This year marks the centennial of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and sixty years since the death of the absent-minded professor who revolutionized physics

Albert Einstein was a nonconformist, a rebel, a humanist – and funny. He never boasted of his achievements, even when the press did. His disheveled exterior reflected his inner humility. As he once said: 

I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university. (Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism, p. 39)

Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg (now Germany), on March 14, 1879. His father, Hermann, was a salesman, and his mother, Pauline, an accomplished pianist. Mrs. Einstein was eager for Albert to study violin, though he showed little enthusiasm at first. In 1880, Hermann Einstein’s business in Ulm collapsed, and the family moved to Munich,where he opened an electrical equipment factory with his brother Jacob. Albert’s only sibling, Maria (known as Maja), was born in Munich in 1881.

Germany was at the center of scientific development in the first decades of the 20th century. When Einstein accepted a teaching position at the University of Berlin, eight of the twelve people in the world interested in the theory of relativity were already there. Einstein in his office at the university, 1920

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