1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Einstein, Albert

EINSTEIN, ALBERT (1879–&emsp;&emsp;), German-Swiss physicist, was born of Jewish parents at Ulm in the kingdom of Württemberg on May 14 1879. His boyhood was spent at Munich where his father, who owned electro-technical works, settled in the early &rsquo;eighties. The family migrated to Italy in 1894, whilst Albert Einstein went to the Cantonschule at Aarau in Switzerland, where he passed the abiturienten examination, the indispensable preliminary to any professional career in Central Europe, two years later. He attended lectures while supporting himself by teaching mathematics and physics at the polytechnic school at Zürich until 1900 and finally, after a year as tutor at Schaffhausen, was appointed examiner of patents at the patent office at Berne, where, having become a Swiss citizen, he remained until 1909. It was during this period that he took his Ph.D. degree at the university of Zürich and published his first papers on physical subjects. These were so highly thought of that in 1909 he was appointed extraordinary professor of theoretical physics at the university of Zürich. In 1911 he accepted the chair of physics in Prague, only to be induced to return to his own polytechnic school at Zürich as full professor in the following year. In 1914 his preëminence had become so evident that a special position was created for him in Berlin, where he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and given a sufficient stipend to enable him to devote all his time to research without any restrictions or duties whatsoever. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1921, having also been made previously a member of the Amsterdam and Copenhagen Academies, while

the universities of Geneva, Manchester, Rostock and Princeton conferred honorary degrees on him.