Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the twentieth century. His theory of special relativity (1905) and general relativity (1916), alongside his work on the photoelectric effect, transformed our understanding of space, time, light and gravity, and Ideas and Opinions collects his reflections on science, politics and humanism.

Emigrating to the United States in 1933 after the Nazis' seizure of power, Einstein was appointed at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A passionate pacifist and internationalist, he lent his enormous celebrity to causes from civil rights to nuclear disarmament, warning famously that the splitting of the atom had changed everything but our thinking.