Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Albert Einstein

14 March 1879, Ulm – 18 April 1955, Princeton, USA

In 1914 Max Planck succeeded in persuading Albert Einstein to become a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and on 1 April 1914 Einstein was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics. From the 1915 summer semester until the 1928/29 winter semester he lectured at Berliner Universität.

Einstein's main work, the theory of relativity, revolutionized our understanding of space and time. His work on this was published in 1905 under the title 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies'. In Berlin, Einstein found the peace and time to finish his great work. He published it in 1916 together with a paper on the Einstein-de Haas effect.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect, which he had also published in 1905.