Albert Einstein was born in a Jewish family on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. The fact that he was Jewish influenced his life later on, often in ways contrary to what he wanted.

His father, Hermann, owned a private company that manufactured electrical materials and equipment, which allowed the family to live a comfortable life. Hermann worked together with his brother Jakob, an engineer, who had a strong influence on Albert Einstein and who helped him master the basics of mathematics and physics. On the other hand, Einstein got his musical talent from his mother. Throughout his whole life, Einstein and his violin were inseparable, something which helped him overcome difficult times. His life was filled with such difficulties, which came as a consequence of either his own or someone else’s actions. Einstein had a sister named Maja who was 4 years younger than him, born in 1883.

His parents had a rich home library, so with the help of his family, Einstein familiarized himself with the world of literature, art and science. He did not start to speak until he was two and a half years old, and his speech problems still continued when he started school.

There was not much difference between Einstein and his peers, except for one shortcoming - he was not very social. He preferred to stay withdrawn and make up his own creative ways to play. So quite early on, Einstein’s family took notice of his incredible patience and preciseness when it came to solving certain problems.

When Einstein was a child, the most outlandish discovery for him was a compass needle shown to him by his father. By himself, he realized that there had to be something in our surroundings which operated that needle.

Einstein started first grade at the age of 6, on October 1, 1885 in Munich. The school system, the behavior of the teachers towards the students and the teaching methods characteristic of that period were difficult for Einstein, since there was no room left for creativity, and instead, learning had to be done mechanically and without much comprehension, which did not suit him at all.

He was a good student who liked to learn, mostly demonstrating knowledge in the fields of mathematics and physics. Before the start of each new school year, he would always learn ahead by reading from mathematics and physics books. Later on, he also enrolled into secondary school in Munich, but was still unable to come to terms with how unsuitable the German schooling system was.

When he was 15 years old, his father and uncle moved their factory to Italy. However, Einstein was supposed to stay in Munich and complete his secondary education. He was unable to do so though because the conditions there were not suited to him, so by the age of 16 he had already joined his family.

Even as a boy, Einstein had a negative attitude towards the army and everything that had to do with any form of slavery and training of men. Later on, he wrote a lot and made public statements on this topic. He always wanted to feel free, just as his brilliant mind was. This sort of attitude was not at all helpful to him once the Nazis came to power in Germany. The last thing they needed was someone who would make such public statements about the army and wars, since they were rapidly working towards the militarization of both the population and their minds. On one occasion, his mother told him that he would also become a good and useful soldier when he grew up, to which, to his mother’s surprise, he yelled,

“When I grow up, I will not become one of those wretches”.

Yet, his Jewish ancestry was a greater problem for him.

Later, Einstein enrolled into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, but because he was yet to finish secondary school, he had to take an entrance exam. In that exam, he demonstrated above average knowledge of mathematics and physics, becoming a student without any difficulty.

It was during his studies in Zurich that Einstein met Mileva Marić, originally from Vojvodina, whom he later married. At the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, he was enrolled in grade VI, which was intended for those wanting to become teachers of mathematics and physics.

Working and dealing with scientific problems by himself was what made Einstein happiest. He found this fulfilling. While his fellow students were often out drinking, he stayed at home, developing his ideas. What interested him most was Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism on the wave nature of light.

We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.

Einstein had an entirely new worldview which was completely original. In 1905, he postulated his well-known Special theory of relativity (STR). In the same year, he published some other works, among which was the paper on the photoelectric effect for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 16 years later.

Einstein’s Special theory of relativity was originally based on two postulates. According to the first postulate, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and invariable. It is the same in all inertial frames and the speed of light represents the highest possible speed of information transfer. The second postulate claims that all laws of physics are invariant in inertial frames, i.e. systems which have a uniform rectilinear movement.

Galileo Galilei claimed that all laws of mechanics are the same in all systems that move rectilinearly at constant velocity. Einstein expanded this principle to all domains of physics and not just the laws of mechanics.

For most scientists of that period, the Special theory of relativity seemed hardly acceptable. It was transforming their Newtonian worldview, which was deeply rooted until then. In Newtonian physics, there were no limitations with regard to achieving high velocity in nature. However, according to the Special theory of relativity, the highest velocity in nature is the speed of light and it is approximately 300,000 km/s, denoted by c. No material body is capable of achieving the speed of light, which is explained through Einstein’s best known formula.

His considerations about space and time pointed to another consequence of his perception of the world. What he realized was that space and time should not be viewed as separate entities, as previously thought, but as a continuum. In other words, spacetime is a four-dimensional area made up of one temporal and three spatial dimensions that are interconnected.

In his 1905 paper titled “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?” discussing a highly complex subject of interrelation of mass, energy and inertia, Einstein concluded: “If a body gives off energy in the form of radiation, then its mass diminishes with the quotient of that energy and the squared velocity of light propagation.”

This conclusion led to the creation of Einstein’s famous formula according to which the energy of a body equals its mass multiplied by the speed of light squared:

E=mc²

According to this formula, the maximum amount of energy a body can produce that can be transformed into useful work is equivalent to the mass of that body multiplied by the speed of light squared.

This formula proved that mass and energy are interconnected units, i.e. the two are equivalent. It was used to explain various problems for which there had been no solution up to that point, one of which had to do with the enormous amount of energy emitted from the Sun’s surface.

Back in his university days, Einstein’s great love was Mileva Marić. Upon completing their studies, the couple tried to find a way to stay together, on the condition that Einstein should find a steady job, while she was staying with her parents in Serbia. Finding a job was not an easy task for him because he was not selected for the position of assistant at his university, and all other places he sent job application letters to rejected him. Then in 1901 they found out that Mileva was pregnant. This made their entire situation even more difficult.

After a series of failed attempts to find a job, in the middle of 1902, with the help of his classmate’s father, Einstein finally got a job at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Mileva Marić joined him at the end of the year, but without their child. Apparently, it was not known that that child had existed until some 35 years ago when it was discovered from Einstein’s old letters. It is assumed that the child died in September of 1903, and was very likely to have been a girl. However, in 1904 the couple had their first son whom they named Hans Albert, and in 1910 their second son Eduard.

While he was working at the Patent office, no one could have guessed that young Einstein was developing a theory that was about to change the way we see the world. Since his duties at the Patent office were few, he had time for his research. It is known that the only tools Einstein used to write down his ideas were pen and paper.

In 1906, Einstein was awarded a PhD, but he had some difficulties with it because the committee found his dissertation too short. However, as he later stated, he only added one sentence to his work. The fact that his scientific papers were just a few pages long spoke in favor of his simple view of the world and the incredible understanding with which he perceived the processes that took place in it.

After publishing the Special theory of relativity, Einstein gained world fame, which led to him getting an invitation from the University of Zurich, where his academic career began on October 15, 1909. After that, many European universities wanted to have this physicist on their team.

Therefore, an invitation from the German University in Prague, which had a professorship position available, soon followed. They wanted Einstein to be a full professor of theoretical physics. He took this position, but remained there for no more than 3 semesters. The reason for this was that he got another invitation, this time for a professorship at ETH Zurich, the school from which he had graduated. Once again, he was teaching theoretical physics. This was also quite suitable for his family, since Mileva had been trying to persuade him to move back to Switzerland for a long time.

Max Planck, the originator of quantum mechanics and the Secretary of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, wanted Einstein to work at their institute. At the time, his relationship with Mileva Marić was failing, because he was also involved with his cousin Elsa who lived in Berlin, where he often stayed. In 1913, Planck finally travelled to Zurich himself to offer Einstein the position of full professor. Einstein hesitated for a while, but ultimately accepted the offer. One of the reasons was his unstable relationship with Mileva and the fact that his future wife Elsa lived in Berlin. He moved to Berlin in March, 1914.

Separation from his family was difficult for Einstein, and according to his biographers, when the family was saying their goodbyes at the train station, he cried for the second time in his life. In Berlin, however, he did not have much time to think about family issues because most of his time was taken up with social engagements, both because of his popularity and because he was working on solving his own scientific problems.

Thus he left his wife, who suffered from depression, and his two sons, the younger one of whom had a serious mental illness. Mileva’s sister had suffered from the same illness. Eduard died in 1965 in a psychiatric hospital.

Einstein started to study non-inertial frames of reference back when he was living in Prague, trying to discover the behavior of certain laws of nature. The Special theory of relativity was developed not just by Einstein, but also by several scientists before him, whereas the General theory of relativity (GTR) represents Einstein’s completely original work.

In 1911, Einstein published his first paper about the General theory of relativity titled “On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light”. Later on, he began introducing his colleagues to the issues related to the General theory of relativity. Only a very small number of scientists of that period were able to understand the theory at first attempt. Then on November 4, 1915, Einstein presented his paper at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and from that point, the development of the General theory of relativity had officially begun.

In 1921, while he was on a boat travelling to Japan, Einstein received the news that he had been given the Nobel Prize in Physics. Reportedly, he seemed very cold and restrained, perhaps because of the fact that this award was for his research paper on the photoelectric effect, and not the theory of relativity.

In December of 1932, Einstein, pressured by the Nazis, left Germany and moved to Princeton, New Jersey, USA. During his earlier visits to the USA, Einstein had made acquaintances who in this case made it possible for him to move from one continent to another without much difficulty and continue his research.

After moving to the USA, Einstein spent most of his time working on his unified field theory. Quantum physics explains the behavior of phenomena in the micro-world (atoms and electrons), whereas his theories explain the phenomena in the macro-world (stars, galaxies).

Quantum physics offers no explanation for the macro-world, while relativity offers no explanation for the micro-world. Einstein believed that the same laws apply in both of these worlds. That is why he spent the final years of his life developing his unified field theory, which he unfortunately did not manage to complete. However, this theory remains to this day a difficult problem in physics for which no one has yet found a solution.

Einstein was uncomfortable with being paid solely for his scientific research, so he often gave lectures to various individuals, experts, groups of students and anyone else who wanted to specialize in the field in which Einstein had gained world fame.

A few days before he died, knowing that he did not have much time left, Einstein asked for a pen and a piece of paper, and said, “I need to make some more calculations.”

He retired in April, 1944, but his life was not significantly changed. He still went to his office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton every day, stayed there for approximately two hours, and went home. April 12, 1955 was no different, although on that day he did not appear to be in full health. The next day, his health suddenly deteriorated and he ended up in hospital with heart problems. On April 18, an hour after midnight, a nurse heard that Einstein became upset in his bed and he then said something in German, which the nurse failed to understand. Thus, Einstein’s last words remain unknown, and we can do nothing but speculate. That night, he died at the age of 76, as one of the most appreciated scientists in history.