Early Life
Born in Ulm, Germany, Einstein showed early aptitude for mathematics and physics. After graduating from ETH Zurich, he worked at the Swiss Patent Office while producing groundbreaking papers.
Annus Mirabilis (1905)
In his "miracle year," Einstein published four papers that transformed physics: the photoelectric effect (establishing light quanta), Brownian motion (confirming atomic theory), special relativity (E=mc²), and mass-energy equivalence.
General Relativity
His 1915 general theory of relativity described gravity as the curvature of spacetime by mass and energy. Its predictions — gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, black holes — have all been experimentally confirmed.