Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the most influential scholars of the twentieth century. His work continues to help astronomers study everything from gravitational waves to the orbit of Mercury.

The world equation that helped explain special relativity - E = mc ^ 2 - is popular even among those who don't understand its basic physics. Einstein is also known for his theory of general relativity (the explanation of gravity), and the photoelectric effect (which explains the behavior of electrons under certain conditions); His work on the latter earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
Einstein tried in vain to unify all the forces of the universe into a single theory, or theory of everything, that he was still working on at the time of his death.

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, a city today with a population of over 120,000. There is a small memorial plaque where his home stood (destroyed during WWII). The family moved to Munich shortly after his birth, and then moved to Italy when his father had problems running his own business. Einstein's father, Hermann, ran an electrical plant, and his mother Pauline took care of Albert and his younger sister, Maria.
Einstein wrote in his diary that two "wonders" profoundly affected his early years, according to Hans-Joseph Cooper, a researcher on Albert Einstein. Young Einstein encountered his first wonder - the compass - at the age of five: he was baffled that unseen forces could deflect a needle. This would lead to a lifelong fascination with unseen forces. The second miracle came at the age of twelve when he discovered a book of engineering that he worshiped, and he called it "The Book of Sacred Engineering."

Contrary to popular belief, the young Albert was a good student. Cooper wrote on his website that he excelled in physics and mathematics, but was a more "moderate" student in other subjects. However, Einstein rebelled against the authoritarian position of some of his teachers and left school at the age of 16.

Later, he took an entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, and while his performance in physics and mathematics was excellent, his grades in other fields were sub-par, and he did not pass the test. The aspiring physicist took additional courses to bridge the gap in his knowledge, was accepted into the Swiss Polytechnic in 1896, and in 1901 he obtained his degree in teaching physics and mathematics.

However, Einstein could not find a teaching job, and he began working in the patent office in Bern in 1901, according to his Nobel Prize-winning biography. While there, between the analysis of patent applications, he developed his work in special relativity and other areas of physics that would later make him famous.
Einstein married Mileva Maric, a long-time love of him from Zurich, in 1903. They had children, Hans Albert and Edward, in 1904 and 1910. Einstein divorced Marek in 1919 and soon after he married Elsa Loventhal. Löwenthal died in 1933.

Einstein's work was validated in 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington, secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, led an expedition to Africa that measured the position of the stars during a total solar eclipse. The group found that the position of the stars had changed due to the bending of light around the sun. (In 2008, BBC / HBO dramatized the story in "Einstein and Eddington.")

Einstein remained in Germany until 1933, when dictator Adolf Hitler came to power. Then the physicist renounced his German citizenship and moved to the United States to become professor of theoretical physics at Princeton University. He became a US citizen in 1940 and retired in 1945.
Einstein remained active in the physics community throughout his later years. In 1939, he wrote a famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning that uranium could be used to build an atomic bomb.
Late in Einstein's life, he engaged in a series of private discussions with physicist Niels Bohr about the validity of quantum theory. Bohr theories prevailed, and Einstein later incorporated quantum theory into his own calculations.

Einstein died of an aortic aneurysm on April 18, 1955. A blood vessel exploded near his heart, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). When asked if he wanted to have surgery, Einstein refused. He said: I want to go when I want to go. Artificially extending life is tasteless. I did my job; it's time to go. I will do it in style.

Einstein's body was cremated - most of it, however -; His ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location, according to the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. However, Princeton Hospital physician Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy, apparently without permission, and removed Einstein's brain and eyeballs, according to Matt Blitz, who wrote about Einstein's brain in a 2015 column for Today I Found Out.
Harvey has sliced ​​hundreds of thin sections of brain tissue for placement on microscopic slides, taking 14 images of the brain from multiple angles. He took brain tissue, slides, and photos with him when he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he was a medical supervisor in a biological testing laboratory. [Photo Gallery: Einstein's Brain]

Over the next 30 years, Harvey sent a few slices to other researchers who requested them, but he kept the rest of the brain in two glass jars, sometimes in a juice box under a beer cooler. The story of Einstein's brain was largely forgotten until 1985, when Harvey and colleagues published results of their study in the journal Experimental Neurology.