Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Hindi: अटल बिहारी वाजपेयी in Devanagari) (born December 25, 1924) was the Prime Minister of India in 1996 and again from October 13, 1998 until May 19, 2004.

He is the senior-most leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu Nationalism in Indian politics. He has served as a member of the Parliament of India for nearly 50 years. He is a native Hindi speaker.

Early Life and Family
Vajpayee is a native of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh and has been active in Indian politics throughout his adult life (as a member of parliament, he has often resided in Delhi). He holds the distinction of being a well-educated politician, having earned a masters degree in political science from the Victoria College (now Laxmibai College) and DAV College. He is well-known for being a poet, and has published a book of poetry. He is a bachelor, and has adopted daughters of Mrs & Mr. B. N. Kaul: Nandita (Nanni) and Namita (Gunu). Nandita is a doctor in US and Namita lives in Delhi. Nandita is married to Ashok Nanda, a software engineer and Namita is married to Ranjan Bhattacharya and has a daughter.

Early Political Career
He began his involvements in politics as a freedom-fighter during the Quit India Movement of 1942-1945, initially adhering to Communism, but shedding that for membership in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the foundation of Hindutva, or Hindu Nationalism and the Right-Wing in Indian politics. He became a student, close follower and aide to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the leader of the right-wing, pro-Hindu Bharatiya Jana Sangh. When Mookherjee went on a fast-unto-death in Kashmir in 1953, protesting the id card requirement and inferior treatment of Indian citizens visiting Kashmir, and the special treatment of Kashmir just because it was Muslim-majority, Vajpayee was close his side. Mookherjee's fast and protest ended the id requirement, and hastened the integration of Kashmir into the Indian Union. But Mookherjee died after weeks of weakness, illness and being confined in jail. These events were a watershed for the young Vajpayee. Taking the baton from Mookherjee, Vajpayee won his first parliamentary seat in 1957. Leading the BJS, he expanded its political appeal, organization and agenda. He soon became a respected voice in the opposition, one of reason and intelligence despite his youth. His broad appeal brought respect, recognition and acceptance in the mainstream of a rising nationalist cultural movement.

Vajpayee has served in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and represented the constituencies of Lucknow and Gwalior.

Prime Minister of India, Twice
Political energy and expansion for the BJP made it the single-largest political party in the Lok Sabha elected in 1996. Mired down by corruption scandals, the Congress was at a historic low, and a vast medley of regional parties and break-off factions dominated the hung Parliament. Asked to form the Government, A.B. Vajpayee was sworn in as Prime Minister, but the BJP failed to gather enough support from other parties to make a majority. Vajpayee was forced to resign after just 13 days, when it was clear there could be no majority. After a third-party coalition ruled between 1996 and 1998, the terribly divided Parliament was dissolved and fresh elections again put the BJP on the front. This time, a cohesive bloc of political parties lined up with it to form the National Democratic Alliance, and A.B. Vajpayee was sworn in as the Prime Minister, and the NDA proved its 286 vote majority in a narrow vote of confidence.

Vajpayee strode into a decisive phase of national life and history: the Congress Party, dominant over 40 years, had fallen into ignominy, and warring, corrupt and fractious regional parties threatened the very stability of the nation by continually fracturing government work. The failed third-party coalition presented two years of chaos and pure incompetence. No visible and inspiring leaders showed amidst a myriad of confusion, and a struggling economy dampened the hopes of the whole nation. With terrorism strong in Kashmir and the Northeastern states, and with the inherent national problems of poverty, illiteracy, corruption and unemployment plaguing uniformly, it was the worst period in free India's history.

A.B. Vajpayee faced several crises while heading a fractious coalition. Tamil Nadu's AIADMK party continually threatened, on one point or the other, to withdraw support from the coalition, exhausting the Government before it could take off. In a situation comic and tragic as well, national leaders had to fly down from Delhi to Chennai to pacify the AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha.

But Prime Minister Vajpayee also earned praise for strong leadership in this chaotic period.

The Janata Phase
While the Bharatiya Jana Sangh had strong constituencies of support, it failed to dislodge the Indian National Congress. Indira Gandhi's winning vast majorities in 1969 and 1971 only diminished other political parties.

In 1974 when PM Gandhi imposed a state of Emergency, the RSS and BJS joined a wide-array of parties in opposing the suspension of elections and civil liberties. Vajpayee was briefly jailed during the Indian Emergency.

When Indira Gandhi called elections in 1977, the BJS joined the Janata coalition wholeheartedly, a vast collage of regional groups, socialist, communist and right-wing forces. Janata swept the polls and formed the next government. Under Prime Minister Morarji Desai, Vajpayee took office as the Minister for External Affairs.

In a tenure lasting just 2 years, Vajpayee achieved major milestones. He went on a historic visit to China in 1979, normalizing relations with that Asian giant for the first time since the 1962 war. He also visited Pakistan and initiated normal dialogue and trade relations that were frozen since the 1971 War and political instability in both countries. This was particularly surprising for a man perceived as a hard-right Hindu nationalist at the time. Minister Vajpayee represented the nation at the International Disarmament Conference, where he defended the national nuclear program (India had become the 6th nuclear power in the world with one underground nuclear test in Pokhran in 1974), the centerpiece of national security in the Cold War world, especially as China was a nuclear power. Although he resigned in 1979 when the Government politically attacked the RSS, he had established his credentials as an experienced statesman and respectable political leader.

Pokhran, Lahore and Kargil
Prime Minister Vajpayee began his potent term of office by changing the direction of the nation completely. In May 1998, India conducted 5 absolute surprise underground nuclear weapon tests in Pokhran, Rajasthan. The 5 tests sent the desert rumbling all the way into Pakistan, and shocked and surprised the world. Two weeks later, Pakistan responded with its own nuclear testing, making it the World's newest nuclear weapons power.

It is widely speculated that the tests were planned in 1995, but Vajpayee takes credit for decisively acting on such an important issue. The first and only nuclear test India undertook was in 1974, and its nuclear ability, potential and defensive systems were unproven and undeveloped since. But Pakistan's aggressively progressing nuclear program and China's atomic and ballistic missile dominance made it essential for India to rejuvenate, modernize, expand and prepare.

The five tests took the world completely by surprise, showing not only the skill of counter-intelligence, but the leadership of PM Vajpayee, who decided to brave the worst criticism and sanctions from literally the whole world. Although nations like Russia and France endorsed India's right to defensive nuclear power, the USA, Canada, Japan, the UK and the European Union imposed sanctions on the selling of military equipment and high-tech scientific information, resources and technology to both India and Pakistan.

Although introducing the nuclear element in South Asia, PM Vajpayee's move solidified national defenses, denying Pakistan and China a major, and terrible advantage. His popularity and the BJP's prestige rose meteorically, even though the nation began braving immense criticism and a steady decline in foreign investment and trade. PM Vajpayee also advanced the ballistic missiles program of the nation, and bolstered defence modernization and spending.

PM Vajpayee also introduced many important economic and infrastructural reforms, encouraging the private sector, eradicating waste and restrictions and encouraging foreign investment, research and development and privatization of incompetent government entities. Soon in late 1998 and early 1999, Vajpayee began pushing for a full-scale diplomatic peace process with Pakistan. By visiting Lahore in with the historic inauguration of the Delhi-Lahore bus service in February 1999, Vajpayee initiated a historic new peace process to permanently resolve the Kashmir dispute and other territorial/nuclear/strategic conflicts with Pakistan. The Lahore Declaration espoused a commitment to dialogue, expanded trade relations and a goal of denuclearized South Asia, and mutual friendship. This eased much of the pressure created by the 1998 N-tests, not only between the two heavily militarized nations, but in South Asia and the world, and gave hope to hundreds of millions of Indians and Pakistanis that peace could still defeat the odds.

In May 1999 (before the Kargil War), the AIADMK finally pulled the plug on the NDA, and the Vajpayee administration was reduced to a caretaker status pending fresh elections in October. Not this, however, but another cataclysmic event, arguably the biggest challenge of Vajpayee's administration shattered this hope of a new era, when just three months later, it was revealed that thousands of terrorists and Pakistani soldiers, (albeit un-uniformed, many carried official ids and Pakistan Army custom weaponry) had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley, capturing control of border hilltops, unmanned border posts and spreading out fast. The action was centric to the town of Kargil, but also around the Batalik and Akhnoor sectors, including firing exchanges at the Siachen Glacier.

Immediately major Army units were rushed into Kashmir. Operation Vijay, launched and fought throughout June, saw hundreds of brave soldiers fighting not only thousands of terorrists and soldiers amidst heavy artillery shelling, but extremely cold weather, snow and treacherous terrain at the highest altitude in the world. Over 500 soldiers died, and it is estimated around 600 Pakistani militants and soldiers died as well, but the hills and border posts were systematically liberated. Pakistan's army shot down two Air Force jets that were pounded the militants, and brutally killed and mutilated the body of pilot Ajay Ahuja, an act which angered literally hundreds of millions in India. But with steady Air Force support, the Army fought some absolutely heroic and legendary battles in heavy natural and military odds. The epic Battle of Tiger Hill, the most prominent and important hillpoint and post under militant contro, captured the anxiety and hope of 1 billion people as a few men climbed, charging into heavy fire but nevertheless liberating the post.

Those few hundred soldiers, the Indian Army and the Prime Minister of India were national heroes. After both the United States and China refused to condone the incursion or threaten India to stop its military operations, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif admitted defeat and now openly asked the militants to stop and withdraw to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Pakistan was internationally exposed for this misadventure, and summarily humiliated by shady politicians and generals.

Life and Legacy, Praise and Criticism, after Elections 2004
A.B. Vajpayee's BJP and the National Democratic Alliance were expected to pick up more seats and score a major victory in the 2004 elections. The Parliament was dissolved earlier than necessary in order to capitalize on the national economic boom and improved security and cultural atmosphere.

A vigorous BJP campaign did its best to highlight the major progress achieved, and win the votes of the traditionally averse Muslims for the BJP candidates. Controversial and ideological issues were side-stepped in favor of bread-butter economic issues. But by the time the first three phases of voting were over, it was clear that the BJP was losing too many important seats to retain a formidable position in Parliament. The BJP and its flagship coalition, the NDA, lost almost half their seats in parliamentane several prominent cabinet ministers were defeated, and regional, socialist and Communist parties quickly grouped round the resurgent Indian National Congress to form a left-of-center United Progressive Alliance, which formed the government under Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

The fact that Vajpayee attended the swearing-in of the new government despite his party's decision to boycott them symbolized the growing acrimony to come. Many criticized Vajpayee for sacrificing core issues like Hindutva and the Ram Temple, and going overboard to woo Muslims (the BJP lost the Muslim vote by a heavy margin), and even moving too early to elections. The pro-Vajpayee activists accused Narendra Modi's controversial regime in Gujarat and the obstructiveness of the Hindu hard-right VHP and RSS for the defeat. A possible factor behind the defeat was the widespread disenchantment amongst hundreds of millions of farmers, labourers and workers who were on the bottom-rung of society, mired in poverty, illiteracy and debt, and yet to cash in any benefit from the boom. While the BJP pandered to the rising middle-class of the cities, India's villages and small towns rallied behind pro-poor, socialistic political forces like the Congress.

A.B. Vajpayee expressed his anger and frustration with repeated signals of resignation and retirement. But at a high-level party meeting, he decided to give up the position of the Leader of the Opposition to his long-time friend, second-in-command and successor, Lal Krishna Advani, who also became BJP President. Always a figure of consensus, Vajpayee became Chairman of the National Democratic Alliance. It is a widespread feeling with critics, journalists and many people that Vajpayee's time at the pinnacle of national politics and the BJP, and his position as the obvious BJP choice for Prime Minister is steadily fading. Vajpayee himself is taking more backseat roles and responsibilities, and his health ailments limit his ability to deal with the premier position in national life.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 6 years at the Prime Minister's Office led to a major transformation and expansion of the national economy. In the 1999 Kargil War, his leadership defended the country's integrity and security, while his broad-minded statesmanship in 1999, 2001 and 2004 kept the country's safety, peace and future on the high-course despite many discouraging events, failures and threats. During his 50 years as Member of Parliament, Vajpayee has established impeccable and virtually infallible credentials as a man of principle, integrity and commitment in the world of Indian politics, and as a leading visionary and statesman of the world.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee sowed the seeds and rose with the growing nationalist movement in Indian politics. For four decades he was the flag-bearer, icon and undisputed leader of the Hindu nationalist political movement, working steadily through years of defeat and desolation to foster a major national movement, broad support amongst hundreds of millions and the leadership of the World's largest democracy and most diverse nation.

Vajpayee's government is criticized over its ignorance of the issues and concerns of India's poor millions, over the famous corruption scandals, and the episodes of communal violence and rise of both Hindu and Muslim radicalism in politics. While praised for his leadership during the Kargil War and for his peace efforts with Pakistan, the Vajpayee administration is blamed for not being able to detect and prevent two serious terrorist attacks on the country, and an incursion into Indian sovereign territory.

Vajpayee led a diverse, fractious coalition to complete a full five-year term in office, be the guiding light over a collage of political chaos. He gave stability and unity when the country was the least united, and security when the country was most susceptible. This included not only the security of the borders from invasion, but of the security of 100 million families with the provision of jobs and education in a solid, hopeful economic future, and the strategic national future security.

Despite the rejection of his party in 2004, Vajpayee has retained a position of esteem and respect amongst common people seldom offered to politicians in India.

In December of 2005, Vajpayee announced his retirement, declaring that he would not participate in the next general election. At a rally in the western city of Mumbai, Vajpayee said "I will not participate in any electoral politics. There are many other leaders to take forward the work which I and other senior leaders have been doing. In a now famous statement at the BJP's silver Jubilee rally at Mumbai's historic Shivaji Park, Vajpayee announced that "from now onwards, Lal Krishna Advani and Pramod Mahajan (a BJP leader from Maharashtra, shot fatally by his own brother.) would be the Ram-Laxman (the two godly brothers much revered and worshipped by Hindus) of the BJP.

A young man with great charismatic aura and vision unbeatable with any political hurdle is set to mark the trend of his ancestors. He is set to make his vision a reality. He is Rahul Gandhi, one of the India's new ray of hope in the world of Indian politics. Explore his life that treads through his childhood, mysterious love stories and his latest political achievements.

His Childhood

Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia Gandhi, the President of the Indian National

.
   Congress and late Rajiv

 Rahul Gandhi loves anything that relates to speed. One of his greatest fantasy is go-karting.
   
Gandhi, the former Prime
Minister was born on 19th June 1970. At his early teenage he had to surpass the grief of loosing his grandmother Indira Gandhi. She was assassinated by her security guards. At the age of 20- 21 he witnesses another gruesome murder. His father, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by Sri Lankan Tamil Eelam militants from the LTTE.

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society, nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. ... The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955) was a theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He proposed the theory of relativity and also made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and "for his services to Theoretical Physics".
Youth and Education

Einstein was born at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany; about 100 km east of Stuttgart. His family was Jewish (and non-observant); Albert attended a Catholic elementary school and, at the insistence of his mother, was given violin lessons.
Einstein began to learn mathematics around age twelve. In 1894, following the failure of his fathers electrochemical business, the Einstein's moved from Munich to Pavia, Italy (near Milan). Albert remained behind to finish school, completing a term by himself before rejoining his family in Pavia.

His failure of the liberal arts portion of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich) entrance exam the following year was a setback; he was sent by his family to Aarau, Switzerland, to finish secondary school, where he received his diploma in 1896. Einstein subsequently enrolled at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. The same year, he renounced his Württemberg citizenship, becoming stateless.

In 1898, Einstein met and fell in love with Mileva Maric, a Serbian classmate (and friend of Nikola Tesla). In 1900, he was granted a teaching diploma by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule and was accepted as a Swiss citizen in 1901. During this time Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Mileva. He and Mileva had a daughter Lieserl, born in January, 1902. Lieserl, at the time, was considered illegitimate because the parents were unwed.
Work and doctorate

Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. The father of a classmate helped him obtain employment as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902.
Einstein married Mileva on January 6, 1903. Einstein's marriage to Mileva, who was a mathematician, was both a personal and intellectual partnership: Einstein referred lovingly, or perhaps with some chagrin, to Mileva as "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am".
On May 14, 1904, the couple's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born. In 1904, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent. He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "On a new determination of molecular dimensions" in 1905.

That same year, he wrote four articles that provided the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to which he could refer or many scientific colleagues with whom he could discuss the theories. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes. Only the paper on the photoelectric effect would win one. This is ironic, not only because Einstein is far better-known for relativity, but also because the photoelectric effect is a quantum phenomenon, and Einstein became somewhat disenchanted with the path quantum theory would take. What makes these papers remarkable is that, in each case, Einstein boldly took an idea from theoretical physics to its logical consequences and managed to explain experimental results that had baffled scientists for decades.

He submitted these papers to the "Annalen der Physik". They are commonly referred to as the "Annus Mirabilis Papers" (from Latin: Extraordinary Year). The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) plans to commemorate the 100th year of the publication of Einstein's extensive work in 1905 as the 'World Year Of Physics 2005'.
Brownian motion

His first article in 1905, named "On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", covered his study of Brownian motion. Using the then-controversial kinetic theory of fluids, it established that the phenomenon, which still lacked a satisfactory explanation decades after it was first observed, provided empirical evidence for the reality of atoms. It also lent credence to statistical mechanics, which was also controversial at the time.

Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists hotly debated whether atoms were real entities. Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behaviour gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the leaders of the anti-atom school, later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had been converted to a belief in atoms by Einstein's complete explanation of Brownian motion.
Photoelectric effect

The second paper, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light", proposed the idea of "light quanta" (now called photons) and showed how it could be used to explain such phenomena as the photoelectric effect. The idea of light quanta was motivated by Max Planck's earlier derivation of the law of black-body radiation by assuming that luminous energy could only be absorbed or emitted in discrete amounts, called quanta. Einstein showed that, by assuming that light actually consisted of discrete packets, he could explain the mysterious photoelectric effect.

The idea of light quanta contradicted the wave theory of light that followed naturally from James Clerk Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic behaviour and, more generally, the assumption of infinite divisibility of energy in physical systems. Even after experiments showed that Einstein's equations for the photoelectric effect were accurate, his explanation was not universally accepted. However, by 1921, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize and his work on photoelectricity was mentioned by name in the award citation, most physicists thought that the equation (hf = Φ + Ek) was correct and light quanta were possible.

The theory of light quanta was a strong indication of wave-particle duality, the concept, used as a fundamental principle by the creators of quantum mechanics, that physical systems can display both wave-like and particle-like properties. A complete picture of the photoelectric effect was only obtained after the maturity of quantum mechanics.
Special relativity

Einstein's third paper that year was called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". While developing this paper, Einstein wrote to Mileva about "our work on relative motion", and this has led some to ask whether Mileva played a part in its development. This paper introduced the special theory of relativity, a theory of time, distance, mass and energy which was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity.

Special relativity solved the puzzle that had been apparent since the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had shown that light waves did not travel through a medium unlike other known waves which require a medium such as water or air. The speed of light was thus fixed, and not relative to the movement of the observer. This was impossible under Newtonian classical mechanics.

It had already been conjectured by George Fitzgerald in 1894 that the Michelson-Morley result could be accounted for if moving bodies were squashed in the direction of their motion. Indeed, some of the paper's core equations, the Lorentz transforms, had been introduced in 1903 by Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, giving mathematical form to Fitzgerald's conjecture. But Einstein revealed the underlying reasons for this geometrical oddity.

His explanation arose from two axioms: Galileo's old idea that the laws of nature should be the same for all observers that move with constant speed relative to each other, and the rule that the speed of light is the same for every observer. Special relativity has several striking consequences, because the absolute concepts of time and size are rejected. The theory came to be called the "special theory of relativity" to distinguish it from his later theory of general relativity, which considers all observers to be equivalent.
Energy equivalence

A fourth paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", published late in 1905, showed one further deduction from relativity's axioms, the famous equation that the energy of a body at rest (E) equals its mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared:E = mc2
Einstein considered this equation to be of paramount importance because it showed that a massive particle possesses an energy, the "rest energy", distinct from its classical kinetic and potential energies. Nevertheless, most scientists simply regarded the finding as a curiosity until the 1930s.

The mass-energy relation can be used to predict how much energy will be released or consumed by chemical and nuclear reactions; one simply measures the mass of all constituents and products and multiplies the difference by c². The result shows how much energy will be released or consumed, usually in the form of light or heat. If applied to certain nuclear reactions, the equation shows that an extraordinary large amount of energy will be released, much larger than in the combustion of chemical explosives, where the mass difference hardly measurable at all. This explains why nuclear weapons produce such phenomenal amounts of energy.
Middle years

In 1906, Albert Einstein was promoted to technical examiner second class. In 1908, Einstein was licensed in Bern, Switzerland as a Privatdozent (unsalaried teacher at a university). Einstein's second son, Eduard, was born on July 28, 1910.

In 1911, Einstein became a full professor at the University of Prague. At that time, he worked closely with the mathematician Marcel Grossman. In 1912, Einstein started to refer to time as the fourth dimension.

In 1914, just before the start of World War I, Einstein settled in Berlin as professor at the local university and became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His pacifism and Jewish origins irritated German nationalists. After he became world-famous, nationalistic hatred of him grew and for the first time he was the subject of an organized campaign to discredit his theories.

From 1914 to 1933, he served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and it was during this time that he was awarded his Nobel Prize and made his most groundbreaking discoveries.

Einstein divorced Mileva on February 14, 1919, and married his cousin Elsa Loewenthal (née Einstein: Loewenthal was the surname of her first husband, Max) on June 2, 1919. Elsa was Albert's first cousin (maternally) and his second cousin (paternally). She was three years older than Albert, and had nursed him to health after he had suffered a partial nervous breakdown combined with a severe stomach ailment. There were no children from this marriage.

In 1922, Einstein and his wife Elsa boarded the S.S. Kitano Maru bound for Japan. The trip also took them to other ports including Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

The fate of Albert and Mileva's first child, Lieserl, is unknown: some believe she died in infancy, while others believe she was given out for adoption. Eduard was institutionalized for schizophrenia and died in an asylum, while Hans became a professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, having little interaction with his father.
General relativity

In November, 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described his theory of general relativity. The final lecture climaxed with his introduction of an equation that replaced Newton's law of gravity. This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time.

The theory provided the foundation for the study of cosmology and gave scientists the tools for understanding many features of the universe that were discovered well after Einstein's death. A truly revolutionary theory, general relativity has passed every test till now – unlike many other scientific theories – and become a method of perceiving all of physics.

Initially, scientists were skeptical because the theory was derived by mathematical reasoning and rational analysis, not by experiment or observation. But in 1919, predictions made using the theory were confirmed by Arthur Eddington's measurements (during a solar eclipse), of how much the light emanating from a star was bent by the Sun's gravity when it passed close to the Sun. On November 7, The Times reported the confirmation, cementing Einstein's fame.

However, many scientists were still unconvinced for various reasons, ranging from disagreement with Einstein's interpretation of the experiments, to not being able to tolerate the absence of an absolute frame of reference. In Einstein's view, many of them simply could not understand the mathematics involved. Einstein's public fame which followed the 1919 article created resentment among these scientists, some of which lasted well into the 1930s.

In the early 1920s, Einstein was the lead figure in a famous weekly physics colloquium at the University of Berlin. On March 30, 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture on his new theory. In the same year, he was finally awarded the Nobel Prize. Though he is now most famous for his work on relativity, it was for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the Prize, because in his work on relativity was still disputed and the Nobel committee decided that citing his less-contested theory would be a better political move.
The "Copenhagen" interpretation

Einstein's relationship with quantum physics was quite remarkable. He was the first to say that quantum theory was revolutionary. His idea of light quanta, now known as photons, marked a landmark break with the classical physics. In 1909, Einstein presented his first paper to a gathering of physicists and told them that they must find some way to understand waves and particles together.

In the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new quantum mechanics, Einstein balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations because it settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical behaviour Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available, but he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e. more deterministic. He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things", the belief which had led to his successes with atoms, photons, and gravity (though he did not believe in 'particles', but rather, represented matter as continuous fields in space-time, the 'particle' only appearing as a high energy density region of space).

In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein made a remark that is now famous:

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

To this, Niels Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on quantum theory retorted,

Stop telling God what He must do!

It was not a rejection of probabilistic theories per se—Einstein had used statistical analysis in his work on Brownian motion and photoelectricity, and in papers published before the miraculous year 1905, and had even discovered Gibbs ensembles on his own—but he believed that, at the core, physical reality behaved deterministically.

Recent controversial results seem to lend support to Einstein's misgivings about the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics. In March, 2004, the results of the Afshar experiment were published which, it is claimed, disprove Bohr's Principle of Complementarity, one of the foundations of the Copenhagen interpretation.
Bose-Einstein statistics

In 1924, Einstein received a short paper from a young Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose describing light as a gas of photons and asking for Einstein's assistance in publication. Einstein realised that the same statistics could be applied to atoms, and published an article in German (then the lingua franca of physics) which described Bose's model and explained its implications. Bose-Einstein statistics now describe any assembly of these indistinguishable particles known as bosons.

Einstein also assisted Erwin Schrödinger in the development of the Quantum Boltzmann distribution, a mixed classical and quantum mechanical gas model—although he realised that this was less significant than the Bose-Einstein model, and declined to have his name included on the paper.
Later Years

Einstein spent the last fourteen years of his life trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism, giving a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics. He was looking for a classical unification of gravity and electromagnetism.

His work at the Institute for Advanced Study focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he referred to as the Unified Field Theory. He attempted to construct a model, under the appropriate conditions, which described all of the fundamental forces as different manifestations of a single force. His attempt was in a way doomed to failure because the strong and weak nuclear forces were not understood independently until around 1970, fifteen years after Einstein's death. Einstein's goal survives in the current drive for unification of the forces, embodied most notably by string theory.

Generalized theory
Einstein began to form a generalized theory of gravitation with the universal law of gravitation and the electromagnetic force in his first attempt to demonstrate the unification and simplification of the fundamental forces. In 1950, he described his work in a Scientific American article. Einstein was guided by a belief in a single statistical measure of variance for the entire set of physical laws, and he investigated the similar properties of the electromagnetic and gravity forces, as they are infinite and obey inverse-square laws.

Einstein's generalized theory of gravitation is a universal mathematical approach to field theory. He investigated reducing the different phenomena by the process of logic to something already known or evident. Einstein tried to unify gravity and electromagnetism in a way that also led to a new subtle understanding of quantum mechanics.

Einstein assumed a four-dimensional space-time continuum expressed in axioms represented by five component vectors. Particles appear in his research as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. Einstein treated subatomic particles as objects embedded in the unified field, influencing it and existing as an essential constituent of the unified field but not of it. Einstein also investigated a natural generalization of symmetrical tensor fields, treating the combination of two parts of the field as being a natural procedure of the total field and not the symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts separately. He researched a way to delineate the equations and systems to be derived from a variational principle.

Einstein became increasingly isolated in his research on a generalized theory of gravitation and was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts.

In 1948, Einstein served on the original committee which resulted in the founding of Brandeis University. In 1952, the Israeli government proposed to Einstein that he take the post of second president. He declined the offer, and remains the only United States citizen to ever be offered a position as a foreign head of state. On March 30, 1953, Einstein released a revised unified field theory.

He died in his sleep at a hospital in Princeton, New Jersey on April 18, 1955, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. The only person present at his deathbed, a hospital nurse, said that just before his death he mumbled several words in German that she did not understand. He was cremated without ceremony on the same day he died at Trenton, New Jersey in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.

His brain was preserved in a jar by Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein. Harvey found nothing unusual with his brain, but in 1999 further analysis by a team at McMaster University revealed that his parietal operculum region was missing and, to compensate, his inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal. The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.