Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany to middle-class Jews.
In 1886 Einstein started schooling in Munich. He disliked the drilling in school and preferred to study at home. He had violin lessons and was taught Judaism. Later he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium. He studied mathematics, in particular the calculus.

In 1894, Einstein's family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich. In 1895 Einstein failed to enter Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich to study for a diploma in electrical engineering. Einstein renounced German citizenship in 1896 and was stateless for a number of years. He applied for Swiss citizenship and it was granted in 1901. After failing the entrance exam to the ETH, Einstein attended secondary school at Aarau. Later he tried but failed to become an assistant at ETH in Zurich.

In 1901 he wrote to universities hoping to get a job, but without success. He managed to avoid Swiss military service because he had flat feet and varicose veins. By mid 1901 he had a temporary job as a teacher, teaching mathematics at the Technical High School in Winterthur.
Then the father of Grossmann (one of his friends) helped Einstein get a job at the patent office in Bern. Einstein was appointed as a technical expert third class.
In 1905 Einstein earned a doctorate from the University of Zurich for a thesis "On a new determination of molecular dimensions" which he dedicated to Grossmann.

In 1905, while in the Bern patent office, he wrote three papers.
In the first of three papers Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in discrete quantities. The energy of these quanta was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This seemed to contradict classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics which assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves which could contain any small amount of energy. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe the electromagnetic radiation of light.
Einstein's second paper proposed the special theory of relativity. He based his new theory on a reinterpretation of the classical principle of relativity, namely that the laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all frames of reference, as required by Maxwell's theory. Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent ( E = mc² ). Einstein was not the first to propose all the components of special theory of relativity. His contribution was unifying important parts of classical mechanics and Maxwell's electrodynamics.
The third of Einstein's papers concerned statistical mechanics.

In 1906 he was promoted to technical expert second class. He made important contributions to quantum theory, but he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The key appeared in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held to be indistinguishable from acceleration caused by mechanical forces. Gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass. In 1908 Einstein became a lecturer at the University of Bern. The following year he become professor of physics at the University of Zurich.

By 1909 Einstein was recognised as a leading scientific thinker and in that year he resigned from the patent office. He was appointed a full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911.
In 1911 Einstein made preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun. This led to the first experimental evidence in favour of Einstein's theory.
About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, with the help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossmann. Einstein called his new work the general theory of relativity. He moved from Prague to Zurich in 1912 to take up a chair at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Einstein returned to Germany in 1914 but did not reapply for German citizenship. He accepted an  offer of a research position in the Prussian Academy of Sciences together with a chair at the University of Berlin. He was also offered the directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics in Berlin.

In 1915, Einstein published the definitive version of general theory. Just before publishing this work he lectured on general relativity at Göttingen. In fact Hilbert submitted for publication, a week before Einstein completed his work, a paper which contained the correct field equations of general relativity.
In 1919 when Eddington confirmed Einstein's prediction concerning deflection of starlight, Einstein was idolised by the popular press.

During 1921 Einstein made his first visit to the United States. His main reason was to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However he received the Barnard Medal during his visit and lectured several times on relativity.
In 1921 Einstein received the Nobel Prize  but not for relativity rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. In fact he was not present in December 1922 to receive the prize as he was on a voyage to Japan. Among further honours which Einstein received were the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1925 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1926. Indeed Einstein's life had been so hectic that he became very ill but he recovered fully.

In 1932, on a third visit to the United States he was offered a post at Princeton. He accepted and left Germany in December 1932 for the United States. The following month the Nazis came to power in Germany and Einstein was never to return to Germany.
In 1933 the Nazi government of Germany took away his property, his position and his citizenship. Einstein moved permanently to the United States where he became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In the same year, Hubble and Humanson discovered the recessional nature of galaxies and Einstein's theories of the universe took shape.
In 1935 he applied and was granted permanent residency in the United States. At Princeton his work attempted to unify the laws of physics.
In 1939, Einstein urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to engage the United States in uranium research. He did not foresee that the first bomb would fall on Japan. In 1940 Einstein became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain his Swiss citizenship.
In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six million dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of Congress.
>By 1949 Einstein was unwell. He recovered and he began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950. He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a university which he served as a governor from 1925 to 1928.

In 1952, after the death of the first president of Israel, the Israeli government decided to offer the post of second president to Einstein. He refused but was embarrassed since it was hard for him to refuse without causing offence.
Albert Einstein tried to combine electromagnetic and gravitational phenomena in a single theory, called the Unified Field Theory. Although he spent the last 25 years of his life working on it he failed to establish this theory.
Even though he was not associated with any religion, he believed that there is a God. He never believed that the universe is one of chance or chaos.
One week before his death Einstein wrote his last letter to Bertrand Russell in which he agreed that his name should go on a manifesto urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons. It is fitting that one of his last acts was to argue, as he had done all his life, for international peace.
On April 18, 1955, at the age of 76, Eistein died peacefully.
Einstein is arguably the greatest theoretical physicist who ever lived.

The Special Theory Of Relativity
Postulate 1:
Observers can never detect their uniform motion except relative to other objects.
The Laws of Physics look the same to all observers as long as they are not accelerating.
Postulate 2:
The speed of light is the same for all observers regardless of their relative motions.
Some Features of Special Relativity:
speed of light (c) is the speed limit for matter.
mass increases with increasing velocity.
time slows down with increasing velocity.
length decreases with increasing velocity.
mass and energy are interchangeable.

The General Theory of Relativity
Principle of Equivalence: Observers cannot distinguish locally between forces due to acceleration and forces due to gravitation.
Modern Statement of GR: Matter tells space-time how to curve; Space-time tells matter how to move.
Some Features of General Relativity:
space-time is curved in the vicinity of matter.
time slows down in the presence of gravitational fields.
light is deflected in gravitational fields.

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