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Albert Einstein forever altered humanity’s understanding of the universe. Born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany, Einstein was a curious child from the start. Around age 4, his father showed him a compass that fascinated him; at 10, a family friend introduced the young genius to a set of science and mathematics textbooks that left him spellbound. Though he struggled in school and faced a brief period of unemployment, his intellectual curiosity never faltered. In 1905, while working as a patent clerk in Switzerland, the 26-year-old published a series of groundbreaking papers that revolutionized physics. Two of the papers addressed the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion; the other two outlined the special theory of relativity and introduced the famous equation E=mc².

These theories reconfigured the scientific community’s understanding of space, time, and mass-energy equivalence, and challenged the long-running conventions of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. The work earned Einstein a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich and a growing reputation in the scientific community. By 1915, he was back in his native Germany teaching physics; he also completed his general theory of relativity. Four years later, the theory was proven during a 1919 solar eclipse, thus redefining our understanding of gravity and catapulting Einstein to international fame. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his work on the photoelectric effect.

In 1933, Einstein moved to the United States, where he continued to teach until he retired in 1945. In addition to his scientific achievements, Einstein was also a civil rights advocate, a vocal war opponent, and a defender of freedom of speech and thought — ideologies that had him under the watchful eye of the U.S. government. Einstein was always uncomfortable with his celebrity, but he continued his scientific research as well as his outspoken advocacy until his death in 1955 at the age of 76.