Albert Einstein
1879 – 1955

Albert Einstein is one of the most recognized and well-known scientists of the century. His theories solved centuries-old problems in physics and rocked even non-physicists' view of the world.

He was born in 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. Around 1886 Albert Einstein began his school career in Munich. In 1894 Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich. In 1895 Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrical engineer at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Einstein attended secondary school at Aarau planning to use this route to enter the ETH in Zurich.

Einstein graduated in 1900 as a teacher of mathematics and physics, but still with no job till 1901. By 1901 he had a temporary job as a teacher of mathematics at the Technical High School in Winterthur. Another temporary position teaching in a private school in Schaffhausen followed. Einstein worked as a technical expert third class in the patent office in Bern from 1902 to 1909. In 1906 he was promoted to technical expert second class. While in the Bern patent office he completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time without the benefit of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues.

  The Scientist

Einstein earned a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905 for a thesis on a new determination of molecular dimensions. In this year, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs in five great papers, in special relativity and quantum theory and some other theories that would establish him as the world's leading physicist.

After 1905 Einstein made important contributions to quantum theory, but he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The key appeared in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held to be indistinguishable from acceleration caused by mechanical forces. Gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass.

In 1908 Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern after submitting his Habilitation thesis Consequences for the constitution of radiation following from the energy distribution law of black bodies. The following year he become professor of physics at the University of Zurich, having resigned his lectureship at Bern and his job in the patent office in Bern.

By 1909 Einstein was recognized as a leading scientific thinker and in that year he resigned from the patent office. He was appointed a full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. Albert was the youngest one to attend the invitation-only Solvay Conference in Brussels, the first world physics conference.

In fact 1911 was a very significant year for Einstein since he was able to make preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun.

About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossmann. Einstein called his new work the general theory of relativity. He moved from Prague to Zurich in 1912 to take up a chair at the “Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule” in Zurich.

Einstein returned to Germany in 1914 but did not reapply for German citizenship. What he accepted was an impressive offer. It was a research position in the Prussian Academy of Sciences together with a chair (but no teaching duties) at the University of Berlin. After a number of false starts, Einstein published late in 1915 the definitive version of the general theory of relativity.