Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 — 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely held to be one of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century. He developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics — alongside quantum mechanics, to which he also contributed.^[1]

Early life

Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire. His family moved to Munich shortly after his birth. He completed his secondary schooling in Switzerland and graduated from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich in 1900.

Annus mirabilis

In 1905, while working as a patent examiner in Bern, Einstein published four papers — the "miracle year" papers — on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc²). The first of these earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

General relativity and exile

In 1915 he completed his theory of general relativity, predicting that gravity bends light — a prediction confirmed during the 1919 solar eclipse. Einstein left Germany permanently in 1933, after the Nazi regime came to power, and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He spent the rest of his life there, dying on 18 April 1955.^[2]