Albert Einstein

Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on Mar. 14, 1879. Einstein's parents, who were non observant Jews, moved from Ulm to Munich when Einstein was an infant. The family business was the manufacture of electrical parts. When the business failed, in 1894, the family moved to Milan, Italy. At this time Einstein decided officially to relinquish his German citizenship. Within a year, still without having completed secondary school, Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to …

…next year Einstein received a regular appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich. By 1909, Einstein was recognized throughout German-speaking Europe as a leading scientific thinker. In quick succession he held professorships at the German University of Prague and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In 1914 he advanced to the most prestigious and best-paying post that a theoretical physicist could hold in central Europe, professor at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin.