“When the Special Theory of Relativity began to germinate in me, I was visited by all sorts of nervous conflicts... I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.” — Albert Einstein

Einstein captured the world's attention with his declaration of the space-time relationship, as well as his formula for energy — E=mc².

Where did he come from, and what inspired him?

Childhood

Born as Albert Einstein in Ulm, Germany, shortly before his family moved to Munich, Einstein was fascinated with mathematics at an early age.

“At the age of 12, I experienced a wonder in a booklet dealing with Euclidean plane geometry, which came into my hands at the beginning of a school year. Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, which -- though by no means evident -- could nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. This lucidity [had] certainly made an indescribable impression on me.” — Albert Einstein

He generally got good grades in school, and he was outstanding in mathematics. However, Einstein hated the academic high school he attended in Munich, where success depended on memorization and obedience to arbitrary authority. His real studies were done at home with books on mathematics, physics, and philosophy. A teacher suggested Einstein leave school, since his very presence destroyed the other students' respect for the teacher. The fifteen-year-old boy did quit school in midterm to join his parents, who had moved to Italy.

Education

Einstein's family moved to Italy to start a new business. In 1895, he took an entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and he failed. He was advised to study at a Swiss school in Aarau, and his teachers there allowed him to be creative, never suppressing his mathematical creativity.

At Aarau, his thoughts turned to the theory of electromagnetism formulated by James Clerk Maxwell, seldom taught even in universities at the turn of the century.

From a classroom essay, the 16-year-old Einstein explained why he would like to study theoretical mathematics or physics.

Einstein graduated from the Aarau school and entered the Institute of Technology in Zurich. He recognized physics as his true subject. Only there could he "seek out the paths that led to the depths." He also realized that he could never be an outstanding student. Fortunately his friend Marcel Grossmann had the conventional traits Einstein lacked. While Einstein worked in the library or the laboratory, Grossmann took excellent notes at the mathematics lectures, and gladly shared them with his friend before examinations.

Einstein later wrote, "I would rather not speculate on what would have become of me without these notes."

Life after school

After Einstein graduated with an undistinguished record, he made a number of efforts to get a university job, and failed. He found occasional jobs on the periphery of the academic world. He felt he was a burden on his family, and he wondered if he had been mistaken in trying to become a physicist. Finally he got a position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, Germany. It was "a kind of salvation," he said. The regular salary and the stimulating work evaluating patent claims freed Einstein. He now had time to devote his thought to the most basic problems of physics of his time, and began to publish significant scientific papers in 1905.

Among these papers were those postulating the discovery of light consisting of matter; instruction on how to illustrate heat as being a ceaseless, agitated motion of atoms; the special theory of relativity and the general theory of relativity.

Einstein reported a remarkable consequence of his special theory of relativity: if a body emits a certain amount of energy, then the mass of that body must decrease by a proportionate amount. He wrote a friend, "The relativity principle in connection with the Maxwell equations demands that the mass is a direct measure for the energy contained in bodies; light transfers mass... This thought is amusing and infectious, but I cannot possibly know whether the good Lord does not laugh at it and has led me up the garden path." Einstein and many others were soon convinced of its truth. The relationship is expressed as an equation: E=mc².

Einstein began to attract respect through his published papers, and in 1909 he was appointed associate professor at the University of Zurich. He also was invited to present his theories before the annual convention of German scientists. He met many people he had known only through their writings, such as the physicist Max Planck of Berlin.

World fame

In 1914, the German government gave Einstein a senior research appointment in Berlin, along with a membership in the prestigious Prussian Academy of Sciences. When Einstein had left his native land as a youth, he had renounced German citizenship and all of the militarist German society. But Berlin -- with no teaching duties and a galaxy of top scientists for colleagues -- could not be resisted. It was the highest level a scientific career could ordinarily reach.

Success in his theoretical work was sealed in 1915. The new equations of gravitation had an essential logical simplicity, despite their unfamiliar mathematical form. To describe gravity, the equations showed how the presence of matter warped the very framework of space and time. This warping would determine how an object moved. This led to his "general" theory of relativity, which evolved from the "special" theory of relativity. Einstein tested his theory by correctly calculating a small discrepancy in the motion of the planet Mercury, which astronomers were at a loss to explain.

Read more on NASA's latest mission to test Einstein's general theory of relativity.

In a letter to an astronomer in 1913, Einstein included a sketch that showed how gravity should deflect light near the sun, making stars appear to shift their positions. A photograph from one of the expeditions shows the eclipsed sun. Some stars are circled and artificially enhanced in this reproduction. These apparent positions deviated from the positions of the stars photographed when the sun was elsewhere in the sky. As a ripple in a pane of glass, when objects seen through the glass are distorted, we detect a warping of space itself.

See an image of the "gravitational lens" effect here.

Announcement of the eclipse results caused a sensation. It brought home to the public a transformation of physics, by Einstein and others, that was overturning established views of time, space, matter, and energy.

Einstein became the world's symbol of the new physics. Some journalists took a perverse delight in exaggerating the incomprehensibility of his theory, claiming that only a genius could understand it. More serious thinkers -- philosophers, artists, ordinary educated and curious people -- took the trouble to study the new concepts. These people too chose Einstein as a symbol for thought at its highest.

“I have become rather like King Midas, except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.” — Albert Einstein