Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich and he began his schooling there at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.
Albert Einstein's most noted contribution to the world is his theory of relativity. By 1902, Einstein was working on combining time and space, matter and energy. In 1905 when he was only 26 years old, he published a paper on relativity. This paper showed mathematically that the speed of light is constant and not relative to its source or to the viewer. Einstein had actually written an essay when he was only 16 years old on relativity, which became the basis for his published paper. The greatest result of relativistic physics was Einstein's famous relation, E=mc2 . In this, he was able to prove that any increase in the energy, E, of a body must lead to a corresponding increase in its mass, m, these increases being related by a factor c2 , where c represents the velocity of light squared.
Albert Einstein published several other papers this same year. They were quantum law and the emission and absorption of light, Brownian motion, the inertia of energy, and the electrodynamics of moving bodies. The research on quantum law and the emission and absorption of light won him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. Incidentally, he was not present at the award ceremony due to his trip to Japan.
At the time of the publication on the theory of relativity, the people that read the papers met them with skepticism and ridicule. As the other papers were published, they were viewed the same way. Since these papers were so advanced, only a few physicists even understood them, and they slowly started to realize what a true genius Einstein actually was.
In 1914, Einstein found himself in demand all over Europe. He went to Berlin as a professor and latter accepted a prestigious appointment as the head of Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute, special professor at the University of Berlin. There he was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and had all the research time he wanted.
In 1933 Albert Einstein came to the United States. He had accepted a position with the Advanced study in Princeton, New Jersey. At the University, he was again allowed to follow his own ideas and do research as he sought. At the University, he also aided Jewish scientists and students who were forced to leave Germany.
