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dated April 20, 1955: Einstein dead

Dr. Albert Einstein, the man who gave the world the key to the secrets of atomic energy, died at a hospital in Princeton (New Jersey) on April 18. He was 76. The theoretical physicist, who first advanced his Theory of Relativity 50 years ago, was the victim of a rupture of the main artery of the body caused by hardening arteries. One of the greatest scientists of modern times, Einstein was universally acclaimed as an authentic genius. To his contemporaries in physics, his was the greatest scientific intellect mankind has ever produced. Yet, he had to live the last days of his life exiled from the country of his birth, deprived of his nationality and property after having been publicly defamed. Einstein, who had secluded himself from public contact in recent years, had been attached to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The quiet, unpretentious wizard of mathematics and physics spent his life-time searching for unified mathematical concept of the laws which govern the universe. A revolutionary idea, it added a fourth dimension - time - to the three - length, breadth and width - which had formed man's basic knowledge of the measurement of matter. It also astounded scientists by disputing Newton's Law of Gravitation. Einstein first developed his Theory of Relativity in a paper he wrote in 1905 when he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Berne. It provided an answer to theoretical difficulties in trying to determine the absolute speed of the earth through space and, by implication, revolutionalised the scientific conception of the nature of the physical world. One of the numerous anecdotes told of Einstein was the explanation he once gave of the Theory of Relativity. "When you sit with the girl you love for two hours, you think it is only a minute. But when you sit on a red hot stove for a minute, you think it is two hours. That is relativity."

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