“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein Biography

Albert Einstein was born into a non-observant Ashkenazi Jewish family on 14 March 1879 in Ulm a city on the River Danube in what was then the Kingdom of Württemberg, in the German Empire. It is now in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. His parents were Pauline Koch and Hermann Einstein who was an engineer and a salesman.

Not long after Albert was born, in 1880, the Einstein family moved to Munich where Hermann and his brother Jakob founded a company which manufactured electrical equipment. From the age of five, Albert attended a Catholic school in Munich and transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium three years later. He continued his primary and secondary education there for the next seven years.

In 1894, the Einstein family were forced to relocate again due to the failure of Hermann and Jakob’s business. They headed to Italy, first to Milan and then to Pavia but Albert stayed behind in Munich to complete his studies. He became more and more frustrated with the gymnasium’s method of teaching though and he clashed with the authorities there and so when the family moved to Pavia, he joined them in December 1894.

The following year, at the age of sixteen, Albert Einstein sat but failed the entrance exam for entry into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. It was noticed though that it was the general studies part of the exam that performed poorly on, whereas his performance on the physics and mathematics parts was excellent. So, he became a pupil at the Argovian cantonal school in Aarau instead, which is where he completed his secondary education.

In January 1896, in order to avoid military service, Albert Einstein renounced his citizenship of the Kingdom of Württemberg and in September of the same year, he passed the Swiss high school exit exam, the Matura, with passable grades. At the age of only seventeen, he then enrolled in a four-year teaching diploma in physics and mathematics at Zurich Polytechnic.

During his time in Zurich Albert Einstein also met his future wife, Mileva Marić who had enrolled on the same course. In 1900, Einstein was awarded his diploma, but Mileva failed the mathematics portion of the exam.

After graduating, Einstein looked for a teaching post. In 1901, he became a Swiss citizen and took a job as an assistant examiner – level III at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property where he evaluated patent applications. After searching for a teaching post for two years and failing to find one, the patent office job became permanent in 1903.

Letters between Albert Einstein and Mileva which were discovered in 1987 reveal that the couple had a daughter in 1902 while Mileva was staying with her parents in Novi Sad in Serbia. However, when she returned to Switzerland she came without the child and its fate is unknown but it is believed she was either adopted or died of scarlet fever.

Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić were married in January of 1903 and in May 1904, Hans Albert Einstein, their first son was born in Bern, Switzerland. Eduard, their second son was born in Zurich in July 1910. The family moved to Berlin but it was to become apparent, that Albert had fallen in love with his first cousin, Elsa. Mileva moved back to Zurich and after five years apart, they divorced in February 1919. The same year, Albert Einstein and Elsa were married.

On 30 April 1905, completed his thesis with his Pro-forma advisor Alfred Kleiner and a dissertation entitled “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions”, and was awarded a PhD from the University of Zurich. In the same year, which would become known as his miracle year or annus mirabilis Einstein, at the age of only 26 published four papers that brought him to the attention of the academic world. The four papers covered the photoelectric effect,