From A Storehouse of Knowledge

Albert Einstein was a German born physicist whose works earned him the reputation of being one of the most brilliant minds in history. He was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, and died in Princeton, United States, on April 14, 1955.

In 1905, when he was still an unknown scientist, and worked in the patent office at Bern, Switzerland, he published his special theory of relativity. There he incorporated concepts and ideas previously studied by Henri Poincare and Hendrick Lorentz into a simple theoretical framework, based on simple physical principles, namely that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames. On that same year he also published a paper explaining the photoelectric effect, which would be nominal in the future development on quantum mechanics, and a paper explaining Brownian motion, which was viewed by many physicists as the final proof for the atomic theory of matter.

In 1915, he presented his general theory of relativity, in which he completely reformulated the principle of gravity. Instead of being an action at a distance force as proposed by Newton, gravity is a consequence of the curvature of space time. Einstein gained a celebrity status when Arthur Eddington, in 1919, measured the bending of light from a star, confirming Einstein theory.

Einstein received the Nobel Prize in physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. He never received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to relativity. Being a Jew, he left Germany and moved to the United States during the Nazi regime. He worked at Princeton University for the rest of his life. During his final years, he tried, without success, to integrate electromagnetic force and gravitational force into a single theory.