He is Albert Einstein. His development of the special and general theories of relativity, his role in the development of the quantum theory, his contributions to our understanding of Brownian motion and the foundations of statistical physics mark him as the greatest scientist since Newton.

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm on 14 March, 1879. Einstein excelled at math and physics from a young age, reaching a mathematical level years ahead of his peers. The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer. By the time of age 13, he already had a predilection for solving complicated problems in applied arithmetic. During his vacation, he set to work on theorems, not by taking their proofs from books, but rather by attempting to prove them for himself. For days he sat alone and was immersed in the search for a solution. He even found an entirely original solution for the Pythagorean theorem. In 1896, he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics, where his remarkable career began.