March 14th 1879: Einstein born

todayinhistory:

March 14th 1879: Einstein born

On this day in 1879, the German physicist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm. Despite now being acclaimed as a genius the young Einstein struggled in school, especially dealing with a speech impediment. However he still had a great passion for science, and this interest was encouraged by his Polish tutor, leading him to write his first paper aged sixteen. He went on to study in Zurich, Switzerland, where he met his future first wife Mileva Maric. He had a bad reputation at university, and earned such a poor reference from one of his professors that he struggled to get a job after graduation. In 1905, he published a series of scientific papers, one of which detailed his famous mass-energy equivalence formula - E = mc². These papers were initially neglected by physicists, but after the endorsement of eminent scientist Max Planck, Einstein’s standing rose in the science community. In 1915, Einstein completed his most famous work - the general theory of relativity. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, but not for the relativity theory. Some of his later work included the groundbreaking idea that the universe is not static but in fact constantly expanding. Einstein became a U.S. citizen in 1940, after moving there upon Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany when Einstein became a target of their anti-Semitic policies. He became involved in anti-nuclear arms and equal rights movements. Albert Einstein died in April 1955 aged 76 in Princeton, New Jersey, and is still hailed as one of the greatest scientists in history.