'It's a true miracle,' he commented years later, 'that modern education hasn't yet completely smothered the curiosity necessary for scientific study.' If Albert had remained in Germany until he was 16, he would have been obliged to perform military service. He loathed Germany's rigid education system, which was based upon rote learning. But by this time, he had already developed a profound distrust of authority and a hatred of conformity. Albert had only one year left in high school, so he stayed behind. When Albert was 15, his family moved to Milan, Italy. He excelled at math and science, though he often got only mediocre grades in other classes. Legend has it that Einstein was a poor student who flunked out of school, but this was not the case. When Einstein was 12, he taught himself geometry from one of these books. His uncle Jakob Einstein, an electrical engineer, and Max Talmey, a medical student who was a regular guest at family dinners, often loaned him science books. 'Something deeper had to be hidden behind things.'Įinstein was fortunate to have people around him who encouraged his interest in math and science. 'That experience made a deep and lasting impression on me,' he wrote years later. This was his introduction to scientific inquiry.

Young Albert was fascinated by the fact that no matter which way he turned the compass, the needle always pointed the same direction. When he was five years old, he received a compass. Einstein was a quiet child, very observant and self-reliant. His father ran an electrical equipment business, while his mother imbued him with a love of music that would stay with him his whole life. His independent, nonconformist thinking enabled him to shrug off centuries of scientific tradition to come up with astoundingly original theories about the nature of the universe.Įinstein was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany, into a nonreligious Jewish family. A heartfelt humanist, he mistrusted authority. Einstein did not seek fame, but when thrust into the spotlight he chose to use his renown to further the causes of freedom and human rights around the world. His scientific breakthroughs were so breathtaking that his gentle, bemused expression and riot of white hair have come to symbolize genius in the popular imagination. Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist of the 20th century.

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