Albert Einstein: The Life Story Behind the Genius Who Changed Science

Albert Einstein is the most famous scientist who ever lived, and his face is known to people who have never read a word of science. The wild white hair, the moustache, the tongue sticking out in a famous photograph: those images belong to the whole world. Behind the images is a man who changed the way we understand time, space, light, and the universe, and who did it not in a great laboratory, but in a small patent office in Switzerland, working alone, thinking about trains, clocks, and light beams, and asking questions that no one else had thought to ask.

He was born on 14 March 1879 in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, in Germany, to Hermann Einstein, an engineer, and Pauline Koch, and he was a slow child who did not speak until he was much older than other children, and who was thought by some of his teachers to be dull. He was not dull. He was a child who thought deeply, who asked questions, and who did not accept answers simply because an adult gave them. That habit of questioning stayed with him for his whole life, and it is the reason he was able to see what other scientists had missed.

In 1905, when he was twenty-six years old and working as a clerk in a patent office in Bern, Switzerland, he published four papers that changed physics forever, including the paper that introduced the theory of special relativity, and the paper that gave the world the equation E=mc2, the most famous equation in science. He went on to develop the general theory of relativity, which described gravity not as a force, but as the bending of space and time, and he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, for his work on the photoelectric effect. He left Germany when the Nazis came to power, he spent the rest of his life in America, and he became a symbol of genius, of peace, and of the power of the human mind.

A Slow Child in Ulm Who Asked Too Many Questions

Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 in Ulm, a city in southern Germany, to Hermann Einstein, who ran a small electrical business, and Pauline Koch, who came from a family of grain merchants. He was a quiet baby, and he did not speak until he was about three years old, which worried his parents, and which led some people to think that he was slow. He was not slow. He was a child who watched, who listened, and who thought, and when he did begin to speak, he spoke in full sentences, as if he had been thinking all along and had simply been waiting for the right moment to say what he thought.

When he was five, his father showed him a compass, and the needle, which always pointed north, fascinated him. He could not understand how the needle knew where to go, and he felt that there must be something hidden, something invisible, that guided it. That feeling, that the world had hidden forces and hidden rules, stayed with him, and it became the driving force of his life. He wanted to understand the hidden rules, and he wanted to know why things worked the way they did, not just how they worked.

At school, he was not a model student. He was good at mathematics and at science, but he was bored by the rote learning, by the discipline, and by the authority of his teachers, and he often argued with them. He was a rebellious boy, and he did not like being told what to think. He left school early, he failed his first entrance examination to the Polytechnic in Zurich, Switzerland, and he had to study for another year before he was accepted. It was not a smooth path, and it was not the path of a child prodigy. It was the path of a stubborn, curious boy who would not accept a simple answer.

He studied at the Polytechnic in Zurich, where he met Mileva Maric, a Serbian student who was one of the few women studying physics at the time, and whom he later married. He was a good student at the Polytechnic, but he was not the best, and when he graduated in 1900, he could not find a teaching job. He worked as a tutor, he applied for jobs, and he was often rejected, because his professors did not like his rebellious attitude. It was a difficult time, and he was poor, and he was not sure what his future would be. In 1902, he found a job as a clerk in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, a job that was not glamorous, but that gave him a steady income and, more importantly, time to think.

The Patent Office and the Miracle Year of 1905

The patent office in Bern was a quiet place, and Einstein’s job was to read patent applications for new inventions and to decide whether they were new and useful. It was not a job that required genius, but it was a job that left his mind free. He could finish his work, and then he could think about physics, about light, about time, and about the problems that had puzzled scientists for years. He did his thinking in his spare time, in the evenings, and on walks, and he wrote his ideas in papers that he sent to a scientific journal.

In 1905, when he was twenty-six, he published four papers in a single year, a year that is now known as his annus mirabilis, his miracle year. The first paper explained the photoelectric effect, the way light can knock electrons out of a metal, and it introduced the idea that light is made of particles, called photons. The second paper explained Brownian motion, the random movement of tiny particles in water, and it proved that atoms were real. The third paper introduced the special theory of relativity, which said that time and space are not fixed, but that they change depending on how fast you are moving, and that the speed of light is the same for everyone. The fourth paper gave the world the equation E=mc2, which says that energy and mass are the same thing, and that a small amount of mass can be turned into a huge amount of energy.

Those four papers changed physics. They were not the work of a professor in a great university, with a laboratory and a team of assistants. They were the work of a clerk in a patent office, working alone, thinking deeply, and writing clearly. The scientific world did not notice them at first, but slowly, other physicists began to read them, to understand them, and to realise that a new kind of physics had been born. Einstein was no longer a clerk. He was a scientist, and he was on his way to becoming the most famous scientist in the world.

He also married Mileva Maric in 1903, and they had two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, and a daughter, Lieserl, who died young, although the details of her life are not fully known. The marriage was not happy, and it ended in divorce in 1919, the same year that Einstein married his cousin Elsa, who became his second wife and his companion for the rest of his life. It was a complicated personal life, and it was not a perfect one, but it was the life of a man who was more interested in ideas than in the ordinary details of domestic life.

Relativity, Fame, and the Eclipse That Proved Him Right

After 1905, Einstein’s fame grew, and he left the patent office to become a professor, first in Zurich, then in Prague, and then in Berlin, where he became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. He worked on the general theory of relativity, a much bigger and more difficult idea than special relativity, which described gravity not as a force pulling objects together, but as the bending of space and time by mass. It was a radical idea, and it took him ten years to work it out, from 1905 to 1915, and when he finally published it, it was so difficult that few people understood it.

The theory was tested in 1919, during a solar eclipse, when a British expedition led by the astronomer Arthur Eddington photographed the stars near the sun during the eclipse, and found that their light was bent by the sun’s gravity, just as Einstein had predicted. The news made headlines around the world, and Einstein became a celebrity overnight. He was no longer just a scientist. He was a genius, a sage, and a public figure, and people who did not understand his theories wanted to meet him, to photograph him, and to hear what he thought about the world.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, although the prize was awarded in 1922, and it was given not for relativity, which was still controversial, but for his work on the photoelectric effect, which was safer and better understood. He accepted the prize with humility, and he used the money to support his family, but he was already more famous than the prize could make him. He travelled the world, he met kings and presidents, and he became a symbol of science, of reason, and of the power of the human mind to understand the universe.

He also became a public figure with opinions about politics, about war, and about peace. He was a pacifist, he believed in disarmament, and he spoke out against nationalism and against the militarism that had led to the First World War. He was a Jew, and he was proud of his Jewish heritage, although he was not a religious man in the traditional sense, and he supported the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, although he did not support all of the political movements that grew out of it. He was a man of strong opinions, and he was not afraid to express them, even when they were unpopular.

Leaving Germany, Princeton, and the Atomic Age

In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, and Einstein, who was a Jew, was in danger. He was travelling in America at the time, and he decided not to return to Germany. The Nazis seized his property, they burned his books, and they put a price on his head. He never went back to Germany, and he became an American citizen in 1940, settling in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, a place where great thinkers could work without teaching, and where he spent the rest of his life.

In Princeton, he worked on a unified field theory, an attempt to bring together the forces of nature into a single theory, and he did not succeed. It was a difficult problem, and it remains unsolved today, but he worked on it for thirty years, because he believed that the universe had a simple, beautiful order, and that it was the job of a scientist to find it. He also became a public figure in America, speaking about peace, about civil rights, and about the dangers of the atomic bomb, which had been built using the science he had helped to create.

In 1939, he signed a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, written by the physicist Leo Szilard, warning that Germany might be building an atomic bomb, and urging the United States to begin its own research. The letter led to the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs, and which dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Einstein later said that signing the letter was the greatest mistake of his life, because he had not wanted the bomb to be used, and because he was horrified by the destruction it caused. He spent the rest of his life speaking out against nuclear weapons, and for peace, and for the idea that science should be used to help humanity, not to destroy it.

He died on 18 April 1955 in Princeton, at the age of seventy-six, after suffering from an abdominal aneurysm, a swelling in a blood vessel, which he refused to have operated on, saying that he wanted to go when he wanted to go, and that it was tasteless to prolong life artificially. He died as he had lived, on his own terms, thinking, questioning, and refusing to accept the easy answer. His brain was preserved for study, and his body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in a place that has never been disclosed.

The Nobel Prize and a Celebrity Scientist

When Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, awarded in 1922, it was given for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, the way light can knock electrons out of metal, rather than for relativity, which many members of the Nobel committee still found too strange and too unproven to reward. He accepted the honour calmly, and he gave the prize money to his first wife Mileva as part of their divorce settlement, a promise he had made to her years earlier. The prize did not change his life very much, because he was already the most famous scientist alive, and because he did not care very much for honours. What mattered to him was the work, and the work went on.

He became a traveller in those years, visiting America, Britain, Japan, and many other countries, where he was greeted by crowds, by kings, and by presidents, and where people who could not understand a word of his theories wanted to shake his hand. He met the King of England, he met the President of the United States, and he was photographed everywhere he went, his wild hair and his gentle smile becoming symbols of genius itself. He did not enjoy the fame in the way a movie star might enjoy it. He found it tiring, and he often said that he would rather be left alone to think, but he accepted it, because he knew that his fame gave him a platform to speak about the things he believed in, about peace, about disarmament, and about the need for people of different nations to understand each other.

He also used his fame to help other people. He helped Jewish scientists who were fleeing Germany, he wrote letters of recommendation, he raised money, and he spoke out against the persecution of Jews in Europe. He was not a religious man in the ordinary sense, but he was proud of his Jewish identity, and he felt a duty to help his people when they were in danger. He was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, after the death of its first president, and he declined, saying that he did not have the experience or the temperament for politics, and that he was better suited to science. It was a wise refusal, and it showed that he knew his own limits, even as the world wanted him to do everything.

Princeton, Peace, and the Search for One Theory

In Princeton, Einstein lived a simple life. He walked to the Institute for Advanced Study each day, he worked in a small office, he played the violin in the evenings, and he talked with other great thinkers who had also come to Princeton, including the mathematician Kurt Godel, who became his friend and his walking companion. He wore old clothes, he did not comb his hair, and he did not care about money or about luxury. He cared about ideas, and he spent his days trying to find a unified field theory, a single theory that would explain both gravity and electromagnetism, the two great forces of nature as they were then known. He never found it, and the problem remains unsolved, but he worked on it until the end of his life, because he believed that the universe was simple and beautiful underneath, and that a single theory must exist.

He also became a voice for peace in America. He spoke against the arms race, he spoke for civil rights, and he spoke for the idea that scientists have a responsibility to think about how their work will be used. He was investigated by the American government during the years of suspicion about communism, and his telephone was tapped, and his mail was opened, because some officials thought that a man with his views must be a danger. He was not a danger. He was a man who believed in peace, in reason, and in the dignity of every human being, and he said so, even when it was unpopular. That courage, the courage to speak when the government is listening, is as important as any of his scientific work.

He lived in Princeton for more than twenty years, and he became a beloved figure in the town, a man whom children waved to, whom neighbours knew, and whom students admired. He died, as he had lived, on his own terms, refusing an operation that might have prolonged his life, and saying that it was time to go. His death was reported around the world, and the tributes that followed all said the same thing: the world had lost its greatest mind, and its gentlest genius, and the universe would never be understood in quite the same way again.

The Violin, the Sailboat, and the Human Side of Genius

Einstein was not only a thinker. He was also a musician, and he played the violin from childhood, often playing Mozart and Bach in the evenings, and saying that music was a way of thinking, and that he often found the answer to a problem while he was playing. He also loved to sail, although he was not a good sailor, and he often capsized his small boat on the lake near Princeton, and had to be rescued, laughing, by his friends. He loved simple pleasures: walking, thinking, playing music, and talking with friends, and he did not care about money, about clothes, or about luxury. He wore the same old sweaters, he did not wear socks, and he did not comb his hair, and he was happy that way, because his mind was on bigger things than his appearance.

He was also a man of humour, and he enjoyed a joke, especially a joke about himself. The famous photograph of him sticking out his tongue was taken on his seventy-second birthday, when a photographer asked him to smile, and he stuck out his tongue instead, and the photograph became one of the most famous images in the world, because it showed that the greatest scientist alive was also a man who could laugh at himself. He liked that photograph, and he had copies made for his friends, because it captured something true about him: that genius does not have to be solemn, and that a person who understands the universe can also be playful. That playfulness is a part of his legacy, and it is one of the reasons people love him, not only as a scientist, but as a human being.

My Take:

I think Albert Einstein is the most important scientist who ever lived, and I do not say that because he was famous, but because he changed the way we think about the universe itself. Before Einstein, people thought that time was the same for everyone, that space was a fixed stage, and that gravity was a force that pulled things together. After Einstein, we know that time can slow down, that space can bend, and that gravity is the shape of the universe itself. That is not a small change. It is a complete revolution in the way we understand reality, and it was done by a man working alone in a patent office, with no laboratory, no team, and no money. That is a kind of genius that is hard to describe, and it is why I admire him so much.

What I love most about his story is that he was not a child prodigy, and he was not a model student. He was a slow speaker, he was bored at school, he argued with his teachers, he failed an entrance exam, and he could not find a job when he graduated. If you had met him when he was twenty-two, you would not have thought that he was going to change the world. You would have thought that he was a clever young man who was going nowhere. That gives me hope, because it tells me that genius is not always obvious, and that a person who is struggling, who is failing, and who is being told that they are not good enough, might still be the person who changes everything. Einstein is proof that the system does not always recognise talent, and that talent does not always follow the system’s rules.

I also love the image of the patent office, because it is such a humble place for such great work. He was not in a great university, he was not in a famous laboratory, and he was not surrounded by other geniuses. He was in a small office in Bern, reading patent applications for toasters and machines, and in his spare time he was thinking about light, about time, and about the universe. That tells me that great ideas do not need a great setting. They need a quiet mind, a curious heart, and time to think. We live in a world that is noisy, busy, and full of distractions, and Einstein’s life reminds me that thinking requires silence, and that the best ideas often come when we are alone, with nothing to do but wonder.

The year 1905 is the part of his story that amazes me most. Four papers in one year, each one of which would have been enough to make a scientist famous, and all of them written by a twenty-six-year-old clerk. The paper on the photoelectric effect, the paper on Brownian motion, the paper on special relativity, and the paper with E=mc2: each one was a revolution, and together they were a miracle. I try to imagine what that year felt like for him, sitting at his desk, writing, thinking, and realising that he had found something new, something true, and something that no one else had seen. It must have been a year of joy, and of fear, and of excitement, and I wish I could have been there to see it.

I think about the eclipse of 1919, and how it made him famous, because it is a beautiful story about science. A British astronomer, Arthur Eddington, travelled to Africa to photograph the stars during an eclipse, to test a theory written by a German scientist, just after a war between Britain and Germany. It was science transcending politics, and it was a test that could have proved Einstein wrong. It proved him right, and the world celebrated, not only because the theory was correct, but because the test itself was a triumph of reason over war. I love that story, because it shows that science is an international language, and that truth does not belong to one country.

I want to be honest about his personal life, because it was not perfect, and because a full picture includes the difficult parts. His first marriage to Mileva Maric ended in divorce, and his relationship with his sons was strained, especially with his younger son Eduard, who suffered from mental illness and who spent much of his life in institutions. Einstein was not a perfect father, and he was not a perfect husband, and he was more interested in his work than in the daily life of his family. I do not think that makes him a bad person, but I think it makes him a human person, and it reminds me that genius often comes with a cost, and that the cost is often paid by the people closest to the genius. That is a sad truth, and it is one that we should not hide.

I also think about the atomic bomb, and about the letter he signed in 1939, because it is the most morally complicated part of his life. He signed the letter because he feared that Hitler would build a bomb, and he wanted America to build one first. He did not want the bomb to be used, and he was horrified when it was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he spent the rest of his life speaking against nuclear weapons. I think he was right to be afraid of Hitler, and I think he was right to regret the bomb, and I think his life shows how difficult it is for a scientist to control what is done with their work. Science can be used for good or for evil, and the scientist cannot always decide which it will be. That is a lesson that is still true today, and it is one that we should all think about.

What I admire most about Einstein, in the end, is his curiosity, and his refusal to accept the easy answer. He asked questions that other people thought were silly: what would it be like to ride on a beam of light, what would happen to time if you travelled fast, what is gravity really? Those questions sounded like the questions of a child, and in a way they were, because Einstein never lost the curiosity of a child. He looked at the world with wonder, and he asked why, and he kept asking until he found an answer that satisfied him. I think that is the most important quality a scientist can have, and it is a quality that anyone can have, in any field: do not accept the answer you are given, ask why, and keep asking, until you understand for yourself.

I think about his famous photograph, with his tongue sticking out, and I love it, because it shows that he did not take himself too seriously. He was the most famous scientist in the world, and he was willing to look silly for a camera, to make a joke, and to show that genius does not have to be solemn. He had a sense of humour, he played the violin, he loved music, and he believed that imagination was more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, but imagination can take you anywhere. That is a beautiful idea, and it is one that I carry with me: do not just learn what is known, imagine what could be, and let your imagination guide you.

I also think about his violin, and about the way he said that he often thought in music, and that the answer to a problem would come to him while he was playing Mozart. That is a beautiful idea, and it tells me that thinking is not only about logic, but also about feeling, and about the patterns that music and mathematics share. Einstein was not a cold, logical machine. He was a man who loved beauty, who loved music, and who believed that the universe was beautiful, and that its beauty was a clue to its truth. I think that is a lesson for all of us: do not separate art from science, or feeling from thinking, because they belong together, and because the best ideas often come when we are doing something we love, not when we are forcing ourselves to work.

I think about the photograph with his tongue out, and I love it, because it shows that he did not take himself too seriously, even though the whole world took him seriously. He was seventy-two, he was the most famous scientist alive, and a photographer asked him to smile, and he stuck out his tongue, and the world laughed, and the photograph became famous. I think that humour is a sign of wisdom, because a person who can laugh at himself is a person who is not afraid, and Einstein was not afraid, not of being wrong, not of being laughed at, and not of being different. That is a quality I admire, and it is a quality I try to practise in my own life, even in small ways, by not taking myself too seriously.

Another thought that stays with me is about his time in Princeton, and about the way he lived simply, in an old house, wearing old clothes, and walking to work each day, with his friend Kurt Godel, talking about mathematics and philosophy. He could have lived in luxury, he could have had a large house, a car, and servants, but he did not want those things. He wanted time to think, and time to walk, and time to play the violin, and that was enough for him. I think that simplicity is a lesson for a world that is obsessed with wealth, and with showing off, because Einstein shows that a rich life is not a life of things, but a life of ideas, of friends, and of curiosity. He was rich in ideas, and that was the only richness that mattered to him.

I also think about the letter to Roosevelt, and about the moral difficulty of it, because it is a story that has no easy answer. He signed the letter because he feared Hitler, and he was right to fear Hitler, and the letter led to the atomic bomb, and the bomb killed hundreds of thousands of people, and Einstein regretted it for the rest of his life. I do not know what I would have done in his place, and I do not think anyone can know, until they are in that place. What I do know is that he thought about it, he spoke about it, and he spent the rest of his life working for peace, and that is the best a person can do after a mistake: learn from it, speak honestly about it, and try to make the world better. That is a lesson in responsibility, and it is one that scientists, and all of us, should remember.

Finally, I want to say something about his famous saying, that imagination is more important than knowledge, because I think it is the most important thing he ever said. Knowledge is what we already know, and it is limited, but imagination is what we do not yet know, and it is unlimited, and it is imagination that leads to new knowledge, to new theories, and to new ways of seeing the world. Einstein imagined riding on a beam of light, he imagined a clock on a train, and he imagined space bending, and those imaginings became the theories that changed physics. I try to remember that when I am learning something new, and when I am stuck: do not just memorise what is known, imagine what could be, and let your imagination take you somewhere new.

In the end, I think Einstein’s life teaches a simple lesson: think for yourself, ask questions, and do not be afraid to be different. He was different, he thought differently, and he changed the world because of it. He was not a perfect man, and he made mistakes, but he was a man who used his mind to its fullest, and who used it to help humanity understand the universe a little better. That is a life worth remembering, and it is a life that will be remembered for as long as people look at the stars and wonder how they work. I also think about the way Einstein’s ideas are used today, in GPS satellites, in nuclear medicine, and in the study of black holes, and about how a theory written by a clerk in a patent office, more than a hundred years ago, is still shaping the technology we use every day. That is a remarkable thing, and it is a reminder that a good idea, written clearly, can outlive its author, and can change the world in ways the author never imagined. Einstein imagined trains and clocks, and his ideas now guide satellites in space, and that is a legacy that is still growing.

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where was Albert Einstein born?

Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Germany, to Hermann Einstein, an engineer, and Pauline Koch. He was a slow speaker as a child and did not speak until he was about three years old, which worried his parents.

What happened in Einstein’s miracle year of 1905?

In 1905, when he was twenty-six and working as a clerk in a patent office in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein published four papers that changed physics: on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equation E=mc2, which says energy and mass are the same thing.

What is the theory of relativity?

Special relativity, from 1905, says that time and space change depending on how fast you are moving, and that the speed of light is the same for everyone. General relativity, from 1915, describes gravity as the bending of space and time by mass, rather than as a force pulling objects together.

When did Einstein win the Nobel Prize?

Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, awarded in 1922, for his work on the photoelectric effect, not for relativity, which was still controversial at the time. He had already become world famous after the 1919 eclipse test proved his theory of general relativity.

Why did Einstein leave Germany?

Einstein left Germany in 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power, because he was Jewish and in danger. He was travelling in America at the time and decided not to return, later becoming an American citizen in 1940 and working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

When did Albert Einstein die?

Albert Einstein died on 18 April 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of seventy-six, after suffering from an abdominal aneurysm, which he refused to have operated on. He had spent his later years working on a unified field theory and speaking out against nuclear weapons.