Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was born in Ulm, in the German Empire, grew up in Munich, and studied at the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. While working as an examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern he published, in 1905, papers on the light quantum, Brownian motion and the electrodynamics of moving bodies, the last of which founded the special theory of relativity. After posts in Zurich and Prague he moved to Berlin in 1914 as a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and in November 1915 he completed the general theory of relativity. The confirmation of its prediction of the bending of starlight during the solar eclipse of 1919 made him world-famous. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded in 1922, for his work on the photoelectric effect. In 1933 he left Germany and settled at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked until his death.
Relativity: The Special and General Theory is Albert Einstein's own explanation of his two theories of relativity for readers who know no higher mathematics. He dated the preface December 1916, and the book appeared in German in 1917 as Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (gemeinverständlich), published by Vieweg in Braunschweig.
