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Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, Germany, the son of Hermann Einstein, a German-Jewish featherbed salesman, and his wife Pauline.
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At the age of five, Albert Einstein becomes fascinated by his father's pocket compass, intrigued by invisible forces that cause the needle always to point north. Later in life, Einstein will look back at this moment as the genesis of his interest in science.
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Struggling financially, the Einstein family moves from Germany to Italy in search of better work. Albert, aged fifteen, stays behind in Munich to finish his schooling, but soon either quits or is kicked out of his high school and follows his parents to Italy.
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Albert Einstein attempts to get out of his last year of high school by taking an entrance exam to ETH, the Swiss Polytechnic University in Zurich. He fails the test, forcing him to attend one final year of high school in the small town of Aarau, Switzerland, instead.
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Albert Einstein graduates from high school and begins attending ETH, the prestigious Swiss Polytechnic University in Zurich.
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At the age of 17, Albert Einstein renounces his German citizenship to avoid mandatory military service in the German army. For the next four years, he will not be a legal citizen of any nation.
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Albert Einstein graduates from ETH with a degree in physics. He tries to find a teaching job, but is unable to obtain work.
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Unable to find any work as a teacher or academic, Albert Einstein takes a job as a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office.
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A year after marrying Albert, his wife Milena gives birth to the Einsteins' first son, Hans Albert.
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Albert Einstein's wife Milena gives birth to their second son, Eduard.
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Einstein completes his General Theory of Relativity.
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Albert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect, first published in 1905.
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Albert Einstein and his family, fearing anti-Semitic persecution, flee from Nazi Germany to resettle in the United States. Einstein takes a post at Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, where he will remain until his death in 1955.
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For the third time in his life, Albert Einstein changes his nationality, becoming a United States citizen while also retaining his Swiss citizenship.
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Albert Einstein dies of heart failure at the age of 76.