| Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born to a middle-class German family of Jewish ancestry. In 1905, he wrote a paper explaining his now famous "principle of relativity," and by 1918 he had become known as an international symbol of science. When the First World War broke out, he rejected Germany's aggressive war aims and supported the formation of a pacifist group. In 1933, he left Germany and emigrated to the United States where he advocated preparation against the Nazi threat as he worked to rescue Jewish and victims of the Nazi government. Einstein declined a request that he become the second President of the State of Israel. |
