The man who rewrote the laws of physics — from a Swiss patent office clerk to the most recognizable scientist in human history.
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg. As a child he was slow to speak, but by 14 he had already mastered integral and differential calculus — and was growing deeply bored with rote schooling.
After failing his first university entrance exam, Einstein eventually graduated from ETH Zurich and — unable to find an academic position — took a job as a patent office clerk in Bern. It was there, in 1905, that he published four papers that would change physics forever.
That year, known as his 'Annus Mirabilis' or miracle year, Einstein explained Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy — E=mc². He was 26 years old and working a day job examining patents.
His theory of special relativity proposed that the laws of physics are the same for all observers moving at constant speeds, and that the speed of light is constant regardless of the observer's motion. It upended centuries of Newtonian physics and introduced the radical idea that time itself is relative.
In 1915, Einstein completed his general theory of relativity, which described gravity not as a force but as a curvature of spacetime caused by mass. Its predictions — including the bending of light around massive objects — were confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919, making Einstein an overnight global celebrity.
Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, though not for relativity — the committee chose his explanation of the photoelectric effect, which laid the foundation for quantum mechanics. Ironically, Einstein never fully accepted quantum theory, famously insisting that 'God does not play dice.'
When the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Einstein — Jewish and internationally famous — was a target. He emigrated to the United States in 1933 and joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he spent the rest of his life. He became an American citizen in 1940.
In 1939, Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt warning that Germany might be developing an atomic bomb and urging the US to investigate nuclear chain reactions. The letter helped trigger what became the Manhattan Project — though Einstein himself never worked on it.
Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, at age 76. He had refused surgery to extend his life, saying he had done his part and it was time to go. His brain was removed without permission and studied for decades. Time magazine named him Person of the Century in 1999.