [[TheTwentiethCentury Twentieth Century]].]]
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* Many people still try to debunk his theories, find some flaws or paradoxes in them. For some reason, they believe that relativety is still the front edge of modern physics, even though his theories are more then a century old by now. Just for comparison, 1903 is the year when the Wright brothers made their "Flyer 1", the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. Compare modern airliners fith the Flyer 1, and you'll get the general idea of how much the modern physics is more advanced than the relativety theories.

Born in Ulm, Germany, Einstein was the son of an engineer. He was gifted in math and science from an early age. (The urban legend that he failed mathematics in high school was completely untrue. He did fail the entrance examination to The Zürich Institute of Technology, [[CripplingOverspecialization because the exam was in]] ''[[CripplingOverspecialization French]]'', [[CripplingOverspecialization a language he read poorly]][[note]]On the other hand, [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker Wernher von Braun]] ''did'' fail ninth-grade algebra, so you can use that to cheer your kid up about bad grades if you like. UsefulNotes/ThomasEdison and Creator/StanleyKubrick also did poorly in school, so they're also good for encouragement.[[/note]]) [[TeenGenius He first started thinking about relativity at the age of 16]], as he tried to imagine how a light wave would look if he traveled with it at the speed of light.[[note]]The idea of relativity was sort of "in the air" when Einstein was growing up in TheGayNineties, as the similarly-multitalented Austrian Ernst Mach was articulating it at the time. There is no question, however, that Einstein's contributions were revolutionary [[/note]]

Einstein died in 1955. He spent most of the time after his arrival at the United States attempting to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity, a quest that continues to this day.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** Einstein appears playing poker with Data, Isaac Newton, and Creator/StephenHawking (played by the ''[[AsHimself real]]'' Stephen Hawking) in episode "Descent: Part I", via use of the Holodeck:
--->'''Einstein:''' The uncertainty principle will not help you now, Stephen. Hm? All the quantum fluctuations in the universe will not change the cards in your hand. I call. You are bluffing. And you will lose!\\
'''Hawking:''' Wrong again, Albert. ''[reveals four-of-a-kind]''
** Einstein also appeared as a hologram in "The Nth Degree", working with the [[FlowersForAlgernonSyndrome then-hyper-intelligent]] Reg Barclay.
* ''Einstein & Eddington'', in which Einstein is played by Creator/AndySerkis (i.e. Gollum).

* The ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "Meltdown", features a "wax droid" museum with android replicas of various celebrities, including Einstein.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'', the Warners come to sell cookies to Einstein, and end up [[EurekaMoment inspiring him to write the Mass-Energy Conversion formula.]]
* [[InNameOnly But not]] ''WesternAnimation/LittleEinsteins''.
* Implied in ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' that he stole the Relativity theory from someone named "Smith". It is implied he savagely beat poor Smith to death. He also beat up God to steal the secret of Shrinky-Dinks.

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheMummyTheAnimatedSeries'' has Imhotep kidnap Einstein to help him decode the Scrolls of Thebes.

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* ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'': Dexter himself praises and cherishes Albert Einstein so much, he even has a poster of of him in his room.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'': Jimmy Neutron admires Einstein. In one episode he was inspired to be a model hall monitor after finding out from his principal that Einstein was a hall monitor as a kid. It was later revealed that the hall monitor that his principal was talking about was actually [[spoiler:the principal's sister, Eunice, who looks like Einstein]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad'', Einstein masqueraded as a Texan used car salesman named Big Al because the pay was better and he felt more accepted by the community.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'', the Warners come to sell cookies to Einstein, and end up [[EurekaMoment inspiring him to write the Mass-Energy Conversion formula.]]
* [[InNameOnly But not]] ''WesternAnimation/LittleEinsteins''.
* Implied in ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' that he stole the Relativity theory from someone named "Smith". It is implied he savagely beat poor Smith to death. He also beat up God to steal the secret of Shrinky-Dinks.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'', Plucky convinces Shirley to channel Einstein's genius into him so he can pass a hard math test. (Plucky doesn't find out until it's too late that Einstein ''flunked'' math in grade school, which Shirley tells him later.)
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheMummyTheAnimatedSeries'' has Imhotep kidnap Einstein to help him decode the Scrolls of Thebes.
* After getting the shit kicked out of him, the time cop of ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' finds Einstein, whom he believes to be Rick, and assaults him shouting "you dont mess with time". Upset, Einstein states that he will mess with time, writing E=mc2 on his board as he gets up.

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->''"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."''[[labelnote:†]]Einstein, 1901, in a letter to Jost Winteler[[/labelnote]]

* ''[[Creator/RobertAntonWilson Masks Of The Illuminati]]'': he and Creator/JamesJoyce are the protagonists, starting out having met by chance in a Zurich beergarden before getting caught up in someone else's GambitPileup before having an illumination which leads to the big breakthrough for the General Theory of Relativity.

After graduating, a friend got him a job at a patent office, a quiet post that gave him plenty of unsupervised free time to work on physics. Nothing special happened until 1905, dubbed ''[[AltumVidetur Annus Mirabilis]]''[[note]]"Wonderful Year"[[/note]], when he published four papers, in which he explained the photoelectric effect (which eventually got him a Nobel prize, and provided a ''major'' breakthrough in quantum mechanics), Brownian motion (which proved the existence of atoms once and for all--a scientific mystery that has been around since the days of classical Greece), special UsefulNotes/{{relativity}} (a theory explaining the previously observed fact that light travels at the same apparent speed regardless of the speed of the observer, which predicts some bizarre consequences, like that two observers moving relative to each other will not agree on how quickly time passes), and matter-energy equivalence (where we get the equation E = mc[[superscript:2]])[[note]]Simply put, energy is matter, matter is energy. Matter is ''kind of'' like concentrated, solid energy.[[/note]] Needless to say, the papers had a revolutionary impact on science, most notably kicking off the age of nuclear energy.

* He was OneOfUs. The next time you feel bad because you're obsessed with a "kid's" show, remember Einstein was a fan of the early 1950's TV puppet show and ''WesternAnimation/BeanyAndCecil'' precursor ''Time for Beany'', which was a kid's show heavy on ParentalBonus. He reputedly interrupted a high-level conference by announcing, "You will have to excuse me, gentlemen. It's ''Time for Beany''." He was also noted to be a fan of comics, several times during his days as a patent clerk he was often found reading them rather than working.

* Following from the above, please note that Einstein '''never said most of the stuff people credit him with saying.''' He never said that standardized testing was like teaching a fish to climb a tree, that insanity is repeating the same method expecting different results, or that the extinction of bees would spell the destruction of civilization. Wiki/TheOtherWiki has a [[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein good resource here]] with verifiable quotes that he made.

* Following from the above, please note that Einstein '''never said most of the stuff people credit him with saying.''' He never said that standardized testing was like teaching a fish to climb a tree, that insanity is repeating the same method expecting different results, or that the extinction of bees would spell the destruction of civilization. TheOtherWiki has a [[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein good resource here]] with verifiable quotes that he made.

* Following from the above, please note that Einstein '''never said most of the stuff people credit him with saying.''' He never said that public testing was like teaching a fish to climb a tree, that insanity is repeating the same method expecting different results, or that the extinction of bees would spell the destruction of civilization. TheOtherWiki has a [[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein good resource here]] with verifiable quotes that he made.

** Einstein did say that he considered most of the beliefs of organized religion to be childish, but [[JesusWasWayCool he liked the teachings of Christ and Buddha]]. Regardless of his beliefs on religion, Einstein truly believed that the universe was a perfect clockwork where all pieces could be predicted exactly. He is even credited as saying, to a symposium at Princeton, that "science without religion is lame, [and] religion without science is blind."[[note]]This quote appears in his 1954 book '''Ideas and Opinions'''[[/note]] The emergence of quantum physics, which Einstein had ironically directly influenced, was an idea that Einstein bitterly disliked. He spent much of his later career unsuccessfully attempting to prove quantum theory wrong.
* Following from the above, please note that Einstein ''never said most of the stuff people credit him with saying.'' He never said that public testing was like teaching a fish to climb a tree, that insanity is repeating the same method expecting different results, or that the extinction of bees would spell the destruction of civilization. TheOtherWiki has a [[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein good resource here]] with verifiable quotes that he made.

* His views about religion were complex, though he called himself an [[{{UsefulNotes/Agnosticism}} agnostic]] and specifically denounced the idea of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_god personal god]] (that is, one that is relatable to humans, as opposed to an impersonal force). He was a member of the American Humanist Association and can mostly be called as a humanist who was influenced by Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and believed in Spinoza's definition of God, which is ambiguous and somewhat... well, rather different from the norm. Spinoza posited an impersonal, amoral, non-sapient god in a kind of [[UsefulNotes/{{Pantheism}} pantheism]], in which God permeates and transcends nature. Einstein did say that he considered most of the beliefs of organized religion to be childish, but [[JesusWasWayCool he liked the teachings of Christ and Buddha]]. Regardless of his beliefs on religion, Einstein truly believed that the universe was a perfect clockwork where all pieces could be predicted exactly. The emergence of quantum physics, which Einstein had ironically directly influenced, was an idea that Einstein bitterly disliked. He spent much of his later career unsuccessfully attempting to prove quantum theory wrong.

->''"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."'' — Einstein, 1901, in a letter to Jost Winteler

->''"To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate made me an authority myself!"''

* In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert'', Einstein builds a time machine shortly after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and uses it to go back in time and [[strike: kill]] remove Adolf Hitler from time long before the war. [[AlternateHistory It worked]]. [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct Sort of]].
* In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'', set after the original time travel event, the Russians use a new time machine to erase Einstein in 1927, before the original time travel event, but after Einstein removed Hitler from time itself (1924).

Born in Ulm, Germany, Einstein was the son of an engineer. He was gifted in math and science from an early age. (The urban legend that he failed mathematics in high school was completely untrue. He did fail the entrance examination to The Zürich Institute of Technology, [[CripplingOverspecialization because the exam was in]] ''[[CripplingOverspecialization French]]'', [[CripplingOverspecialization a language he read poorly]][[note]]On the other hand, [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker Wernher von Braun]] ''did'' fail ninth-grade algebra, so you can use that to cheer your kid up about bad grades if you like. UsefulNotes/ThomasEdison and Creator/StanleyKubrick also did poorly in school, so they're also good for encouragement.[[/note]]) [[TeenGenius He first started thinking about relativity at the age of 16]], as he tried to imagine how a light wave would look if he traveled with it at the speed of light.[[note]]The idea of relativity was sort of "in the air" when Einstein was growing up in TheGayNineties, as the similarly-multitalented Austrian Ernst Mach was articulating it at the time. There is no question, however, that Einstein's contributions were revolutionary [[/note]]

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* In ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', an {{Expy}} of Einstein named Dr. Albert Zweinstein appeared in several episodes.

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* In ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' Albert Einstein, alongside Goddard and Tesla, built the first rocket ship and flew it to Mars. Later he built a long distance space ship and left the solar system entirely, becoming the only human to do so.

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* Einstein has often been accused of plagiarism. It is true that other scientists had written about relativity before Einstein. In fact, relativity as a concept is first considered by ''Galileo'' in 1632, although Galileo's work didn't include anything like time slowing down as you speed up or lengths contracting. It was [[CoolOldGuy Hendrik Lorentz]] that first came up with the idea that light speed is constant, and it was [[TheSmartGuy Henri Poincare]] who originally came up with the equation E = mc[[superscript:2]], only he wrote it as "m = E/c[[superscript:2]]". But to Einstein's credit, he was the only person to realize that relativity can be applied to the entire universe. Also, Lorentz and Poincare made very different physical assumptions than Einstein - namely the existence of a perfect reference point and the [[ScienceMarchesOn Luminiferous Aether]]. Though Lorentz and Einstein would become friends, Einstein never got over (what he perceived to be) Poincare's scientific conservatism.

* His views about religion were complex, though he called himself an [[{{UsefulNotes/Agnosticism}} agnostic]] and specifically denounced the idea of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_god personal god]] (that is, one that is relatable to humans, as opposed to an impersonal force). He was a member of the American Humanist Association and can mostly be called as a humanist who was influenced by Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and believed in Spinoza's definition of God, which is ambiguous and somewhat... well, rather different from the norm. Spinoza posited an impersonal, amoral, non-sapient god in a kind of [[UsefulNotes/{{Pantheism}} pantheism]], in which God permeates and transcends nature. Einstein did say that he considered most of the beliefs of organized religion to be childish, but [[JesusWasWayCool he liked the teachings of Christ and Buddha]]. Regardless of his beliefs on religion, Einstein truly believed that the universe was a perfect clockwork where all pieces could be predicted exactly. The emergence of quantum physics, which Einstein had ironically directly influenced, was an idea that Einstein bitterly disliked. He spent much of his later career unsuccessfully attempting to prove quantum theory wrong.

* In the ''Literature/HeecheeSaga'' future, Robinette Broadhead has an A.I. created to be Einstein. Every single writing by and about Einstein is used to create an A.I. as close to the real thing as possible. This [[HeroicBSOD creates a problem later on]] when the A.I. discovers that God really does play dice with the universe.

* In ''Literature/TalesOfMU'', Einstein's quote "God does not play dice with the universe" is referenced during a discussion on whether or not there's a god of magic (which leads to the inevitable [[RandomNumberGod comparison to rolling dice]]).

--->'''Einstein:''' The uncertainty principle will not help you now, Stephen. Hm? All the quantum fluctuations in the universe will not change the cards in your hand. I call. You are bluffing. And you will lose!\\