On this date in history (Ulm, Germany in 1879) -- Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein!

from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor, American Public Media):

Today, March 14 is the birthday of Albert Einstein, born in Ulm, Germany (1879). He was homeschooled during his early years; when he entered a more formal educational environment, he was a good student, but he was generally disrespectful of his teachers, because he knew more than they did. When he graduated, none of his instructors would give him the letters of recommendation he needed to get a job in academia, so his first job was as a technical assistant for the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. He enjoyed the work and, more importantly, it gave him lots of free time at home to work out his own theories of physics. Since he was outside of the academic scientific community, he wasn't bothered about what other people thought.
In 1905 -- a year he called his annus mirabilis -- he obtained his doctorate and published four important papers. One of these was on his Special Theory of Relativity, which states that absolute space and absolute time don't exist; they are relative to each other and should be represented as "space-time." The only universal constant is the speed of light, which never changes under any circumstances. Light from a fast-moving object still travels at the same speed as light from a slow-moving object, so the only explanation is that time itself is elastic and moves more slowly relative to the fast-moving object. It was a revolutionary theory, but it still wasn't enough to get him an academic job; he did get a promotion at the patent office, though. He was 26 years old. Four years later, in 1909, he got a job as an adjunct professor of theoretical physics in Zurich; five years after that, he moved to Berlin, and began work on his General Theory of Relativity, which he published in 1916.