Albert Einstein: Life Story, Bio and Facts

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." said a man whose life was steered by his unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Albert Einstein is a name that is synonymous with genius, whose almost surreal personality every mathematician and physicist has tried to equal.

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His brain, which was posthumously removed by a pathologist, has traveled around the world in a jar. Several scientists have scrutinized his preserved brain to try and find out the biological reasons for his ingenuity.The scrutiny Einstein’s brain has endured is astounding – the lack of a certain wrinkle in his brain that supposedly enhanced communication between his neurons, the abundance of glial cells, and other minute details.

But without Einstein’s curiosity and persistence to have his questions answered, all the unusual aspects of his brain would be nothing more than scientifically unimportant abnormalities, and no one would care.

What is it that motivated Einstein take to intricacy of mathematics and physics over climbing trees like other 10-year-olds?

Why is it that Einstein immersed himself in drafting science papers instead of courting ladies like other youngsters his age?

The answer to these high voltage questions and more is a single word: curiosity.

Albert Einstein Story

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany to a salesman-cum-engineer Hermann Einstein.

At the tender age of 5, a pocket compass did to Einstein what a falling apple did to Newton.

Albert was bedridden at age 5 when his father presented him with a pocket compass to entertain him. The child was captivated by the fact that the compass needle pointed in the same direction no matter how he held the compass.

His childhood curiosity about the unseen force that held the compass needle in a specific direction propelled his long term work on magnetic fields.

At the age of 10, Albert Einstein was the proud owner of his first set of books on mathematics and physics. The boy performed well in school, excelling in the subjects he was passionate about.

He did fail in a university examination, securing top marks in mathematics and physics, but performing miserably in geography, history and other subjects.

At the age twenty-six, Albert came up with his two most famous scientific discoveries – the theory of relativity, and the equation e=mc2. 1905 has been dubbed Einstein’s “wonderful year” by his biographers as he published 4 papers that year, with the theory of relativity and the equation being among them.

Deeming Newtonian laws to be insufficient in explaining the interplay of forces, Einstein applied his special theory of relativity to mass, energy and gravity.

His scientific career is bejeweled with a number of groundbreaking discoveries and research, including thermodynamics, quantum theory, photoelectric effect, atoms, cosmology, unified field theory, and wormholes.

Albert Einstein was presented with a variety of awards for his work; a Nobel Prize in Physics, a Matteucci Medal, a Copley Medal and a Max Planck Medal being the most notable ones. He was also declared Person of the Century by Time in 1999.

Einstein was also a pacifist. He renounced his German citizenship the second time (he renounced his citizenship before to be able to study in another nation) because he was overwhelmed by the sheer violence enacted by Hitler.

When Einstein migrated to United States of America, where he was later granted honorary citizenship by F. D. Roosevelt, he warned the country that Germany was developing nuclear weapons, and contributed his research on nuclear fission to help US beef up security.

He worked with Bertrand Russell on nuclear technology. However, when he later realized the terrors that a nuclear bomb could unleash, the two scientists signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto that highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons.

His scientific career is too magnanimous (300 scientific and 150 non-scientific papers are no mean feat) to be conveyed in a single article, and all one can hope to do is to gently scratch the surface.

Einstein was also offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he denounced..

Lessons from Einstein's story

“Dare to dream, and live to achieve those dreams” may sound like a line composed by someone giving a pep talk, but fact remains that the secret to success (if ever there was one) is as simple as that.

Failure, after all, is a term that refers to the state when you stop allowing yourself to accept that you have the ability to attain what you seek.

Albert Einstein progressed by never ceasing to pose questions, and more importantly, by always forging ahead to answer those questions. Every paper he wrote unleashed more questions and his efforts to answer them had him stumble across more discoveries.

Einstein is recorded to have suffered speech impediments as a child, and was unable to speak fluently until the age of 9. He was known to be absent-minded and was ridiculed liberally for the same. However, he paid no heed to these comments and went about his work. This is a trait that one must emulate, as popular opinion has become everything in this glitzy, insubstantial world.

Trace the life of any person who has gone down the history of the world, and you will find that a couple of thought that flitted across their minds, as they let their imaginations loose, that defined them.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world,” said Albert Einstein during an interview.

It is imagination – call it dreams, if you wish – that prepares the mind for healthy growth.

Let your imagination go wild, pose a million questions, and hunt down answers to find the one mystery whose answer will motivate you to explore and discover.

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Short Bio: Who is Albert Einstein?

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). He is best known for his famous equation, E=mc², which shows that energy and mass are interchangeable. Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. He was also a pacifist and civil rights activist. He immigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism in Germany. He died in 1955 at the age of 76.

Albert Einstein Fast Facts

* Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany.
* He was not particularly successful academically in his youth but showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and physics.
* Einstein developed the theory of general relativity, which describes the behavior of gravity and the structure of space and time, between 1907 and 1915.
* He published four papers in 1905 that laid the foundation for modern physics, including the theory of special relativity, which introduced the concept of time dilation.
* Einstein's famous equation, E=mc², shows that energy and mass are interchangeable.
* He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his work on theoretical physics, specifically the photoelectric effect.
* Einstein was a pacifist and civil rights activist. He supported the Zionist movement and later became an advocate for civil rights in the United States.
* He immigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism in Germany.
* Einstein worked at Princeton University for the rest of his life and became a US citizen in 1940.
* He died on April 18, 1955 at the age of 76, after suffering an aortic aneurysm.
* He was a theoretical physicist who made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and cosmology.
* He was also active in the civil rights movement and was a vocal advocate for nuclear disarmament.
* Einstein's brain was preserved for scientific study after his death.

Albert Einstein Top Quotes

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

"Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think."

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

Chief Editor

Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.