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animals. The south and central prairie was the homeland of the American bison, also known as buffalo, with its grasses providing pasture and breeding ground for millions of buffalo. The buffalo population was decimated during early settlement, but since then, buffalo have made a comeback, living on farms and in parks all over Alberta.
Herbivores are found throughout the province. Moose, mule deer, elk, and whitetailed deer are found in the wooded regions, and pronghorn can be found in the prairies of southern Alberta. Bighorn sheep and mountain goats live in the Rocky Mountains. Rabbits, porcupines, skunks, squirrels, and many species of rodents and reptiles live in every corner of the province. Alberta is home to only one venomous snake species, the prairie rattlesnake.
Alberta is home to many large carnivores such as wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, and mountain lions, which are found in the mountains and wooded regions. Smaller carnivores of the canine and feline families include coyotes, red foxes, |
Canada lynx, and bobcats. Wolverines can also be found in the northwestern areas of the province.
Central and northern Alberta and the region farther north are the nesting ground of many migratory birds. Vast numbers of ducks, geese, swans and pelicans arrive in Alberta every spring and nest on or near one of the hundreds of small lakes that dot northern Alberta. Eagles, hawks, owls, and crows are plentiful, and a huge variety of smaller seed and insecteating birds can be found. Alberta, like other temperate regions, is home to mosquitoes, flies, wasps, and bees. Rivers and lakes are populated with pike, walleye, whitefish, rainbow, speckled, brown trout, and sturgeon. Native to the province, the bull trout, is the provincial fish and an official symbol of Alberta. Turtles are found in some water bodies in the southern part of the province. Frogs and salamanders are a few of the amphibians that make their homes in Alberta.
Alberta is the only province in Canadaas well as one of the few places in the worldth |
at is free of Norwegian rats. Since the early 1950s, the Government of Alberta has operated a ratcontrol program, which has been so successful that only isolated instances of wild rat sightings are reported, usually of rats arriving in the province aboard trucks or by rail. In 2006, Alberta Agriculture reported zero findings of wild rats; the only rat interceptions have been domesticated rats that have been seized from their owners. It is illegal for individual Albertans to own or keep Norwegian rats of any description; the animals can only be kept in the province by zoos, universities and colleges, and recognized research institutions. In 2009, several rats were
found and captured, in small pockets in southern Alberta, putting Alberta's ratfree status in jeopardy. A colony of rats was subsequently found in a landfill near Medicine Hat in 2012 and again in 2014.
Paleontology
Alberta has one of the greatest diversities and abundances of Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils worldwide. Taxa are represented by com |
plete fossil skeletons, isolated material, microvertebrate remains, and even mass graves. At least 38 dinosaur type specimens were collected in the province. The Foremost Formation, Oldman Formation and Dinosaur Park Formations collectively comprise the Judith River Group and are the most thoroughly studied dinosaurbearing strata in Alberta.
Dinosaurbearing strata are distributed widely throughout Alberta. The Dinosaur Provincial Park area contains outcrops of the Dinosaur Park Formation and Oldman Formation. In Alberta's central and southern regions are intermittent Scollard Formation outcrops. In the Drumheller Valley and Edmonton regions there are exposed Horseshoe Canyon facies. Other formations have been recorded as well, like the Milk River and Foremost Formations. The latter two have a lower diversity of documented dinosaurs, primarily due to their lower total fossil quantity and neglect from collectors who are hindered by the isolation and scarcity of exposed outcrops. Their dinosaur fossils are prim |
arily teeth recovered from microvertebrate fossil sites. Additional geologic formations that have produced only a few fossils are the Belly River Group and St. Mary River Formations of the southwest and the northwestern Wapiti Formation, which contains two Pachyrhinosaurus bone beds. The Bearpaw Formation represents strata deposited during a marine transgression. Dinosaurs are known from this formation, but represent specimens washed out to sea or reworked from older sediments.
History
PaleoIndians arrived in Alberta at least 10,000 years ago, toward the end of the last ice age. They are thought to have migrated from Siberia to Alaska on a land bridge across the Bering Strait and then possibly moved down the east side of the Rocky Mountains through Alberta to settle the Americas. Others may have migrated down the coast of British Columbia and then moved inland. Over time they differentiated into various First Nations peoples, including the Plains Indians of southern Alberta such as those of the Blackfoot C |
onfederacy and the Plains Cree, who generally lived by hunting buffalo, and the more northerly tribes such as the Woodland Cree and Chipewyan who hunted, trapped, and fished for a living.
After the British arrival in Canada, approximately half of the province of Alberta, south of the Athabasca River drainage, became part of Rupert's Land which consisted of all land drained by rivers flowing into Hudson Bay. This area was granted by Charles II of England to the Hudson's Bay Company HBC in 1670, and rival fur trading companies were not allowed to trade in it.
The Athabasca River and the rivers north of it were not in HBC territory because they drained into the Arctic Ocean instead of Hudson Bay, and they were prime habitats for furbearing animals. The first European explorer of the Athabasca region was Peter Pond, who learned of the Methye Portage, which allowed travel from southern rivers into the rivers north of Rupert's Land. Other North American fur traders formed the North West Company NWC of Montreal to |
compete with the HBC in 1779. The NWC occupied the northern part of Alberta territory. Peter Pond built Fort Athabasca on Lac la Biche in 1778. Roderick Mackenzie built Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca ten years later in 1788. His cousin, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, followed the North Saskatchewan River to its northernmost point near Edmonton, then setting northward on foot, trekked to the Athabasca River, which he followed to Lake Athabasca. It was there he discovered the mighty outflow river which bears his namethe Mackenzie Riverwhich he followed to its outlet in the Arctic Ocean. Returning to Lake Athabasca, he followed the Peace River upstream, eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean, and so he became the first European to cross the North American continent north of Mexico.
The extreme southernmost portion of Alberta was part of the French and Spanish territory of Louisiana and was sold to the United States in 1803. In the Treaty of 1818, the portion of Louisiana north of the FortyNinth Parallel was ceded t |
o Great Britain.
Fur trade expanded in the north, but bloody battles occurred between the rival HBC and NWC, and in 1821 the British government forced them to merge to stop the hostilities. The amalgamated Hudson's Bay Company dominated trade in Alberta until 1870 when the newly formed Canadian Government purchased Rupert's Land. Northern Alberta was included in the NorthWestern Territory until 1870, when it and Rupert's land became Canada's NorthWest Territories.
First Nations negotiated the Numbered Treaties with the Crown in which the Crown gained title to the land that would later become Alberta, and the Crown committed to the ongoing support of the First Nations and guaranteed their hunting and fishing rights. The most significant treaties for Alberta are Treaty 6 1876, Treaty 7 1877 and Treaty 8 1899.
The District of Alberta was created as part of the NorthWest Territories in 1882. As settlement increased, local representatives to the NorthWest Legislative Assembly were added. After a long campaign f |
or autonomy, in 1905, the District of Alberta was enlarged and given provincial status, with the election of Alexander Cameron Rutherford as the first premier. Less than a decade later, the First World War presented special challenges to the new province as an extraordinary number of volunteers left relatively few workers to maintain services and production. Over 50 of Alberta's doctors volunteered for service overseas.
On June 21, 2013, during the 2013 Alberta floods Alberta experienced heavy rainfall that triggered catastrophic flooding throughout much of the southern half of the province along the Bow, Elbow, Highwood and Oldman rivers and tributaries. A dozen municipalities in Southern Alberta declared local states of emergency on June 21 as water levels rose and numerous communities were placed under evacuation orders.
In 2016, the Fort McMurray wildfire resulted in the largest fire evacuation of residents in Alberta's history, as more than 80,000 people were ordered to evacuate.
Since 2020, Alberta h |
as been affected by the COVID19 pandemic.
Demographics
The 2021 Canadian census reported Alberta had a population of 4,262,635 living in 1,633,220 of its 1,772,670 total dwellings, an 4.8 change from its 2016 population of 4,067,175. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. Statistics Canada estimated the province to have a population of 4,464,170 in Q4 of 2021.
Since 2000, Alberta's population has experienced a relatively high rate of growth, mainly because of its burgeoning economy. Between 2003 and 2004, the province had high birthrates on par with some larger provinces such as British Columbia, relatively high immigration, and a high rate of interprovincial migration compared to other provinces. In 2016, Alberta continued to have the youngest population among the provinces with a median age of 36.7 years, compared with the national median of 41.2 years. Also in 2016, Alberta had the smallest proportion of seniors 12.3 among the provinces and one of the highest population shares o |
f children 19.2, further contributing to Alberta's young and growing population.
About 81 of the population lives in urban areas and only about 19 in rural areas. The CalgaryEdmonton Corridor is the most urbanized area in the province and is one of the most densely populated areas of Canada. Many of Alberta's cities and towns have experienced very high rates of growth in recent history. Alberta's population rose from 73,022 in 1901 to 3,290,350 according to the 2006 census.
Census information
According to the 2016 census Alberta has 779,155 residents 19.2 between the ages of 014, 2,787,805 residents 68.5 between the ages of 1564, and 500,215 residents 12.3 aged 65 and over. English is the most common mother tongue, with 2,991,485 native speakers. This is followed by Tagalog, with 99,035 speakers, German, with 80,050 speakers, French, with 72,150 native speakers, and Hindi, with 68,695 speakers. 253,460 residents identify as Aboriginal, including 136,585 as First Nations, 114,370 as Mtis, and 2,500 as Inuit. |
There are also 933,165 residents who identify as a visible minority, including 230,930 South Asian people, 166,195 Filipinos, and 158,200 Chinese respondents. 1,769,500 residents hold a postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree, 895,885 residents have obtained a secondary high school diploma or equivalency certificate, and 540,665 residents do not have any certificate, diploma or degree.
The 2006 census found that English, with 2,576,670 native speakers, was the most common mother tongue of Albertans, representing 79.99 of the population. The next most common mother tongues were Chinese with 97,275 native speakers 3.02, followed by German with 84,505 native speakers 2.62 and French with 61,225 1.90. Other mother tongues include Punjabi, with 36,320 native speakers 1.13; Tagalog, with 29,740 0.92; Ukrainian, with 29,455 0.91; Spanish, with 29,125 0.90; Polish, with 21,990 0.68; Arabic, with 20,495 0.64; Dutch, with 19,980 0.62; and Vietnamese, with 19,350 0.60. The most common aboriginal language is Cree |
17,215 0.53. Other common mother tongues include Italian with 13,095 speakers 0.41; Urdu with 11,275 0.35; and Korean with 10,845 0.33; then Hindi 8,985 0.28; Farsi 7,700 0.24; Portuguese 7,205 0.22; and Hungarian 6,770 0.21.
Alberta has considerable ethnic diversity. In line with the rest of Canada, many are descended from immigrants of Western European nations, notably England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France, but large numbers later came from other regions of Europe, notably Germany, Ukraine and Scandinavia. According to Statistics Canada, Alberta is home to the secondhighest proportion 2 of Francophones in western Canada after Manitoba. Despite this, relatively few Albertans claim French as their mother tongue. Many of Alberta's Frenchspeaking residents live in the central and northwestern regions of the province, after migration from other areas of Canada or descending from Mtis. As reported in the 2001 census, the Chinese represented nearly 4 of Alberta's population, and South Asians represented mo |
re than 2. Both Edmonton and Calgary have historic Chinatowns, and Calgary has Canada's thirdlargest Chinese community. The Chinese presence began with workers employed in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. Indigenous Albertans makeup approximately 3 of the population.
In the 2006 Canadian census, the most commonly reported ethnic origins among Albertans were 885,825 English 27.2; 679,705 German 20.9; 667,405 Canadian 20.5; 661,265 Scottish 20.3; 539,160 Irish 16.6; 388,210 French 11.9; 332,180 Ukrainian 10.2; 172,910 Dutch 5.3; 170,935 Polish 5.2; 169,355 North American Indian 5.2; 144,585 Norwegian 4.4; and 137,600 Chinese 4.2. Each person could choose as many ethnicities as were applicable. Amongst those of British heritage, the Scots have had a particularly strong influence on placenames, with the names of many cities and towns including Calgary, Airdrie, Canmore, and Banff having Scottish origins.
Alberta is the third most diverse province in terms of visible minorities after Br |
itish Columbia and Ontario with 13.9 of the population consisting of visible minorities in 2006. Over onethird of the populations of Calgary and Edmonton belong to a visible minority group. Aboriginal Identity Peoples made up 5.8 of the population in 2006, about half of whom consist of First Nations and the other half are Mtis. There are also a small number of Inuit people in Alberta. The number of Aboriginal Identity Peoples have been increasing at a rate greater than the population of Alberta. As of the 2011 National Household Survey, the largest religious group was Roman Catholic, representing 24.3 of the population. Alberta had the secondhighest percentage of nonreligious residents among the provinces after British Columbia at 31.6 of the population. Of the remainder, 7.5 of the population identified themselves as belonging to the United Church of Canada, while 3.9 were Anglican. Lutherans made up 3.3 of the population while Baptists comprised 1.9. The remainder belonged to a wide variety of different rel |
igious affiliations, none of which constituted more than 2 of the population.
Members of LDS Church are mostly concentrated in the extreme south of the province. Alberta has a population of Hutterites, a communal Anabaptist sect similar to the Mennonites, and has a significant population of Seventhday Adventists. Alberta is home to several Byzantine Rite Churches as part of the legacy of Eastern European immigration, including the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Edmonton, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada's Western Diocese which is based in Edmonton. Muslims made up 3.2 of the population, Sikhs 1.5, Buddhists 1.2, and Hindus 1.0. Many of these are immigrants, but others have roots that go back to the first settlers of the prairies. Canada's oldest mosque, the AlRashid Mosque, is located in Edmonton, whereas Calgary is home to Canada's largest mosque, the Baitun Nur Mosque. Alberta is also home to a growing Jewish population of about 15,400 people who constituted 0.3 of Alberta's population. Most of A |
lberta's Jews live in the metropolitan areas of Calgary 8,200 and Edmonton 5,500.
Municipalities
Largest metro areas and municipalities by population as of 2016
Economy
Alberta's economy was one of the strongest in the world, supported by the burgeoning petroleum industry and to a lesser extent, agriculture and technology. In 2013, Alberta's per capita GDP exceeded that of the United States, Norway, or Switzerland, and was the highest of any province in Canada at This was 56 higher than the national average of and more than twice that of some of the Atlantic provinces. In 2006, the deviation from the national average was the largest for any province in Canadian history. According to the 2006 census, the median annual family income after taxes was 70,986 in Alberta compared to 60,270 in Canada as a whole. In 2014, Alberta had the secondlargest economy in Canada after Ontario, with a GDP exceeding . The GDP of the province calculated at basic prices rose by 4.6 in 2017 to 327.4 billion, which was the la |
rgest increase recorded in Canada, and it ended two consecutive years of decreases.
Alberta's debttoGDP ratio is projected to peak at 12.1 in fiscal year 20212022, falling to 11.3 the following year.
The CalgaryEdmonton Corridor is the most urbanized region in the province and one of the densest in Canada. The region covers a distance of roughly north to south. In 2001, the population of the CalgaryEdmonton Corridor was 2.15 million 72 of Alberta's population. It is also one of the fastestgrowing regions in the country. A 2003 study by TD Bank Financial Group found the corridor to be the only Canadian urban centre to amass a United States level of wealth while maintaining a Canadian style quality of life, offering universal health care benefits. The study found that GDP per capita in the corridor was 10 above average United States metropolitan areas and 40 above other Canadian cities at that time.
The Fraser Institute states that Alberta also has very high levels of economic freedom and rates Alberta as t |
he freest economy in Canada, and secondfreest economy amongst U.S. states and Canadian provinces.
In 2014, merchandise exports totalled US121.4 billion. Energy revenues totalled 111.7 billion and Energy resource exports totalled 90.8 billion. Farm Cash receipts from agricultural products totalled 12.9 billion. Shipments of forest products totalled 5.4 billion while exports were 2.7 billion. Manufacturing sales totalled 79.4 billion, and Alberta's information and communications technology ICT industries generated over 13 billion in revenue. In total, Alberta's 2014 GDP amassed 364.5 billion in 2007 dollars, or 414.3 billion in 2015 dollars. In 2015, Alberta's GDP grew unstably despite low oil prices, with growth rates as high 4.4 and as low as 0.2.
Agriculture and forestry
Agriculture has a significant position in the province's economy. The province has over three million head of cattle, and Alberta beef has a healthy worldwide market. Nearly one half of all Canadian beef is produced in Alberta. Alberta i |
s one of the top producers of plains buffalo bison for the consumer market. Sheep for wool and mutton are also raised.
Wheat and canola are primary farm crops, with Alberta leading the provinces in spring wheat production; other grains are also prominent. Much of the farming is dryland farming, often with fallow seasons interspersed with cultivation. Continuous cropping in which there is no fallow season is gradually becoming a more common mode of production because of increased profits and a reduction of soil erosion. Across the province, the once common grain elevator is slowly being lost as rail lines are decreasing; farmers typically truck the grain to central points.
Alberta is the leading beekeeping province of Canada, with some beekeepers wintering hives indoors in specially designed barns in southern Alberta, then migrating north during the summer into the Peace River valley where the season is short but the working days are long for honeybees to produce honey from clover and fireweed. Hybrid canola |
also requires bee pollination, and some beekeepers service this need.
Forestry plays a vital role in Alberta's economy, providing over 15,000 jobs and contributing billions of dollars annually. Uses for harvested timber include pulpwood, hardwood, engineered wood and bioproducts such as chemicals and biofuels.
Industry
Alberta is the largest producer of conventional crude oil, synthetic crude, natural gas and gas products in Canada. Alberta is the world's secondlargest exporter of natural gas and the fourthlargest producer. Two of the largest producers of petrochemicals in North America are located in central and northcentral Alberta. In both Red Deer and Edmonton, polyethylene and vinyl manufacturers produce products that are shipped all over the world. Edmonton's oil refineries provide the raw materials for a large petrochemical industry to the east of Edmonton.
The Athabasca oil sands surrounding Fort McMurray have estimated unconventional oil reserves approximately equal to the conventional oil reser |
ves of the rest of the world, estimated to be 1.6 trillion barrels 254 km3. Many companies employ both conventional strip mining and nonconventional in situ methods to extract the bitumen from the oil sands. As of late 2006, there were over 100 billion in oil sands projects under construction or in the planning stages in northeastern Alberta.
Another factor determining the viability of oil extraction from the oil sands is the price of oil. The oil price increases since 2003 have made it profitable to extract this oil, which in the past would give little profit or even a loss. By mid2014, rising costs and stabilizing oil prices threatened the economic viability of some projects. An example of this was the shelving of the Joslyn north project in the Athabasca region in May 2014.
With concerted effort and support from the provincial government, several hightech industries have found their birth in Alberta, notably patents related to interactive liquidcrystal display systems. With a growing economy, Alberta has |
several financial institutions dealing with civil and private funds.
Tourism
Alberta has been a tourist destination from the early days of the 20th century, with attractions including outdoor locales for skiing, hiking, and camping, shopping locales such as West Edmonton Mall, Calgary Stampede, outdoor festivals, professional athletic events, international sporting competitions such as the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games, as well as more eclectic attractions. According to Alberta Economic Development, Calgary and Edmonton both host over four million visitors annually. Banff, Jasper and the Rocky Mountains are visited by about three million people per year. Alberta tourism relies heavily on Southern Ontario tourists, as well as tourists from other parts of Canada, the United States, and many other countries.
There are also natural attractions like Elk Island National Park, Wood Buffalo National Park, and the Columbia Icefield. Alberta's Rockies include wellknown tourist destinations Banff National P |
ark and Jasper National Park. The two mountain parks are connected by the scenic Icefields Parkway. Banff is located west of Calgary on Highway 1, and Jasper is located west of Edmonton on the Yellowhead Highway. Five of Canada's fourteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites are located within the province Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, WatertonGlacier International Peace Park, Wood Buffalo National Park, Dinosaur Provincial Park and HeadSmashedIn Buffalo Jump. A number of these areas hold ski resorts, most notably Banff Sunshine, Lake Louise, Marmot Basin, Norquay and Nakiska.
About 1.2 million people visit the Calgary Stampede, a celebration of Canada's own Wild West and the cattle ranching industry. About 700,000 people enjoy Edmonton's KDays formerly Klondike Days and Capital EX. Edmonton was the gateway to the only allCanadian route to the Yukon gold fields, and the only route which did not require goldseekers to travel the exhausting and dangerous Chilkoot Pass.
Another tourist destination that draws more th |
an 650,000 visitors each year is the Drumheller Valley, located northeast of Calgary. Drumheller, "Dinosaur Capital of The World", offers the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. Drumheller also had a rich mining history being one of Western Canada's largest coal producers during the war years. Another attraction in eastcentral Alberta is Alberta Prairie Railway Excursions, a popular tourist attraction operated out of Stettler, that offers train excursions into the prairie and caters to tens of thousands of visitors every year.
Government and politics
The Government of Alberta is organized as a parliamentary democracy with a unicameral legislature. Its unicameral legislaturethe Legislative Assemblyconsists of 87 members elected first past the post FPTP from singlemember constituencies. Locally municipal governments and school boards are elected and operate separately. Their boundaries do not necessarily coincide.
As Queen of Canada, Elizabeth II is the head of state for the Government of Alberta. Her dut |
ies in Alberta are carried out by Lieutenant Governor Salma Lakhani. The Queen and lieutenant governor are figureheads whose actions are highly restricted by custom and constitutional convention. The lieutenant governor handles numerous honorific duties in the name of the Queen. The government is headed by the premier. The premier is normally a member of the Legislative Assembly, and draws all the members of the Cabinet from among the members of the Legislative Assembly. The City of Edmonton is the seat of the provincial governmentthe capital of Alberta. The premier is Jason Kenney, sworn in on April 30, 2019.
Alberta's elections have tended to yield much more conservative outcomes than those of other Canadian provinces. Since the 1960s, Alberta has had three main political parties, the Progressive Conservatives "Conservatives" or "Tories", the Liberals, and the social democratic New Democrats. The Wildrose Party, a more conservative party formed in early 2008, gained much support in the 2012 election and be |
came the official opposition, a role it held until 2017 when it was dissolved and succeeded by the new United Conservative Party created by the merger of Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives. The strongly conservative Social Credit Party was a power in Alberta for many decades, but fell from the political map after the Progressive Conservatives came to power in 1971.
For 44 years the Progressive Conservatives governed Alberta. They lost the 2015 election to the NDP which formed their own government for the first time in provincial history, breaking almost 80 consecutive years of rightwing rule, suggesting at the time a possible shift to the left in the province, also indicated by the election of progressive mayors in both of Alberta's major cities. Since becoming a province in 1905, Alberta has seen only five changes of governmentonly six parties have governed Alberta the Liberals, from 1905 to 1921; the United Farmers of Alberta, from 1921 to 1935; the Social Credit Party, from 1935 to 1971; the Progr |
essive Conservative Party, from 1971 to 2015; from 2015 to 2019, the Alberta New Democratic Party; and from 2019, the United Conservative Party, with the most recent transfer of power being the first time in provincial history that an incumbent government was not returned to a second term.
Administrative divisions
The province is divided into ten types of local governments urban municipalities including cities, towns, villages and summer villages, specialized municipalities, rural municipalities including municipal districts often named as counties, improvement districts, and special areas, Mtis settlements, and Indian reserves. All types of municipalities are governed by local residents and were incorporated under various provincial acts, with the exception of improvement districts governed by either the provincial or federal government, and Indian reserves governed by local band governments under federal jurisdiction.
Law enforcement
Policing in the province of Alberta upon its creation was the respons |
ibility of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. In 1917, due to pressures of the First World War, the Alberta Provincial Police was created. This organization policed the province until it was disbanded as a Great Depressionera costcutting measure in 1932. It was at that time the, now renamed, Royal Canadian Mounted Police resumed policing of the province, specifically RCMP "K" Division. With the advent of the Alberta Sheriffs Branch, the distribution of duties of law enforcement in Alberta has been evolving as certain aspects, such as traffic enforcement, mobile surveillance and the close protection of the Premier of Alberta have been transferred to the Sheriffs. In 2006, Alberta formed the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams ALERT to combat organized crime and the serious offences that accompany it. ALERT is made up of members of the RCMP, Sheriffs Branch, and various major municipal police forces in Alberta.
Military
Military bases in Alberta include Canadian Forces Base CFB Cold Lake, CFB Edmonton, CF |
B Suffield and CFB Wainwright. Air force units stationed at CFB Cold Lake have access to the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range. CFB Edmonton is the headquarters for the 3rd Canadian Division. CFB Suffield hosts British troops and is the largest training facility in Canada.
Taxation
According to Alberta's 2009 budget, government revenue in that year came mainly from royalties on nonrenewable natural resources 30.4, personal income taxes 22.3, corporate and other taxes 19.6, and grants from the federal government primarily for infrastructure projects 9.8. In 2014, Alberta received 6.1 billion in bitumen royalties. With the drop in the price of oil in 2015 it was down to 1.4 billion. In 2016, Alberta received "about 837 million in royalty payments from oil sands Royalty Projects". According to the 20182021 fiscal plan, the two top sources of revenue in 2016 were personal income tax at 10,763 million and federal transfers of 7,976 million with total resource revenue at 3,097 million. Alberta is the only province in C |
anada without a provincial sales tax. Alberta residents are subject to the federal sales tax, the Goods and Services Tax of 5.
From 2001 to 2016, Alberta was the only Canadian province to have a flat tax of 10 of taxable income, which was introduced by Premier, Ralph Klein, as part of the Alberta Tax Advantage, which also included a zeropercent tax on income below a "generous personal exemption".
In 2016, under Premier Rachel Notley, while most Albertans continued to pay the 10 income tax rate, new tax brackets 12, 14, and 15 for those with higher incomes 128,145 annually or more were introduced. Alberta's personal income tax system maintained a progressive character by continuing to grant residents personal tax exemptions of 18,451, in addition to a variety of tax deductions for persons with disabilities, students, and the aged. Alberta's municipalities and school jurisdictions have their own governments who usually work in cooperation with the provincial government. By 2018, most Albertans continued to pa |
y the 10 income tax rate.
According to a March 2015 Statistics Canada report, the median household income in Alberta in 2014 was about 100,000, which is 23 higher than the Canadian national average.
Based on Statistic Canada reports, lowincome Albertans, who earn less than 25,000 and those in the highincome bracket earning 150,000 or more, are the lowesttaxed people in Canada. Those in the middle income brackets representing those that earn about 25,000 to 75,000 pay more in provincial taxes than residents in British Columbia and Ontario. In terms of income tax, Alberta is the "best province" for those with a low income because there is no provincial income tax for those who earn 18,915 or less. Even with the 2016 progressive tax brackets up to 15, Albertans who have the highest incomes, those with a 150,000 annual income or moreabout 178,000 people in 2015, pay the least in taxes in Canada. About 1.9 million Albertans earned between 25,000 and 150,000 in 2015.
Alberta also privatized alcohol distribution |
. By 2010, privatization had increased outlets from 304 stores to 1,726; 1,300 jobs to 4,000 jobs; and 3,325 products to 16,495 products. Tax revenue also increased from 400 million to 700 million.
In 201718 Alberta collected about 2.4 billion in education property taxes from municipalities. Alberta municipalities raise a significant portion of their income through levying property taxes. The value of assessed property in Alberta was approximately 727 billion in 2011. Most real property is assessed according to its market value. The exceptions to market value assessment are farmland, railways, machinery and equipment and linear property, all of which is assessed by regulated rates. Depending on the property type, property owners may appeal a property assessment to their municipal 'Local Assessment Review Board', 'Composite Assessment Review Board,' or the Alberta Municipal Government Board.
Culture
Summer brings many festivals to the province of Alberta, especially in Edmonton. The Edmonton Fringe Festiva |
l is the world's secondlargest after the Edinburgh Festival. Both Calgary and Edmonton host many annual festivals and events, including folk music festivals. The city's "heritage days" festival sees the participation of over 70 ethnic groups. Edmonton's Churchill Square is home to a large number of the festivals, including the large Taste of Edmonton and The Works Art Design Festival throughout the summer months.
The City of Calgary is also famous for its Stampede, dubbed "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth". The Stampede is Canada's biggest rodeo festival and features various races and competitions, such as calf roping and bull riding. In line with the western tradition of rodeo are the cultural artisans that reside and create unique Alberta western heritage crafts.
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity hosts a range of festivals and other events including the international Mountain Film Festival. These cultural events in Alberta highlight the province's cultural diversity. Most of the major cities hav |
e several performing theatre companies who entertain in venues as diverse as Edmonton's Arts Barns and the Winspear Centre. Both Calgary and Edmonton are home to Canadian Football League and National Hockey League teams the StampedersFlames and Edmonton ElksOilers respectively. Soccer, rugby union and lacrosse are also played professionally in Alberta.
In 2019, the then Minister of Culture and Tourism Ricardo Miranda announced the Alberta Artist in Residence program in conjunction with the province's first Month of the Artist to celebrate the arts and the value they bring to the province, both socially and economically, The Artist is selected each year via a public and competitive process is expected to do community outreach and attend events to promote the arts throughout the province. The award comes with 60,000 funding which includes travel and materials costs. On January 31, 2019, Lauren Crazybull named Alberta's 1st Artist in Residence. Alberta is the first province to launch an Artist in Residence prog |
ram in Canada.
Education
As with any Canadian province, the Alberta Legislature has almost exclusive authority to make laws respecting education. Since 1905, the Legislature has used this capacity to continue the model of locally elected public and separate school boards which originated prior to 1905, as well as to create and regulate universities, colleges, technical institutions, and other educational forms and institutions public charter schools, private schools, homeschooling.
Elementary and secondary
There are fortytwo public school jurisdictions in Alberta, and seventeen operating separate school jurisdictions. Sixteen of the operating separate school jurisdictions have a Catholic electorate, and one St. Albert has a Protestant electorate. In addition, one Protestant separate school district, Glen Avon, survives as a ward of the St. Paul Education Region. The City of Lloydminster straddles the AlbertanSaskatchewan border, and both the public and separate school systems in that city are counted in |
the above numbers both of them operate according to Saskatchewan law.
For many years the provincial government has funded the greater part of the cost of providing K12 education. Prior to 1994 public and separate school boards in Alberta had the legislative authority to levy a local tax on property as supplementary support for local education. In 1994, the government of the province eliminated this right for public school boards, but not for separate school boards. Since 1994 there has continued to be a tax on property in support of K12 education; the difference is that the provincial government now sets the mill rate, the money is collected by the local municipal authority and remitted to the provincial government. The relevant legislation requires that all the money raised by this property tax must go to support K12 education provided by school boards. The provincial government pools the property tax funds from across the province and distributes them, according to a formula, to public and separate school |
jurisdictions and Francophone authorities.
Public and separate school boards, charter schools, and private schools all follow the Program of Studies and the curriculum approved by the provincial department of education Alberta Education. Homeschool tutors may choose to follow the Program of Studies or develop their own Program of Studies. Public and separate schools, charter schools, and approved private schools all employ teachers who are certificated by Alberta Education, they administer Provincial Achievement Tests and Diploma Examinations set by Alberta Education, and they may grant high school graduation certificates endorsed by Alberta Education.
Postsecondary
The University of Alberta, located in Edmonton and established in 1908, is Alberta's oldest and largest university. The University of Calgary, once affiliated with the University of Alberta, gained its autonomy in 1966 and is now the secondlargest university in Alberta. Athabasca University, which focuses on distance learning, and the Universi |
ty of Lethbridge are located in Athabasca and Lethbridge respectively.
In early September 2009, Mount Royal University became Calgary's second public university, and in late September 2009, a similar move made MacEwan University Edmonton's second public university. There are 15 colleges that receive direct public funding, along with two technical institutes, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Two of the colleges, Red Deer College and Grande Prairie Regional College, were approved by the Alberta government to become degreegranting universities.
There are also many private postsecondary institutions, mostly Christian Universities, bringing the total number of universities to 12. Students may also receive government loans and grants while attending selected private institutions. There was some controversy in 2005 over the rising cost of postsecondary education for students as opposed to taxpayers. In 2005, Premier Ralph Klein made a promise that he would free |
ze tuition and look into ways of reducing schooling costs.
Health care
Alberta provides a publicly funded, fully integrated health system, through Alberta Health Services AHSa quasiindependent agency that delivers health care on behalf of the Government of Alberta's Ministry of Health. The Alberta government provides health services for all its residents as set out by the provisions of the Canada Health Act of 1984. Alberta became Canada's second province after Saskatchewan to adopt a Tommy Douglasstyle program in 1950, a precursor to the modern medicare system.
Alberta's health care budget was 22.5 billion during the 20182019 fiscal year approximately 45 of all government spending, making it the bestfunded healthcare system percapita in Canada. Every hour the province spends more than 2.5 million, or 60 million per day, to maintain and improve health care in the province.
Notable health, education, research, and resources facilities in Alberta, all of which are located within Calgary or Edmonton. Health |
centres in Calgary include
Alberta Children's Hospital
Foothills Medical Centre
Grace Women's Health Centre
Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta
Peter Lougheed Centre
Rockyview General Hospital
South Health Campus
Tom Baker Cancer Centre
University of Calgary Medical Centre UCMC
Health centres in Edmonton include
Alberta Diabetes Institute
Cross Cancer Institute
Edmonton Clinic
Grey Nuns Community Hospital
Lois Hole Hospital for Women
Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute
Misericordia Community Hospital
Rexall Centre for Pharmacy and Health Research
Royal Alexandra Hospital
Stollery Children's Hospital
University of Alberta Hospital
The Edmonton Clinic complex, completed in 2012, provides a similar research, education, and care environment as the Mayo Clinic in the United States.
All public health care services funded by the Government of Alberta are delivered operationally by Alberta Health Services. AHS is the province's single health authority, established on July 1, 2008, which replaced nine regio |
nal health authorities. AHS also funds all ground ambulance services in the province, as well as the provincewide Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service STARS air ambulance service.
Transportation
Air
Alberta is wellconnected by air, with international airports in both Calgary and Edmonton. Calgary International Airport and Edmonton International Airport are the fourth and fifthbusiest in Canada, respectively. Calgary's airport is a hub for WestJet Airlines and a regional hub for Air Canada, primarily serving the prairie provinces Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba for connecting flights to British Columbia, eastern Canada, fifteen major United States centres, nine European airports, one Asian airport and four destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean. Edmonton's airport acts as a hub for the Canadian north and has connections to all major Canadian airports as well as airports in the United States, Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean .
Public transit
Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, and Lethbridge have su |
bstantial public transit systems. In addition to buses, Calgary and Edmonton operate light rail transit LRT systems. Edmonton LRT, which is underground in the downtown core and on the surface outside the CBD, was the first of the modern generation of light rail systems to be built in North America, while the Calgary C Train has one of the highest numbers of daily riders of any LRT system in North America.
Rail
There are more than of operating mainline railway in Alberta. The vast majority of this trackage is owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway companies, which operate Rail freight transport across the province. Additional railfreight service in the province is provided by two shortline railways the Battle River Railway and Forty Mile Rail. Passenger trains include Via Rail's Canadian TorontoVancouver or JasperPrince Rupert trains, which use the CN mainline and pass through Jasper National Park and parallel the Yellowhead Highway during at least part of their routes. The Rock |
y Mountaineer operates two sections one from Vancouver to Banff and Calgary over CP tracks, and a section that travels over CN tracks to Jasper.
Road
Alberta has over of highways and roads, of which nearly are paved. The main northsouth corridor is Highway 2, which begins south of Cardston at the Carway border crossing and is part of the CANAMEX Corridor. Beginning at the Coutts border crossing and ending at Lethbridge, Highway 4, effectively extends Interstate 15 into Alberta and is the busiest United States gateway to the province. Highway 3 joins Lethbridge to Fort Macleod and links Highway 2 to Highway 4. Highway 2 travels north through Fort Macleod, Calgary, Red Deer, and Edmonton.
North of Edmonton, the highway continues to Athabasca, then northwesterly along the south shore of Lesser Slave Lake into High Prairie, north to Peace River, west to Fairview and finally south to Grande Prairie, where it ends at an interchange with Highway 43. The section of Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton has been |
named the Queen Elizabeth II Highway to commemorate the visit of the monarch in 2005. Highway 2 is supplemented by two more highways that run parallel to it Highway 22, west of Highway 2, known as Cowboy Trail, and Highway 21, east of Highway 2. Highway 43 travels northwest into Grande Prairie and the Peace River Country. Travelling northeast from Edmonton, the Highway 63 connects to Fort McMurrayand the Athabasca oil sands.
Alberta has two main eastwest corridors. The southern corridor, part of the TransCanada Highway system, enters the province near Medicine Hat, runs westward through Calgary, and leaves Alberta through Banff National Park. The northern corridor, also part of the TransCanada network and known as the Yellowhead Highway Highway 16, runs west from Lloydminster in eastern Alberta, through Edmonton and Jasper National Park into British Columbia. One of the most scenic drives is along the Icefields Parkway, which runs for between Jasper and Lake Louise, with mountain ranges and glaciers on eit |
her side of its entire length. A third corridor stretches across southern Alberta; Highway 3 runs between Crowsnest Pass and Medicine Hat through Lethbridge and forms the eastern portion of the Crowsnest Highway. Another major corridor through central Alberta is Highway 11 also known as the David Thompson Highway, which runs east from the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Banff National Park through Rocky Mountain House and Red Deer, connecting with Highway 12, west of Stettler. The highway connects many of the smaller towns in central Alberta with Calgary and Edmonton, as it crosses Highway 2 just west of Red Deer.
Urban stretches of Alberta's major highways and freeways are often called trails. For example, Highway 2, the main northsouth highway in the province, is called Deerfoot Trail as it passes through Calgary but becomes Calgary Trail southbound and Gateway Boulevard northbound as it enters Edmonton and then turns into St. Albert Trail as it leaves Edmonton for the City of St. Albert. Calgary, in parti |
cular, has a tradition of calling its largest urban expressways trails and naming many of them after prominent First Nations individuals and tribes, such as Crowchild Trail, Deerfoot Trail, and Stoney Trail.
Friendship partners
Alberta has relationships with many provinces, states, and other entities worldwide.
Gangwondo, South Korea 1974
Hokkaido, Japan 1980
Heilongjiang, China 1981
Montana, United States 1985
Tyumen, Russia 1992
KhantyMansi, Russia 1995
YamaloNenets, Russia 1997
Jalisco, Mexico 1999
Alaska, United States 2002
Saxony, Germany 2002
IvanoFrankivsk, Ukraine 2004
Lviv, Ukraine 2005
California, United States 1997
Guangdong, China 2017
See also
Index of Albertarelated articles
Outline of Alberta
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Government of Alberta website
Alberta Encyclopedia
List of streets in Alberta with maps
1905 establishments in Canada
Provinces of Canada
States and territories established in 1905
Canadian Prairies |
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mile D |
urkheim
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r
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Karl Verner
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Y
Nur Yalman
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Jarrett Zigon
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Fictional anthropologists
Mary Albright Jane Curtin in the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun
Temperance "Bones" Brennan Emily Deschanel in the television series Bones
Temperance Brennan in the novel series Temperance Brennan by Kathy Reichs
Chakotay Robert Beltran in the television series Star Trek Voyager
Michael Burnham Sonequa MartinGreen in the television series Star Trek Discovery
Daniel Jackson Michael Shanks, James Spader in the television series and film Stargate SG1
Charlotte Lewis Rebecca Mader in the television series Lost
See also
List of female anthropologists
List of Black Anthropologists
References
Anthropologists |
Actinopterygii ; , members of which are known as rayfinned fishes, is a clade traditionally class or subclass of the bony fishes. They comprise over 50 of living vertebrate species.
The rayfinned fishes are socalled because their fins are webs of skin supported by bony or horny spines rays, as opposed to the fleshy, lobed fins that characterize the class Sarcopterygii lobefinned fish. These actinopterygian fin rays attach directly to the proximal or basal skeletal elements, the radials, which represent the link or connection between these fins and the internal skeleton e.g., pelvic and pectoral girdles.
By species count, actinopterygians dominate the vertebrates, and they comprise nearly 99 of the over 30,000 species of fish. They are ubiquitous throughout freshwater and marine environments from the deep sea to the highest mountain streams. Extant species can range in size from Paedocypris, at , to the massive ocean sunfish, at , and the longbodied oarfish, at . The vast majority of Actinopterygii 95 are te |
leosts.
Characteristics
Rayfinned fishes occur in many variant forms. The main features of a typical rayfinned fish are shown in the adjacent diagram. The swim bladder is the more derived structure.
Rayfinned fishes have many different types of scales; but all teleosts, the most advanced actinopterygians, have leptoid scales. The outer part of these scales fan out with bony ridges while the inner part is crossed with fibrous connective tissue. Leptoid scales are thinner and more transparent than other types of scales, and lack the hardened enamel or dentinelike layers found in the scales of many other fish. Unlike ganoid scales, which are found in nonteleost actinopterygians, new scales are added in concentric layers as the fish grows.
Rayfinned and lobefinned fishes, including tetrapods, possessed lungs used for aerial respiration. Only bichirs retain ventrally budding lungs.
Body shapes and fin arrangements
Rayfinned fish vary in size and shape, in their feeding specializations, and in the number and |
arrangement of their rayfins.
Reproduction
In nearly all rayfinned fish, the sexes are separate, and in most species the females spawn eggs that are fertilized externally, typically with the male inseminating the eggs after they are laid. Development then proceeds with a freeswimming larval stage. However other patterns of ontogeny exist, with one of the commonest being sequential hermaphroditism. In most cases this involves protogyny, fish starting life as females and converting to males at some stage, triggered by some internal or external factor. Protandry, where a fish converts from male to female, is much less common than protogyny.
Most families use external rather than internal fertilization. Of the oviparous teleosts, most 79 do not provide parental care. Viviparity, ovoviviparity, or some form of parental care for eggs, whether by the male, the female, or both parents is seen in a significant fraction 21 of the 422 teleost families; no care is likely the ancestral condition. The oldest case of viv |
iparity in rayfinned fish is found in Middle Triassic species of Saurichthys. Viviparity is relatively rare and is found in about 6 of living teleost species; male care is far more common than female care. Male territoriality "preadapts" a species for evolving male parental care.
There are a few examples of fish that selffertilise. The mangrove rivulus is an amphibious, simultaneous hermaphrodite, producing both eggs and spawn and having internal fertilisation. This mode of reproduction may be related to the fish's habit of spending long periods out of water in the mangrove forests it inhabits. Males are occasionally produced at temperatures below and can fertilise eggs that are then spawned by the female. This maintains genetic variability in a species that is otherwise highly inbred.
Classification and fossil record
Actinopterygii is divided into the classes Cladistia and Actinopteri. The latter comprises the subclasses Chondrostei and Neopterygii. The Neopterygii, in turn, is divided into the infraclas |
ses Holostei and Teleostei. During the Mesozoic Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous and Cenozoic the teleosts in particular diversified widely. As a result, 96 of living fish species are teleosts 40 of all fish species belong to the teleost subgroup Acanthomorpha, while all other groups of actinopterygians represent depauperate lineages.
The classification of rayfinned fishes can be summarized as follows
Cladistia, which include bichirs and reedfish
Actinopteri, which include
Chondrostei, which include Acipenseriformes paddlefishes and sturgeons
Neopterygii, which include
Teleostei most living fishes
Holostei, which include
Lepisosteiformes gars
Amiiformes bowfin
The cladogram below shows the main clades of living actinopterygians and their evolutionary relationships to other extant groups of fishes and the fourlimbed vertebrates tetrapods. The latter include mostly terrestrial species but also groups that became secondarily aquatic e.g. Whales and Dolphins. Tetrapods evolved from a group of bony fish durin |
g the Devonian period. Approximate divergence dates for the different actinopterygian clades in millions of years, mya are from Near et al., 2012.
The polypterids bichirs and reedfish are the sister lineage of all other actinopterygians, the Acipenseriformes sturgeons and paddlefishes are the sister lineage of Neopterygii, and Holostei bowfin and gars are the sister lineage of teleosts. The Elopomorpha eels and tarpons appear to be the most basal teleosts.
The earliest known fossil actinopterygian is Andreolepis hedei, dating back 420 million years Late Silurian. Remains have been found in Russia, Sweden, and Estonia. The earliest fossil relatives of modern teleosts are from the Triassic period Prohalecites, Pholidophorus, although it is suspected that teleosts originated already during the Paleozoic Era.
Taxonomy
The listing below is a summary of all extinct indicated by a dagger, and living groups of Actinopterygii with their respcective taxonomic rank. The taxonomy follows Phylogenetic Classification o |
f Bony Fishes with notes when this differs from Nelson, ITIS and FishBase and extinct groups from Van der Laan 2016 and Xu 2021.
Order ?Asarotiformes Schaeffer 1968
Order ?Discordichthyiformes Minikh 1998
Order ?Paphosisciformes Grogan Lund 2015
Order ?Scanilepiformes Selezneya 1985
Order Cheirolepidiformes KazantsevaSelezneva 1977
Order Paramblypteriformes Heyler 1969
Order Rhadinichthyiformes
Order Palaeonisciformes Hay 1902
Order Tarrasiiformes sensu Lund Poplin 2002
Order Ptycholepiformes Andrews et al. 1967
Order Haplolepidiformes Westoll 1944
Order Aeduelliformes Heyler 1969
Order Platysomiformes Aldinger 1937
Order Dorypteriformes Cope 1871
Order Eurynotiformes Sallan Coates 2013
Class Cladistia Pander 1860
Order Guildayichthyiformes Lund 2000
Order Polypteriformes Bleeker 1859 bichirs and reedfishes
Class Actinopteri Cope 1972 s.s.
Order Elonichthyiformes KazantsevaSelezneva 1977
Order Phanerorhynchiformes
Order Bobasatraniiformes Berg 1940
Order Saurichthyiformes Aldinger 1 |
937
Subclass Chondrostei Mller, 1844
Order Birgeriiformes Heyler 1969
Order Chondrosteiformes Aldinger, 1937
Order Acipenseriformes Berg 1940 includes sturgeons and paddlefishes
Subclass Neopterygii Regan 1923 sensu Xu Wu 2012
Order Pholidopleuriformes Berg 1937
Order Redfieldiiformes Berg 1940
Order Platysiagiformes Brough 1939
Order Polzbergiiformes Griffith 1977
Order Perleidiformes Berg 1937
Order Louwoichthyiformes Xu 2021
Order Peltopleuriformes Lehman 1966
Order Luganoiiformes Lehman 1958
Order Pycnodontiformes Berg 1937
Infraclass Holostei Mller 1844
Division Halecomorpha Cope 1872 sensu Grande Bemis 1998
Order Parasemionotiformes Lehman 1966
Order Ionoscopiformes Grande Bemis 1998
Order Amiiformes Huxley 1861 sensu Grande Bemis 1998 bowfins
Division Ginglymodi Cope 1871
Order Dapediiformes Thies Waschkewitz 2015
Order Semionotiformes Arambourg Bertin 1958
Order Lepisosteiformes Hay 1929 gars
Clade Teleosteomorpha Arratia 2000 sensu Arratia 2013
Order Prohaleciteiformes Arrat |
ia 2017
Division Aspidorhynchei Nelson, Grand Wilson 2016
Order Aspidorhynchiformes Bleeker 1859
Order Pachycormiformes Berg 1937
Infraclass Teleostei Mller 1844 sensu Arratia 2013
Order ?Araripichthyiformes
Order ?Ligulelliiformes Taverne 2011
Order ?Tselfatiiformes Nelson 1994
Order Pholidophoriformes Berg 1940
Order Dorsetichthyiformes Nelson, Grand Wilson 2016
Order Leptolepidiformes
Order Crossognathiformes Taverne 1989
Order Ichthyodectiformes Bardeck Sprinkle 1969
Teleocephala de Pinna 1996 s.s.
Megacohort Elopocephalai Patterson 1977 sensu Arratia 1999 Elopomorpha Greenwood et al. 1966
Order Elopiformes Gosline 1960 ladyfishes and tarpon
Order Albuliformes Greenwood et al. 1966 sensu Forey et al. 1996 bonefishes
Order Notacanthiformes Goodrich 1909 halosaurs and spiny eels
Order Anguilliformes Jarocki 1822 sensu Goodrich 1909 true eels
Megacohort Osteoglossocephalai sensu Arratia 1999
Supercohort Osteoglossocephala sensu Arratia 1999 Osteoglossomorpha Greenwood et al. 1966
Order |
Lycopteriformes Chang Chou 1977
Order Hiodontiformes McAllister 1968 sensu Taverne 1979 mooneye and goldeye
Order Osteoglossiformes Regan 1909 sensu Zhang 2004 bonytongued fishes
Supercohort Clupeocephala Patterson Rosen 1977 sensu Arratia 2010
Cohort Otomorpha Wiley Johnson 2010 Otocephala; Ostarioclupeomorpha
Subcohort Clupei Wiley Johnson 2010 Clupeomorpha Greenwood et al. 1966
Order Ellimmichthyiformes Grande 1982
Order Clupeiformes Bleeker 1859 herrings and anchovies
Subcohort Alepocephali
Order Alepocephaliformes Marshall 1962
Subcohort Ostariophysi Sagemehl 1885
Section Anotophysa Rosen Greenwood 1970 Sagemehl 1885
Order Sorbininardiformes Taverne 1999
Order Gonorynchiformes Regan 1909 milkfishes
Section Otophysa Garstang 1931
Order Cypriniformes Bleeker 1859 sensu Goodrich 1909 barbs, carp, danios, goldfishes, loaches, minnows, rasboras
Order Characiformes Goodrich 1909 characins, pencilfishes, hatchetfishes, piranhas, tetras, dourado golden genus Salminus and pacu
Order Gymnotif |
ormes Berg 1940 electric eels and knifefishes
Order Siluriformes Cuvier 1817 sensu Hay 1929 catfishes
Cohort Euteleosteomorpha Greenwood et al. 1966 Euteleostei Greenwood 1967 sensu Johnson Patterson 1996
Subcohort Lepidogalaxii
Lepidogalaxiiformes BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013 salamanderfish
Subcohort Protacanthopterygii Greenwood et al. 1966 sensu Johnson Patterson 1996
Order Argentiniformes barreleyes and slickheads formerly in Osmeriformes
Order Galaxiiformes
Order Salmoniformes Bleeker 1859 sensu Nelson 1994 salmon and trout
Order Esociformes Bleeker 1859 pike
Subcohort Stomiati
Order Osmeriformes smelts
Order Stomiatiformes Regan 1909 bristlemouths and marine hatchetfishes
Subcohort Neoteleostei Nelson 1969
Infracohort Ateleopodia
Order Ateleopodiformes jellynose fish
Infracohort Eurypterygia Rosen 1973
Section Aulopa Cyclosquamata Rosen 1973
Order Aulopiformes Rosen 1973 Bombay duck and lancetfishes
Section Ctenosquamata Rosen 1973
Subsection Myctophata Scopelomorpha
Order Myctophifo |
rmes Regan 1911 lanternfishes
Subsection Acanthomorpha BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Division Lampridacea BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013 Lampridomorpha; Lampripterygii
Order Lampriformes Regan 1909 oarfish, opah and ribbonfishes
Division Paracanthomorphacea sensu Grande et al. 2013 Paracanthopterygii Greenwood 1937
Order Percopsiformes Berg 1937 cavefishes and troutperches
Order Sphenocephaliformes Rosen Patterson 1969
Order Zeiformes Regan 1909 dories
Order Stylephoriformes Miya et al. 2007
Order Gadiformes Goodrich 1909 cods
Division Polymixiacea BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013 Polymyxiomorpha; Polymixiipterygii
Order Pattersonichthyiformes Gaudant 1976
Order Ctenothrissiformes Berg 1937
Order Polymixiiformes Lowe 1838 beardfishes
Division Euacanthomorphacea BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013 Euacanthomorpha sensu Johnson Patterson 1993; Acanthopterygii Gouan 1770 sensu
Subdivision Berycimorphaceae BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Order Beryciformes fangtooths and pineconefishes incl. Stephanoberycifor |
mes; Cetomimiformes
Subdivision Holocentrimorphaceae BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Order Holocentriformes Soldierfishes
Subdivision Percomorphaceae BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013 Percomorpha sensu Miya et al. 2003; Acanthopteri
Series Ophidiimopharia BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Order Ophidiiformes pearlfishes
Series Batrachoidimopharia BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Order Batrachoidiformes toadfishes
Series Gobiomopharia BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Order KurtiformesNurseryfishes and cardinalfishes
Order GobiiformesSleepers and gobies
Series Scombrimopharia BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Order Syngnathiformes seahorses, pipefishes, sea moths, cornetfishes and flying gurnards
Order Scombriformes Tunas and mackerels
Series Carangimopharia BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Subseries Anabantaria BetancurRodriguez et al. 2014
Order Synbranchiformes swamp eels
Order Anabantiformes Labyrinthici gouramies, snakeheads,
Subseries Carangaria BetancurRodriguez et al. 2014
Carangaria incertae sedis
Order I |
stiophoriformes BetancurRodriguez 2013 Marlins, swordfishes, billfishes
Order Carangiformes Jack mackerels, pompanos
Order Pleuronectiformes Bleeker 1859 flatfishes
Subseries Ovalentaria Smith Near 2012 Stiassnyiformes sensu Li et al. 2009
Ovalentaria incertae sedis
Order Cichliformes BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013 Cichlids, Convict blenny, leaf fishes
Order Atheriniformes Rosen 1964 silversides and rainbowfishes
Order Cyprinodontiformes Berg 1940 livebearers, killifishes
Order Beloniformes Berg 1940 flyingfishes and ricefishes
Order Mugiliformes Berg 1940 mullets
Order Blenniiformes Springer 1993 Blennies
Order Gobiesociformes Gill 1872 Clingfishes
Series Eupercaria BetancurRodriguez et al. 2014 Percomorpharia BetancurRodriguez et al. 2013
Eupercaria incertae sedis
Order Gerreiformes Mojarras
Order Labriformes Wrasses and Parrotfishes
Order Caproiformes Boarfishes
Order Lophiiformes Garman 1899 Anglerfishes
Order Tetraodontiformes Regan 1929 Filefishes and pufferfish
Order Centrarchiformes |
Bleeker 1859 Sunfishes and mandarin fishes
Order Gasterosteiformes Sticklebacks and relatives
Order Scorpaeniformes Lionfishes and relatives
Order Perciformes Bleeker 1859
References
External links
Rayfinned fish
Fish classes
Silurian bony fish
Extant Silurian first appearances |
Albert Einstein ; ; 14 March 1879 18 April 1955 was a Germanborn theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are together the two pillars of modern physics. His massenergy equivalence formula , which arises from relativity theory, has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in "Einstein" becoming synonymous with "genius".
In 1905, a year sometimes described as his annus mirabilis 'miracle year', Einstein published four groundbre |
aking papers. These outlined the theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced special relativity, and demonstrated massenergy equivalence. Einstein thought that the laws of classical mechanics could no longer be reconciled with those of the electromagnetic field, which led him to develop his special theory of relativity. He then extended the theory to gravitational fields; he published a paper on general relativity in 1916, introducing his theory of gravitation. In 1917, he applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light and the quantum theory of radiation, which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.
However, for much of the later part of his career, he worked on two ultimately unsuccessful endeavors. First, despite his great |
contributions to quantum mechanics, he opposed what it evolved into, objecting that nature "does not play dice". Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from the mainstream of modern physics.
Einstein was born in the German Empire, but moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship as a subject of the Kingdom of Wrttemberg the following year. In 1897, at the age of 17, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss Federal polytechnic school in Zrich, graduating in 1900. In 1901, he acquired Swiss citizenship, which he kept for the rest of his life, and in 1903 he secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. In 1914, Einstein moved to Berlin in order to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1917, Einste |
in became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics; he also became a German citizen again, this time Prussian.
In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Einstein, of Jewish origin, objected to the policies of the newly elected Nazi government; he settled in the United States and became an American citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research. Einstein supported the Allies but generally denounced the idea of nuclear weapons.
Life and career
Early life and education
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Wrttemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879 into a family of secular Ashkenazi Jews. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektro |
technische Fabrik J. Einstein Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.
Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich, from the age of five, for three years. At the age of eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium now known as the Albert Einstein Gymnasium, where he received advanced primary and secondary school education until he left the German Empire seven years later.
In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's company lost a bid to supply the city of Munich with electrical lighting because they lacked the capital to convert their equipment from the direct current DC standard to the more efficient alternating current AC standard. The loss forced the sale of the Munich factory. In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia. When the family moved to Pavia, Einstein, then 15, stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but |
Einstein clashed with the authorities and resented the school's regimen and teaching method. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought was lost in strict rote learning. At the end of December 1894, he traveled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note. During his time in Italy he wrote a short essay with the title "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".
Einstein excelled at math and physics from a young age, reaching a mathematical level years ahead of his peers. The 12yearold Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer. Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12. A family tutor Max Talmud says that after he had given the 12yearold Einstein a geometry textbook, after a short time "Einstein had worked through the whole book. He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics... Soon the flight of his mathematical ge |
nius was so high I could not follow." His passion for geometry and algebra led the 12yearold to become convinced that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure". Einstein started teaching himself calculus at 12, and as a 14yearold he says he had "mastered integral and differential calculus".
At age 13, when he had become more seriously interested in philosophy and music, Einstein was introduced to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher, his tutor stating "At the time he was still a child, only thirteen years old, yet Kant's works, incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, seemed to be clear to him."
In 1895, at the age of 16, Einstein took the entrance examinations for the Swiss Federal polytechnic school in Zrich later the Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule, ETH. He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the examination, but obtained exceptional grades in physics and mathematics. On the advice of the principal of the polytechnic school, he atte |
nded the Argovian cantonal school gymnasium in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1895 and 1896 to complete his secondary schooling. While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. Albert's sister Maja later married Winteler's son Paul. In January 1896, with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Wrttemberg to avoid military service. In September 1896 he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 16. At 17, he enrolled in the fouryear mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Federal polytechnic school. Marie Winteler, who was a year older, moved to Olsberg, Switzerland, for a teaching post.
Einstein's future wife, a 20yearold Serbian named Mileva Mari, also enrolled at the polytechnic school that year. She was the only woman among the six students in the mathematics and physics section of the teaching diploma course. Ove |
r the next few years, Einstein's and Mari's friendship developed into a romance, and they spent countless hours debating and reading books together on extracurricular physics in which they were both interested. Einstein wrote in his letters to Mari that he preferred studying alongside her. In 1900, Einstein passed the exams in Maths and Physics and was awarded a Federal teaching diploma. There is eyewitness evidence and several letters over many years that indicate Mari might have collaborated with Einstein prior to his landmark 1905 papers, known as the Annus Mirabilis papers, and that they developed some of the concepts together during their studies, although some historians of physics who have studied the issue disagree that she made any substantive contributions.
Marriages and children
Early correspondence between Einstein and Mari was discovered and published in 1987 which revealed that the couple had a daughter named "Lieserl", born in early 1902 in Novi Sad where Mari was staying with her parents. M |
ari returned to Switzerland without the child, whose real name and fate are unknown. The contents of Einstein's letter in September 1903 suggest that the girl was either given up for adoption or died of scarlet fever in infancy.
Einstein and Mari married in January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert Einstein was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born in Zrich in July 1910. The couple moved to Berlin in April 1914, but Mari returned to Zrich with their sons after learning that, despite their close relationship before, Einstein's chief romantic attraction was now his cousin Elsa Lwenthal; she was his first cousin maternally and second cousin paternally. Einstein and Mari divorced on 14 February 1919, having lived apart for five years. As part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed to give Mari his future in the event, 1921 Nobel Prize money.
In letters revealed in 2015, Einstein wrote to his early love Marie Winteler about his marriage and his strong feelings for her. He wrote in 1910, |
while his wife was pregnant with their second child "I think of you in heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy as only a man can be." He spoke about a "misguided love" and a "missed life" regarding his love for Marie.
Einstein married Lwenthal in 1919, after having had a relationship with her since 1912. They emigrated to the United States in 1933. Elsa was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems in 1935 and died in December 1936.
In 1923, Einstein fell in love with a secretary named Betty Neumann, the niece of a close friend, Hans Mhsam. In a volume of letters released by Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006, Einstein described about six women, including Margarete Lebach a blonde Austrian, Estella Katzenellenbogen the rich owner of a florist business, Toni Mendel a wealthy Jewish widow and Ethel Michanowski a Berlin socialite, with whom he spent time and from whom he received gifts while being married to Elsa. Later, after the death of his second wife Elsa, Einstein was briefly in a relatio |
nship with Margarita Konenkova. Konenkova was a Russian spy who was married to the noted Russian sculptor Sergei Konenkov who created the bronze bust of Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Einstein's son Eduard had a breakdown at about age 20 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother cared for him and he was also committed to asylums for several periods, finally being committed permanently after her death.
Patent office
After graduating in 1900, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years searching for a teaching post. He acquired Swiss citizenship in February 1901, but was not conscripted for medical reasons. With the help of Marcel Grossmann's father, he secured a job in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office, as an assistant examiner level III.
Einstein evaluated patent applications for a variety of devices including a gravel sorter and an electromechanical typewriter. In 1903, his position at the Swiss Patent Office became permanent, although he was passed over for promotion u |
ntil he "fully mastered machine technology".
Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electricalmechanical synchronization of time, two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time.
With a few friends he had met in Bern, Einstein started a small discussion group in 1902, selfmockingly named "The Olympia Academy", which met regularly to discuss science and philosophy. Sometimes they were joined by Mileva who attentively listened but did not participate. Their readings included the works of Henri Poincar, Ernst Mach, and David Hume, which influenced his scientific and philosophical outlook.
First scientific papers
In 1900, Einstein's paper "Folgerungen aus den Capillarittserscheinungen" "Conclusions from the Capillarity Phenomena" was published in the journal Annalen der Physik. On 30 A |
pril 1905, Einstein completed his dissertation, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions with Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Zrich, serving as proforma advisor. His work was accepted in July, and Einstein was awarded a Ph.D.
Also in 1905, which has been called Einstein's annus mirabilis amazing year, he published four groundbreaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world, at the age of 26.
Academic career
By 1908, he was recognized as a leading scientist and was appointed lecturer at the University of Bern. The following year, after he gave a lecture on electrodynamics and the relativity principle at the University of Zurich, Alfred Kleiner recommended him to the faculty for a newly created professorship in theoretical physics. Einstein was appointed associate professor in 1909.
Einstein became a full professor at the German Charl |
esFerdinand University in Prague in April 1911, accepting Austrian citizenship in the AustroHungarian Empire to do so. During his Prague stay, he wrote 11 scientific works, five of them on radiation mathematics and on the quantum theory of solids.
In July 1912, he returned to his alma mater in Zrich. From 1912 until 1914, he was a professor of theoretical physics at the ETH Zurich, where he taught analytical mechanics and thermodynamics. He also studied continuum mechanics, the molecular theory of heat, and the problem of gravitation, on which he worked with mathematician and friend Marcel Grossmann.
When the "Manifesto of the NinetyThree" was published in October 1914a document signed by a host of prominent German intellectuals that justified Germany's militarism and position during the First World WarEinstein was one of the few German intellectuals to rebut its contents and sign the pacifistic "Manifesto to the Europeans".
In the spring of 1913, Einstein was enticed to move to Berlin with an offer that |
included membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and a linked University of Berlin professorship, enabling him to concentrate exclusively on research. On 3 July 1913, he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Max Planck and Walther Nernst visited him the next week in Zurich to persuade him to join the academy, additionally offering him the post of director at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, which was soon to be established. Membership in the academy included paid salary and professorship without teaching duties at Humboldt University of Berlin. He was officially elected to the academy on 24 July, and he moved to Berlin the following year. His decision to move to Berlin was also influenced by the prospect of living near his cousin Elsa, with whom he had started a romantic affair. Einstein assumed his position with the academy, and Berlin University, after moving into his Dahlem apartment on 1 April 1914. As World War I broke out that year, the plan for Kaiser Wilhelm I |
nstitute for Physics was aborted. The institute was established on 1 October 1917, with Einstein as its director. In 1916, Einstein was elected president of the German Physical Society 19161918.
In 1911, Einstein used his 1907 Equivalence principle to calculate the deflection of light from another star by the Sun's gravity. In 1913, Einstein improved upon those calculations by using Riemannian spacetime to represent the gravity field. By the fall of 1915, Einstein had successfully completed his general theory of relativity, which he used to calculate that deflection, and the perihelion precession of Mercury. In 1919, that deflection prediction was confirmed by Sir Arthur Eddington during the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. Those observations were published in the international media, making Einstein worldfamous. On 7 November 1919, the leading British newspaper The Times printed a banner headline that read "Revolution in Science New Theory of the Universe Newtonian Ideas Overthrown".
In 1920, he became a Fo |
reign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". While the general theory of relativity was still considered somewhat controversial, the citation also does not treat even the cited photoelectric work as an explanation but merely as a discovery of the law, as the idea of photons was considered outlandish and did not receive universal acceptance until the 1924 derivation of the Planck spectrum by S. N. Bose. Einstein was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society ForMemRS in 1921. He also received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 1925.
Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy in March 1933. Einstein's scientific accomplishments while in Berlin, included finishing the general theory of relativity, proving the gyromagnetic effect, contributing to the quantum theory of radiation, and BoseEinstein statistics.
|
19211922 Travels abroad
Einstein visited New York City for the first time on 2 April 1921, where he received an official welcome by Mayor John Francis Hylan, followed by three weeks of lectures and receptions. He went on to deliver several lectures at Columbia University and Princeton University, and in Washington, he accompanied representatives of the National Academy of Sciences on a visit to the White House. On his return to Europe he was the guest of the British statesman and philosopher Viscount Haldane in London, where he met several renowned scientific, intellectual, and political figures, and delivered a lecture at King's College London.
He also published an essay, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", in July 1921, in which he tried briefly to describe some characteristics of Americans, much as had Alexis de Tocqueville, who published his own impressions in Democracy in America 1835. For some of his observations, Einstein was clearly surprised "What strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive attitud |
e to life ... The American is friendly, selfconfident, optimistic, and without envy."
In 1922, his travels took him to Asia and later to Palestine, as part of a sixmonth excursion and speaking tour, as he visited Singapore, Ceylon and Japan, where he gave a series of lectures to thousands of Japanese. After his first public lecture, he met the emperor and empress at the Imperial Palace, where thousands came to watch. In a letter to his sons, he described his impression of the Japanese as being modest, intelligent, considerate, and having a true feel for art. In his own travel diaries from his 192223 visit to Asia, he expresses some views on the Chinese, Japanese and Indian people, which have been described as xenophobic and racist judgments when they were rediscovered in 2018.
Because of Einstein's travels to the Far East, he was unable to personally accept the Nobel Prize for Physics at the Stockholm award ceremony in December 1922. In his place, the banquet speech was made by a German diplomat, who praise |
d Einstein not only as a scientist but also as an international peacemaker and activist.
On his return voyage, he visited Palestine for 12 days, his only visit to that region. He was greeted as if he were a head of state, rather than a physicist, which included a cannon salute upon arriving at the home of the British high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel. During one reception, the building was stormed by people who wanted to see and hear him. In Einstein's talk to the audience, he expressed happiness that the Jewish people were beginning to be recognized as a force in the world.
Einstein visited Spain for two weeks in 1923, where he briefly met Santiago Ramn y Cajal and also received a diploma from King Alfonso XIII naming him a member of the Spanish Academy of Sciences.
From 1922 to 1932, Einstein was a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations in Geneva with a few months of interruption in 19231924, a body created to promote international exchange between |
scientists, researchers, teachers, artists, and intellectuals. Originally slated to serve as the Swiss delegate, SecretaryGeneral Eric Drummond was persuaded by Catholic activists Oskar Halecki and Giuseppe Motta to instead have him become the German delegate, thus allowing Gonzague de Reynold to take the Swiss spot, from which he promoted traditionalist Catholic values. Einstein's former physics professor Hendrik Lorentz and the Polish chemist Marie Curie were also members of the committee.
1925 Visit to South America
In the months of March and April 1925, Einstein visited South America, where he spent about a month in Argentina, a week in Uruguay, and a week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Einstein's visit was initiated by Jorge Duclout 18561927 and Mauricio Nirenstein 18771935 with the support of several Argentine scholars, including Julio Rey Pastor, Jakob Laub, and Leopoldo Lugones. The visit by Einstein and his wife was financed primarily by the Council of the University of Buenos Aires and the Asociacin H |
ebraica Argentina Argentine Hebraic Association with a smaller contribution from the ArgentineGermanic Cultural Institution.
19301931 Travel to the US
In December 1930, Einstein visited America for the second time, originally intended as a twomonth working visit as a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. After the national attention, he received during his first trip to the US, he and his arrangers aimed to protect his privacy. Although swamped with telegrams and invitations to receive awards or speak publicly, he declined them all.
After arriving in New York City, Einstein was taken to various places and events, including Chinatown, a lunch with the editors of The New York Times, and a performance of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, where he was cheered by the audience on his arrival. During the days following, he was given the keys to the city by Mayor Jimmy Walker and met the president of Columbia University, who described Einstein as "the ruling monarch of the mind". Harry Emerson |
Fosdick, pastor at New York's Riverside Church, gave Einstein a tour of the church and showed him a fullsize statue that the church made of Einstein, standing at the entrance. Also during his stay in New York, he joined a crowd of 15,000 people at Madison Square Garden during a Hanukkah celebration.
Einstein next traveled to California, where he met Caltech president and Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan. His friendship with Millikan was "awkward", as Millikan "had a penchant for patriotic militarism", where Einstein was a pronounced pacifist. During an address to Caltech's students, Einstein noted that science was often inclined to do more harm than good.
This aversion to war also led Einstein to befriend author Upton Sinclair and film star Charlie Chaplin, both noted for their pacifism. Carl Laemmle, head of Universal Studios, gave Einstein a tour of his studio and introduced him to Chaplin. They had an instant rapport, with Chaplin inviting Einstein and his wife, Elsa, to his home for dinner. Chaplin sa |
id Einstein's outward persona, calm and gentle, seemed to conceal a "highly emotional temperament", from which came his "extraordinary intellectual energy".
Chaplin's film, City Lights, was to premiere a few days later in Hollywood, and Chaplin invited Einstein and Elsa to join him as his special guests. Walter Isaacson, Einstein's biographer, described this as "one of the most memorable scenes in the new era of celebrity". Chaplin visited Einstein at his home on a later trip to Berlin and recalled his "modest little flat" and the piano at which he had begun writing his theory. Chaplin speculated that it was "possibly used as kindling wood by the Nazis".
1933 Emigration to the US
In February 1933, while on a visit to the United States, Einstein knew he could not return to Germany with the rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
While at American universities in early 1933, he undertook his third twomonth visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology in |
Pasadena. In February and March 1933, the Gestapo repeatedly raided his family's apartment in Berlin. He and his wife Elsa returned to Europe in March, and during the trip, they learned that the German Reichstag had passed the Enabling Act on 23 March, transforming Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship, and that they would not be able to proceed to Berlin. Later on, they heard that their cottage had been raided by the Nazis and Einstein's personal sailboat confiscated. Upon landing in Antwerp, Belgium on 28 March, Einstein immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship. The Nazis later sold his boat and converted his cottage into a Hitler Youth camp.
Refugee status
In April 1933, Einstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. Historian Gerald Holton describes how, with "virtually no audible protest being raised by their |
colleagues", thousands of Jewish scientists were suddenly forced to give up their university positions and their names were removed from the rolls of institutions where they were employed.
A month later, Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burnings, with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming, "Jewish intellectualism is dead." One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged", offering a 5,000 bounty on his head. In a subsequent letter to physicist and friend Max Born, who had already emigrated from Germany to England, Einstein wrote, "... I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise." After moving to the US, he described the book burnings as a "spontaneous emotional outburst" by those who "shun popular enlightenment", and "more than anything else in the world, fear the influence of men of intellectual independence".
Einstein was now |
without a permanent home, unsure where he would live and work, and equally worried about the fate of countless other scientists still in Germany. He rented a house in De Haan, Belgium, where he lived for a few months. In late July 1933, he went to England for about six weeks at the personal invitation of British naval officer Commander Oliver LockerLampson, who had become friends with Einstein in the preceding years. LockerLampson invited him to stay near his home in a wooden cabin on Roughton Heath in the Parish of . To protect Einstein, LockerLampson had two bodyguards watch over him at his secluded cabin; a photo of them carrying shotguns and guarding Einstein was published in the Daily Herald on 24 July 1933.
LockerLampson took Einstein to meet Winston Churchill at his home, and later, Austen Chamberlain and former Prime Minister Lloyd George. Einstein asked them to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. British historian Martin Gilbert notes that Churchill responded immediately, and sent his fri |
end, physicist Frederick Lindemann, to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities. Churchill later observed that as a result of Germany having driven the Jews out, they had lowered their "technical standards" and put the Allies' technology ahead of theirs.
Einstein later contacted leaders of other nations, including Turkey's Prime Minister, smet nn, to whom he wrote in September 1933 requesting placement of unemployed GermanJewish scientists. As a result of Einstein's letter, Jewish invitees to Turkey eventually totaled over "1,000 saved individuals".
LockerLampson also submitted a bill to parliament to extend British citizenship to Einstein, during which period Einstein made a number of public appearances describing the crisis brewing in Europe. In one of his speeches he denounced Germany's treatment of Jews, while at the same time he introduced a bill promoting Jewish citizenship in Palestine, as they were being denied citizenship elsewhere. In his speech he described Ein |
stein as a "citizen of the world" who should be offered a temporary shelter in the UK. Both bills failed, however, and Einstein then accepted an earlier offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, US, to become a resident scholar.
Resident scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study
In October 1933, Einstein returned to the US and took up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, noted for having become a refuge for scientists fleeing Nazi Germany. At the time, most American universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Yale, had minimal or no Jewish faculty or students, as a result of their Jewish quotas, which lasted until the late 1940s.
Einstein was still undecided on his future. He had offers from several European universities, including Christ Church, Oxford, where he stayed for three short periods between May 1931 and June 1933 and was offered a fiveyear studentship, but in 1935, he arrived at the decision to remain permanently in the United States and apply for ci |
tizenship.
Einstein's affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study would last until his death in 1955. He was one of the four first selected along with John von Neumann and Kurt Gdel at the new Institute, where he soon developed a close friendship with Gdel. The two would take long walks together discussing their work. Bruria Kaufman, his assistant, later became a physicist. During this period, Einstein tried to develop a unified field theory and to refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics, both unsuccessfully.
World War II and the Manhattan Project
In 1939, a group of Hungarian scientists that included migr physicist Le Szilrd attempted to alert Washington to ongoing Nazi atomic bomb research. The group's warnings were discounted. Einstein and Szilrd, along with other refugees such as Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, "regarded it as their responsibility to alert Americans to the possibility that German scientists might win the race to build an atomic bomb, and to warn that Hitler would |
be more than willing to resort to such a weapon." To make certain the US was aware of the danger, in July 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, Szilrd and Wigner visited Einstein to explain the possibility of atomic bombs, which Einstein, a pacifist, said he had never considered. He was asked to lend his support by writing a letter, with Szilrd, to President Roosevelt, recommending the US pay attention and engage in its own nuclear weapons research.
The letter is believed to be "arguably the key stimulus for the U.S. adoption of serious investigations into nuclear weapons on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II". In addition to the letter, Einstein used his connections with the Belgian Royal Family and the Belgian queen mother to get access with a personal envoy to the White House's Oval Office. Some say that as a result of Einstein's letter and his meetings with Roosevelt, the US entered the "race" to develop the bomb, drawing on its "immense material, financial, and scie |
ntific resources" to initiate the Manhattan Project.
For Einstein, "war was a disease ... and he called for resistance to war." By signing the letter to Roosevelt, some argue he went against his pacifist principles. In 1954, a year before his death, Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my lifewhen I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justificationthe danger that the Germans would make them ..." In 1955, Einstein and ten other intellectuals and scientists, including British philosopher Bertrand Russell, signed a manifesto highlighting the danger of nuclear weapons.
US citizenship
Einstein became an American citizen in 1940. Not long after settling into his career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he expressed his appreciation of the meritocracy in American culture when compared to Europe. He recognized the "right of individuals to say and think what they pleased", without socia |
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