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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 and begins his schooling there.
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Albert Einstein graduates from high school and begins attending ETH, the prestigious Swiss Polytechnic University in Zurich. Also, at the age of 17, Albert Einstein renounced 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 travels to Italy for a tryst with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Milena Maric. He ends up getting her pregnant. Milena gives birth to Leiserl Einstein, Albert's first child. The unwed couple, unable to care for the girl and perhaps ashamed of her illegitimate status, put her up for adoption.
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Albert Einstein married his longtime girlfriend, Milena Maric.
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A year after marrying Albert, his wife Milena gives birth to the Einsteins' first son, Hans Albert. 6 years later, their second son Eduard was born.
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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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The Nazis seize power in Germany.
Einstein resigns from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and declares that he will not return to Germany.
Einstein moves to the United States with his wife and his secretary Helen Dukas.
Elsa Einstein dies in Princeton.
Einstein signs a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging the acceleration of atomic bomb development. -
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.
Albert Einstein dies of heart failure at the age of 76.
