Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. After the failure if his parents' business, they moved to Italy. He attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology for a period of time until he failed an exam that would have made him an electrical engineer. He went elsewhere and began the study of physics. One year later in 1896, he returned to the Institute and in four years graduated as a secondary school teacher of physics and mathematics. It may not be known that he was a pacifist throughout his life, and moved to Switzerland in 1900 to avoid the German draft. He worked several jobs in Switzerland, including serving as a patent clerk. He returned to Germany to teach at the Prussian Academy of Science and the University of Berlin in 1914. World War I broke out very soon after his return. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922, for his work with the Photoelectric Effect and not for the Theory of Relativity. In 1933, he left Germany for a vacation in the United States that never ended. The tyranny of Adolf Hitler made him stay in America and accept a full-time position at the school of mathematics at Princeton University. Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955 in his sleep.

His 1905 paper and thesis "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions" was the catalyst for the modern physics revolution. Einstein's theory is also known as Special Relativity which allows us to assume that the laws of physics are in fact the same in all frames of reference. Also, Special Relativity gave the scientific community a better understanding of the speed of light. The second postulate that we can take from Special Relativity is that the speed of light is the same for all observers. Before the revolution of Einstein, physics was based upon the laws of Isaac Newton. Special Relativity does not agree with Newton's Law of Gravity that states when forces acted upon each other, it is in fact instantaneous. In order that these two theories can work together, the effects of gravity must move at or less than the speed of light and not instantly. This helped to put an upper bound on the velocities that humans can reach (3*10^8 m/s). The idea of time dilation can be drawn from this theory. A way to explain this idea is by using the "Twin Paradox." If one twin stays on Earth while the other goes in the rocket approaching the speed of light, turns and returns home, then the earth-bound twin is substantially older than its rocket-bound twin. This is due to the increased speed on the rocket, time slows down for the rocket-bound twin and hence he is younger. One other derivative from these postulates is that simultaneity is simply relative. Simultaneity depends on someone’s inertial frame of reference. Events can no longer be said to occur at the same time. Another result of the Theory of Special Relativity is his famous equation E=m*c^2. Previously, the conservation of mass and energy were separate entities, but now they are combined into one single law. In 1915, Einstein unveiled his Theory of General Relativity that dealt with gravitational forces in terms of an object's curvature. The background of this theory is four dimensional in what can be called space-time. The points on this sort of plane are referred to as events. A hypothesis of this theory was that time should move slower near a more massive body like a planet. This was tested in 1962 by taking two identical clocks and placing one at the base of a mountain and the other on the peak of the mountain. The first ran slower and confirmed the credibility of the theory. The reason for these results is due to the relationship between the frequency and energy of light. As something travels to the outer limits of a field (mountain's peak), the frequency and energy decrease that makes events at the base seem to occur slower.

Albert Einstein was indeed a genius who changed the world and the theories of science forever.