Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the south German kingdom of Württemberg on March 14, 1879. Following his graduation from the Federal Polytechnical Institute (ETH) in Zurich in 1900 he obtained a job as a patent examiner, ("technical expert, third class") in the Swiss patent office in Bern, starting in the summer of 1902. In January 1903 he married his first wife, Mileva Maric, a fellow student of physics at the ETH and, with Mileva's support, continued his investigations in physics, earning a PhD from the University of Zürich in 1905.

That was Einstein's "miracle year." In 1905 Einstein published the founding papers of the special theory of relativity, including a version of the famous E = mc². Also in 1905 he developed the light quantum hypothesis to treat the photo-electric effect, a work important in the subsequent development of the quantum theory and the official basis of his 1922 award...