The man who shaped the universe was born on the day of the most famous number in the world of mathematics

European conundrum: Why Einstein would never celebrate Pi Day

Although the Pi Day celebration is today a global phenomenon, often celebrated precisely on the occasion of Einstein’s birthday, the scientist himself probably never even thought of this coincidence. As the historian of science Michael Gordin from Princeton University explains, the reason is very simple.
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​- No, he never joked about that, partly because as a European he would have written the date as 14/3 – said Gordin.

The tradition of celebrating March 14 as Pi Day originated in the United States, where dates are written in the month/day/year format. This practice only caught on many years after Einstein’s death in 1955, and his birthday coincidence only further popularized the celebration. It is ironic that the man, whose work contains the constant pi in the very heart of the general relativity equation, lived unaware of the “honorable” day that future generations will assign to him.

The genius who spoke late

Einstein’s path to icon status was not a straight line. His parents were seriously concerned because he didn’t speak until he was about three years old, and even then he often took long, unnatural pauses before saying a sentence. The family nurse considered him “silly”, and in his early years there was no indication that they were raising one of the greatest minds in history. Still, sparks of genius were present. When his father showed him a compass at the age of five, the boy was mesmerized by an invisible force that always turned the needle to the north. This mystery, as he later admitted, haunted him all his life and directed him towards physics.

Although the myth that he failed mathematics is false, the truth is that he could not stand the rigid educational system of his time. He believed that it kills creativity and the “sacred desire to know”.
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​- It is almost a good thing that modern teaching methods have not yet completely suffocated the sacred knowledge of research – he once said.
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​The biggest lesson he learned himself. At the age of twelve, he independently mastered the entire Euclidean geometry from a textbook that he called his “holy little book of geometry”, and by the age of fifteen he was a master. mastered differential and integral calculus. Parallel to his love for science, he also developed a passion for music. At Maja’s persuasion, he started playing the violin at the age of six and became a skilled musician, finding in Mozart’s music, as he said, “a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe”.

A scientist with a deep sense of justice

Despiteč The image of a genius closed in his own world, Einstein was deeply engaged in social and political issues. He was a dedicated pacifist all his life. During the First World War, he was one of only four German intellectuals who signed a manifesto against German participation in the conflict, calling nationalism “the measles of the human race”. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they declared his works “Jewish physics”, and he was forced to emigrate to the United States in 1933.

In his new homeland, he became a vocal advocate of civil rights. Noticing the parallels between the persecution of Jews in Europe and the systematic discrimination against African Americans in the USA, he became a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In a speech at the historically black Lincoln University in 1946, he called segregation a “white man’s disease.” His activism and left-wing views attracted the attention of the FBI, which kept a file on him of more than 1,400 pages. After the Second World War, he deeply regretted the letter he sent to President Roosevelt, in which he warned him about the possibility of the Nazis developing an atomic bomb. He became an ardent opponent of nuclear armament, aware of the destructive power that his E=mc² equation theoretically made possible.