a way for him to reach back to his roots, for his father was half-German and half-Jewish. Although he never directly said so, the Germans dislike for the Jews may have been another reason that he blatantly refused to do any work for the German military. One of his lesser-known scientific accomplishments came in 1917, when he began to apply his general theory of relativity to the structure of the universe. Einstein took Newton's theory of an unending universe, and described it as measurable, but without boundaries. This was corroborated by Edwin Hubble, who discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929, bringing Einstein to enter a joint venture with Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter. Their new model of this has been referred to as the 'Einstein-de Sitter universe' ever since. In 1919, the same year that his first marriage ended, he married his cousin Elsa, whose first husband had died. Aroundthe same time, the name Albert Einstein had gone from being well known only in scientific circles to being one of the best known people in the world. This came aftertwo British groups tested his theory that light rays from a star would bend if they passed too close to the sun. They conclusively agreed that Einstein was correct by testing the theory during the solar eclipse of May 1919. Curiously, the theory of relativity and his well known equation E=mc2 were never recognized or awarded by the scientific community. His only major award was the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921. This awarded was presented based on his work in discovering the law of the photoelectric effect, which has made almost all modern electronics possible. His newfound fame brought him a great number of chances to travel abroad to lecture. Also in 1921, on his first visit to the United States, he received an honorary degree from Princeton University. The purpose of the trip had been to help raise funds for a Jewish University in Jerusalem, but the enormous amount of requests f...
