Born in Ulm, Germany in 1879, Einstein grew up to be a rebel with a cause. Never backing down and never giving up, he broke down barriers and challenged others to do the same, making him one of the most important people of the 20th century. Einstein had a sister named Maja, and they were both raised by their parents, Hermann and Pauline Einstein. "German by nationality, Jewish by origin, dissenting in spirit, Einstein reacted ambivalently against these three birthday gifts. He threw his German nationality overboard at the age of fifteen but twenty years later, after becoming Swiss, settled in Berlin, where he remained throughout the first world war" (Clark 8).
Albert Einstein was brilliant. In fact, he gained worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize with scientific theories that reshaped traditional Newtonian principles and changed our way of looking at the universe. His theories on relativity explained a number of natural phenomena that traditional Physics had no way of accurately predicting or understanding. Subsequently the great theory of relativity brought Einstein much fame, for this was one of his greatest achievements. Comparable to the special theory, it was fixed on a thought experiment: "Imagine being in an enclosed lab accelerating through space. The effects you'd feel would be no different from the experience of gravity. Gravity, he figured, is a warping of