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Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was one of the greatest and most original scientific thinkers of all time.
Born of Jewish parents at Ulm in Switzerland and got his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich. He went to live in the United States in 1933 because of the rise of Nazism in Germany and Hitler’s persecution（迫害） of the Jews.
In 1905, while still at Zurich, he published his Special Theory of Relativity, which was based on things everyone may have noticed. If two trains are standing alongside each other and one train starts to move, a person sitting in the train may wonder whether his own train is moving or the other is moving, and before he finds out what is happening, he can see that one train is moving relative to the other. From this and also from other more complicated facts, Einstein came to the conclusion that all motion is relative and that there is really no such thing as absolute motion. Some of the other conclusions he drew are that nothing can go faster than light, and that if something such as a ruler was moving faster and faster it would seem to get shorter and shorter as its speed was near the speed of light. By 1915, Einstein had made known his General Theory of Relativity. He also improved on Newton’s theory of gravity. Most of his theories have been tested and found to be true though some may sound strange. For his important work he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Towards the end of his life, Einstein was asked by a group of students to explain his complicated Theory of Relativity. He said, “When you sit with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute; but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. That is relativity.”
1. In 1933, Einstein went to live in the United States because ______.
A. he loved the U.S. more than his own country.
B. he had got some friends there with whom he could work.
C. he wanted to live quietly and happily there.
D. he could no longer work in Germany when Hitler came to power.
2. One of the conclusions drawn by Einstein is that _______
A. planes can go faster than trains and buses.
B. people couldn’t run as fast as vehicles.
C. light goes the fastest of all things.
D. two trains can never go at the same time.
3. Einstein added that if something such as a ruler was moving, it would seem to get shorter and shorter _______
A. because the ruler itself was short.
B. when it was moving faster and faster.
C. because we can’t see it clearly.
D. because the ruler was broken into pieces.
4. Albert Einstein was world-famous for his ______
A. Special Theory of Relativity.
B. General Theory of Relativity.
C. improving on Newton’s theory of gravity.
D. all his work mentioned above.
