Albert Einstein Is Born

Setting the scene

Hermann and Pauline Einstein, secular Jews, ran an electrical business in Ulm, Germany, when their son Albert was born on March 14, 1879. The family moved to Munich, then Italy and Switzerland after business failures.

What happened

Einstein graduated from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic, worked at the Bern patent office, and published four groundbreaking papers in 1905—including special relativity and E=mc². He won the 1921 Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect, not relativity.

Why it still matters

He fled Nazi Germany in 1933, joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and later urged President Roosevelt to consider atomic weapons research. Memorable detail: Einstein's brain was removed without family permission after his 1955 death and studied for decades, though he had wanted his body cremated intact.

Background

E=mc² and Nobel work followed.