Albert Einstein was born to Herman and Pauline Eintstein in 1879. At age 10, Einstein began home schooling. He began teaching himself and read all about science. His quest for knowledge kept growing. Einstein read books that were of little interest to children his age. Einstein's uncle was the first to introduce Einstein to geometry at the age of 12.
In 1900, Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich, Switzerland. He was later hired by the Swiss Patent Office as a Probability Technical Expert, Third Class. The work here really bored Einstein. It was undemanding; thus Einstein had time to develop some of his most creative ideas while at work.
In 1905, at the age of 26, Einstein's unimaginable concepts helped create a turning point in the history of physics. Relativity would never again be what it was. Mass was recognized as a form of energy (E=mc?). Einstein proposed that mass is a form of energy. This is the year in which his Special Theory of Relativity was born. Because Einstein's theories were not easily accepted, he continued working at the patent office until 1909. That same year, Einstein was assured an associate professorship at the University of Zurich.
During the 1920s, Einstein worked on trying to combine electromagnetic and gravitational phenomena into a single theory. He called this the Unified Field Theory. Einstein failed to prove this theory and spent the last 25 years of his life working on it. In 1922, Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics.
Albert Einstein was and probably still is one of the most famous scientist of the 20th Century.
He changed the way people thought about science and his concepts affect the way we think today.
Einstein once said:" It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
Books on Albert Einstein:
Einstein: His Life and Times by Philipp Frank
Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark
Einstein's Mirror by Tony Hey, Patrick Walters