Albert Einstein

Born in the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1879, Einstein moved to Switzerland at sixteen, forsaking German citizenship and enrolling at the Zurich polytechnic in 1897. After graduating in 1900 and taking Swiss citizenship, he worked at the Bern patent office while earning his PhD from the University of Zurich in 1905 - the same year he published four papers that introduced special relativity, explained the photoelectric effect, and proved mass-energy equivalence. In 1915 he proposed general relativity, extending mechanics to gravitation and laying the foundation for modern cosmology with the cosmological constant a year later. He joined the Prussian Academy in Berlin in 1914, but when Hitler rose in 1933, he stayed in the United States and became a citizen in 1940, endorsing the letter that led to the Manhattan Project. He spent his final decades isolated from the mainstream, fighting quantum randomness and chasing a unified field theory that never came. Time named him Person of the Century in 1999.