Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, and showed early curiosity about nature and abstract reasoning, though his unconventional path through school and the Swiss Polytechnic belied the revolution he would later ignite. After years as a patent clerk in Bern, he published a series of papers in 1905—his annus mirabilis—that transformed understanding of light, matter, and energy.

Special relativity unified space and time and established that the speed of light is constant for all observers, leading to the famous equation E=mc². General relativity, completed in 1915, recast gravity not as a force across empty space but as the curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy. The theory predicted phenomena such as the bending of starlight and gravitational waves, later confirmed by observation.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for explaining the photoelectric effect, Einstein also helped lay foundations for quantum theory while famously debating its interpretation. A pacifist who later warned of nuclear danger, he emigrated to the United States and spent his final decades at the Institute for Advanced Study, pursuing a unified field theory and advocating for civil rights and international cooperation.

1. 1879

   Born in Ulm

   Born to a middle-class Jewish family in the German Empire.

2. 1905

   Annus Mirabilis

   Published papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity.

3. 1915

   General Relativity

   Presented field equations describing gravity as spacetime curvature.

4. 1921

   Nobel Prize

   Awarded for services to theoretical physics, especially the photoelectric effect.

5. 1955

   Death in Princeton

   Died in New Jersey, leaving a legacy as the twentieth century's emblem of scientific genius.