Albert Einstein was a world-famous physicist.
Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879, but grew up in Munich. As a young boy, he did not do well in school. He liked to study math, science, and philosophy at home by himself.
In 1895, Einstein’s family moved to Milan, Italy. He stayed behind to go to school, but soon left to join his family. Again, he studied at home on his own. But, in 1896, on his second try, he became a student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He studied math and physics and graduated in 1900.
In 1901, Einstein got a job in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland. When he wasn’t at work, he did research on physics. In 1903, he married Mileva Maric.
In 1905, the University of Zurich gave him a Ph.D. for an article he wrote on molecular physics. He wrote four other scientific papers that year. The most important one explained his theory of relativity.
Einstein became a professor of physics. He worked at universities in Prague, in Zurich, and, finally, in Berlin. But his wife did not like Berlin. She and their sons went back to Switzerland. Einstein and his wife divorced in 1919. Later that year, he married again.
In 1915, Einstein finished his theory of relativity. In 1919, the scientists in the Royal Society of London said they agreed with his theory. This made Einstein very famous. He gave lectures on relativity around the world. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for Physics. He worked on theories of physics for the rest of his life.
Einstein did not believe in war. When the Nazis gained power in Germany in 1933, he gave up his German citizenship and moved to the United States. Einstein was very upset when the United States used an atomic bomb to end the Second World War. After that, he spent much of his time trying to convince people that an atomic bomb should never be used again.
Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1955.
