Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the theory of special relativity in 1905, establishing mass-energy equivalence through E = mc², and the general theory of relativity in. His explanation of the photoelectric effect illuminated light's particle-like behavior, foundational to quantum mechanics, and earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Born to secular Ashkenazi Jewish parents in Ulm, Germany, Einstein fled Nazi persecution in 1933. He settled in the United States as a dual Swiss-American citizen and continued work on unified field theories at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

He started primary school at Munich's Petersschule in 1885, attending Catholic religious classes despite his Jewish background. His uncle Jakob, an engineer, introduced him to algebra in an engaging way, describing it as "the merry science" and supplying him with challenging problems.

In 1888, Einstein entered the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he strongly criticized the institution's emphasis on rote memorization, strict discipline, and militaristic atmosphere, believing it suppressed creativity and independent thought. Outside the rigid school curriculum, he pursued advanced mathematics independently. By age twelve, he had mastered Euclidean geometry from self-study and created an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem using triangle similarity, without any teacher guidance. From about 1889 to 1894, Max Talmud (later Talmey), a Jewish medical student and regular family guest, acted as an informal tutor. He introduced Einstein to popular science books (such as Aaron Bernstein's Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher), philosophy, and critical thinking. Einstein read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason around age thirteen and quickly outpaced his mentor in these areas. Through persistent self-study, he mastered differential and integral calculus by age fourteen. At sixteen, he authored his first scientific essay—an unpublished piece titled "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field"—which anticipated his future explorations in electromagnetism, light, and relativity.