Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Einstein was born at Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. Encouraged by his father, who was an electrical engineer, Einstein studied at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute until the age of 21, shortly afterwards starting work at the Swiss patent office. Although famous for his papers on special and general relativity, he won the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect. Einstein died on 18 April, 1955 without completing his grand unified theory of the fundamental forces.