Was working as a Swiss patent clerk when he published the theory of relativity.
[1] Often used the word "God" or "Old Man" as a metaphor for the Laws of Nature. As a member of the American Humanist Association, there is little reason to think he believed in any kind of personal God. In a letter to Eric Gutkind dated 3 January 1954 he wrote, "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish... For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them." An earlier letter to M. Berkowitz, dated 25 October 1950, uses hedged words to indicate sympathy towards agnosticism but Einstein pointedly refrains from calling himself agnostic: "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." Certainly with this view one cannot call him a Deist as some claim. The careful choice of words thus permits his atheistic view three years later. Einstein publicly claimed on several occasions that he was not an atheist, but it is difficult to square that with the private declarations to Gutkind.
Father: Hermann Einstein (salesman, b. 1847, d. 1902)
Mother: Pauline Koch (b. 1858, d. 1920)
Sister: Maria "Maja" (b. 1881, d. 1951)
Wife: Mileva Maric (b. 1875, m. 6-Jan-1903, div. 14-Feb-1919, d. 1948, three children)
Daughter: Lieserl (b. 1902 prior to marriage, probably put up for adoption)
Son: Hans Albert (hydraulic engineer, b. 1904, d. 1973)
Son: Eduard (b. 1910, d. 1965, schizophrenic)
Wife: Elsa Einstein Löwenthal (his cousin, m. 2-Jun-1919, d. 20-Dec-1936)
University: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
Professor: University of Zurich (1909-)
Professor: Karl-Ferdinand University, Prague (1911-)
Professor: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland (1912-)
Professor: University of Berlin (1914-)
Professor: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (1932-)
American Humanist Association
American Philosophical Society 1930
Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow (1927)
Nobel Prize for Physics 1921
Matteucci Medal 1921
Copley Medal 1925
Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal 1926
Naturalized US Citizen 1940
Autopsy
Sgt. Pepper Lonely Heart
Asteroid Namesake 2001 Einstein
Chemical Element Namesake einsteinium (Es, 99)
Jewish Ancestry
Risk Factors: Dyslexia, Smoking, Orgone
Author of books:
Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1920)
The Meaning of Relativity (1922)
Sidelights on Relativity (1922)
Investigations on the Theory of the Brownian Movement (1926)
About Zionism: Speeches and Letters (1930)
Cosmic Religion: With other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931)
Builders of the Universe: From the Bible to the Theory of Relativity (1932)
Essays in Science (1934)
Out of My Later Years (1950)
Born: 