Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, to Hermann Einstein (1847–1902) and Pauline Koch (1858–1920), who were non-practising Jews. The family moved to Munich in 1880, and his sister Maja (Maria, died 1951) was born in 1881.⁠[1][2][3]

He attended elementary school in Munich and entered the Luitpold school there in 1888. He later recalled the wonder he felt at a magnetic compass that he saw when he was four or five years old.⁠[1][2][4]

In 1894 the family moved to Italy while he stayed at school in Munich; he then quit school in mid-term, rejoined his family in Italy in 1895 and studied on his own for the entrance examination of the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich (now ETH Zurich).⁠[1][4][2]

He lacked the required university entrance diploma and was under 18; on the recommendation of Gustav Maier, a family friend, the director, Albin Herzog, allowed him to sit the examination at the beginning of October 1895. His best results were in mathematics and the natural sciences, his linguistic and historical results were unsatisfactory, and the overall result was rated “insufficient.” He then entered the Aargau cantonal school in Aarau, Switzerland, to complete his secondary schooling. In 1896 he renounced his German citizenship, received his diploma from Aarau and enrolled at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich.⁠[2][1]

He joined the school’s sixth department, the school for subject teachers in the mathematical and scientific fields; Mileva Marić, his future wife, was the only woman registered in it. He attended few lectures, preferring to study at home, and used the lecture notes of his friend Marcel Grossmann; in his third year he was reprimanded for frequent absence and received the lowest possible mark, 1, in Jean Pernet’s physics practical course for beginners.⁠[5][4]

In July 1900 he completed his studies with a teaching diploma in mathematics and science; the other four graduates of his class all obtained assistant posts at the Polytechnic, but he did not.⁠[5][6]

After graduating he tried unsuccessfully to obtain a position as an assistant at universities in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. On February 21, 1901, he officially became a citizen of Switzerland. During the summer semester of 1901 he taught the mathematics course at the Technical College in Winterthur for two months, and he then took a post as a private tutor in Schaffhausen.⁠[7]

On December 11, 1901, a post at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property was announced in the Bundesblatt, and he applied; on June 19, 1902, he was appointed Technical Expert, III Class, at the patent office in Bern. In Bern he and his friends formed a discussion circle that they called the Olympia Academy. In 1903 he married Mileva Marić.⁠[7][4][1]

On March 17, 1905, Einstein sent Annalen der Physik his paper on the light quantum and the photoelectric effect; the journal received it on March 18 and published it on June 9. The paper proposed that light consists of quanta, packets of energy tied to specific frequencies; a single light quantum, later called a photon, must reach a minimum frequency before it can free an electron from a metal.⁠[4][3][1]

In May he sent his paper on Brownian motion, which was received on May 11 and published on July 18. In mid-May, in a discussion with Michele Besso in Bern, he conceived the special theory of relativity; the paper, titled “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper,” was received on June 30 and published on September 26. A paper sent in September, on whether the inertia of a body depends on its energy content, was received on September 27 and published on November 21; this relationship between mass and energy is expressed in the equation E=mc².⁠[4][7][1]

On April 30 he submitted his doctoral dissertation, “Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen” (A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions), to the University of Zurich, where his supervisor was Alfred Kleiner; the Philosophy II faculty approved the doctorate unanimously on July 27, and the degree was formally awarded on January 15, 1906.⁠[4][8]

In 1907 he published a paper on the quantum theory of solids (specific heats) and set out the principle that gravitation is equivalent to acceleration, his first crucial idea on the way to general relativity. In February 1909, at the invitation of the Physics Society of Zurich, he lectured on electrodynamics and the relativity principle at the Physics Institute of the University of Zurich; on May 7 of that year the cantonal government of Zurich appointed him associate professor from October 15, 1909, with an annual salary of CHF 4,500.⁠[1][7][8]

In 1911 he became full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague and predicted the bending of starlight at eclipses, though with the wrong magnitude. The ETH entered into negotiations with him at the end of 1911 and at the beginning of 1912 appointed him professor of theoretical physics, starting on October 1; in the winter semester of 1912/13 he taught analytical mechanics and thermodynamics and in the summer semester of 1913 continuum mechanics and the molecular theory of heat, with a physics seminar in each semester. In Zurich in 1912 he worked on the problem of gravitation together with the mathematician Marcel Grossmann.⁠[1][9][6]

In 1913 he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and was given a professorship with no obligation to lecture at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-University. He submitted his request for dismissal to the ETH on November 30, 1913, and the two ETH protocols on his dismissal are both dated December 6, 1913.⁠[9]

In April 1914 Einstein moved to Berlin, and that year he separated from Mileva and their sons. After the outbreak of the First World War, ninety-three German intellectuals signed a manifesto defending Germany’s conduct of the war, and Einstein and three others signed an antiwar counter-manifesto. In 1916 he became president of the German Physical Society, and in 1917 director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute.⁠[10][1][4]

In late 1915 he set down the general theory of relativity in a series of lectures in Berlin and published the gravitational field equations (“Feldgleichungen der Gravitation”); with the theory he explained a discrepancy in the orbit of Mercury. In 1916 he published “Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie,” laying out the general theory, and a paper on the quantum theory of radiation, and a 1917 paper with the same title explained stimulated emission; in 1917 he also published cosmological equations containing the cosmological term.⁠[11][1][4]

His prediction that light is deflected in a gravitational field spurred British astronomers to observe a total eclipse in May 1919, with one expedition going to an island off West Africa and the other to Brazil; H. A. Lorentz wired him that the British expeditions had proved the deflection of light. That year he was divorced from Mileva and married his cousin Elsa Einstein Löwenthal (1876–1936). In 1920 there were public antisemitic attacks in Germany on relativity and on Einstein himself.⁠[4][1]

In 1921 Einstein made his first visit to the United States; he was invited by, and traveled with, the chemist Chaim Weizmann to raise money for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his wife Elsa accompanied him. On May 9 Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry awarded him, at age 42, an honorary degree, and that day he lectured to 400 attendees in McCosh 50, the university’s largest lecture hall. It was the first of five Stafford Little Lectures given on successive days; he spoke in German, and Edwin Adams, a professor of physics, then summarized the lectures orally in English. The lectures formed the basis of the book The Meaning of Relativity, published by Princeton University Press in January 1923.⁠[12][1]

That year he refused to attend the third Solvay Congress in Belgium because German scientists were excluded.⁠[4]

In 1921 the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of the year’s nominations met the criteria in Alfred NobelAlfred NobelAlfred Nobel (1833–1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor and industrialist who invented dynamite, the blasting cap, blasting gelatine and the smokeless powder ballistite and founded enterprises in more than 20 countries. Through his will he left his fortune to establish the five Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.Open the full entry’s will, and under the Nobel Foundation’s statutes the prize was reserved until the following year; Einstein therefore received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” At the time of the award he was affiliated with the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (now Max-Planck-Institut) für Physik in Berlin.⁠[13][3]

In 1922 he traveled east as far as Japan, returning by way of Palestine and Spain; that year he joined the newly created Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of NationsLeague of NationsThe League of Nations was an international organization established under the Covenant of the League of Nations after the First World War. It existed from 1920 to 1946 with its seat in Geneva, Switzerland, and a total of 63 states became members; the United States never joined.Open the full entry, from which he resigned in 1923 and which he later rejoined.⁠[4][1]

In 1924 the Einstein Institute in Potsdam was inaugurated with its “Einstein Tower,” and he published his paper on the quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas, the “Bose-Einstein” quantum theory of statistical fluctuations. In 1927, at the fifth Solvay Congress, he began his dialogue with Niels Bohr on the interpretation of quantum theory. In 1929 he made a widely publicized attempt to unify the theories of the gravitational and electromagnetic fields. In 1930 the ETH awarded him an honorary doctorate.⁠[1][10]

Between 1930 and 1933 Einstein spent each winter in Pasadena at the California Institute of Technology and each summer at his home in Caputh, near Berlin. The Institute for Advanced Study was incorporated in New Jersey on May 20, 1930, founded with a $5 million gift from Louis and Caroline Bamberger, with Abraham Flexner as founding director. Early in 1932 Flexner presented the Institute to Einstein at the California Institute of Technology, he later made him an offer at Oxford, inviting him to set his own terms, and the two then met at Caputh, where Einstein decided to join; he insisted on a position for his collaborator Walther Mayer, and Flexner agreed. In the autumn of 1932 Flexner announced the first faculty appointments, Oswald Veblen and Einstein.⁠[4][14][15]

Einstein left Germany in 1932 and never returned. After the Nazis took power in 1933 he again renounced German citizenship in March and resigned from the Prussian and Bavarian Academies of Science in protest; his assets in Germany were confiscated and a price was put on his head. During a stay in England in September 1933 he met Winston ChurchillWinston ChurchillSir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a British Conservative statesman and writer who served as Prime Minister in 1940–1945 and 1951–1955, led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.Open the full entry and Lloyd George.⁠[4][10]

On October 17, 1933, he and his entourage arrived in New York, and he then joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The Institute at first had no building of its own, and from 1933 to 1939 his office was in Fine Hall (now Jones Hall) on the Princeton University campus; he was never on the Princeton University faculty.⁠[16][11][17][12]

In 1935 Einstein, with B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, published the paper “Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?”, continuing the debate over the interpretation of quantum theory. In 1936 his wife Elsa died. At the Institute for Advanced Study he had no teaching obligations and pursued a unified field theory, an idea that most working physicists had set aside at the time; in 1946 he presented his first draft of the field equation for a general field theory, and in 1948 he published “Generalized theory of gravitation.”⁠[1][18][19]

In August 1939 nuclear physicists came to Einstein for political help; Leo Szilard had realized that uranium might be used for enormously devastating bombs. With Szilard’s help Einstein wrote and signed a letter to President Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the only president elected four times; he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II and greatly expanded the federal government’s role through the New Deal.Open the full entry dated August 2, 1939, warning him of the dangers posed by nuclear energy and voicing the fear that Germany might develop an atomic bomb first; a second Einstein-Szilard letter followed in March 1940.⁠[4][20][18][1]

During the war he was denied security clearance for such sensitive work, but he served as a consultant to the United States Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance. In 1940 he became a citizen of the United States while retaining his Swiss citizenship.⁠[4][1]

In May 1946 Einstein became chairman of the newly formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. He held that the solution to international conflict was world law, world government and a strong world police force, publicly opposed McCarthyism, attacked racial prejudice and supported the Black civil rights movement. In 1955 he joined Bertrand Russell in urging scientists toward mediation between East and West and the limitation of nuclear arms.⁠[4][1]

In 1952, after the death of Israel’s first president, Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel, a chiefly honorific post, and declined. J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) was an American theoretical physicist and science administrator who directed the Los Alamos laboratory that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.Open the full entry became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1947, and the two overlapped there for almost a decade; after Oppenheimer’s security clearance hearing Einstein was one of the leaders of a group of faculty who wrote a letter in his support.⁠[17][4][1]

Einstein died at Princeton Hospital at 1:15 a.m. on April 18, 1955, at the age of 76; he had been admitted the previous Friday after a two-day illness. His personal physician, Guy K. Dean, stated that death was caused by a small leak from an aneurysmal sac into the tissues behind the aorta. At his death he was a professor emeritus in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study.⁠[21][3]

His body was cremated in strict privacy at the Ewing Cemetery crematorium in West Trenton, New Jersey, without religious services, in the presence of about a dozen scientists and close friends and his son. Otto Nathan was named executor of the estate.⁠[22][21]

With his first wife, Mileva Marić (1875–1948), Einstein had two sons: Hans Albert (1904–1973), who became a hydraulic engineer, and Eduard, who was born in 1910 and died in 1965. A daughter was born to the couple in 1902, before their marriage; she was apparently put up for adoption, and her fate is unknown. The two adult daughters of his second wife, Elsa, by a previous marriage, Ilse (1897–1934) and Margot (1899–1986), had already legally taken the name Einstein before the marriage.⁠[1]

In his will of 1950 Einstein bequeathed his personal papers to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After his death the trustees of his estate, Otto Nathan and Helen Dukas, organized the documents in his home and over the next 25 years collected additional material from around the world; in 1971 Princeton University Press took on the publishing effort. The Albert Einstein Archives has been housed at the Hebrew University’s Jewish National & University Library since 1982.⁠[23][24]

The Einstein Papers Project, which edits The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, was installed at the California Institute of Technology in the summer of 2000; as of November 2026, Volumes 1 through 17 have been published. On March 19, 2012, the Hebrew University launched an Einstein digital archive website intended to hold a complete catalog of more than 80,000 records of documents held by its Einstein Archives and the Einstein Papers Project. The ETH Library holds original correspondence to and from Einstein, including the particularly extensive collection donated by his first biographer, Carl Seelig; documents belonging to ETH Zurich can be viewed online through the Einstein Online platform.⁠[24][25][26][6][18][27]

Institute for Advanced Study: Official website: https://www.ias.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]

Einstein Papers Project: Official website: https://www.einstein.caltech.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

ETH Library Einstein Online: Official website: https://library.ethz.ch/en/collections-and-archives/platforms/einstein-online.html (opens in a new window).⁠[27]