Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14 into a middle-class assimilated German-Jewish family; by the time of his death on April 18 in Princeton, New Jersey, he was recognized as being equal in accomplishment to Isaac Newton, but one significantly more publicly involved in human affairs.

Life

Einstein showed precociousness in science and mathematics, with mixed accomplishment in other areas. He spent his early professional years in Switzerland working in the patent office. At age twenty-six—in the miracle year of 1905—he published several papers on special relativity, on the particle (photon) nature of light, resulting in the complementary idea that light was both a wave and a particle, and seminal papers in statistical physics. His general theory of relativity, first conceived in about 1907, achieved its final form in 1915. This theory was dramatically confirmed by its successful explanation of the hitherto mysterious precession of the...