Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, around 11:30 AM LMT, to a Jewish family, in the city of Ulm in W�rttemberg, Germany, about 100 km east of Stuttgart. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman who later ran an electrochemical works, and his mother was Pauline n�e Koch. They were married in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.
At his birth, Albert's mother was reputedly frightened that her infant's head was so large and oddly shaped. Though the size of his head appeared to be less remarkable as he grew older, it's evident from photographs of Einstein that his head was disproportionately large for his body throughout his life, a trait regarded as "benign macrocephaly" in large-headed individuals with no related disease or cognitive deficits.
Another more famous aspect of Einstein's childhood is the fact that he spoke much later than the average child. Einstein claimed that he did not begin speaking until the age of three and only did so hesitantly, even beyond the age of nine (see "Speculation and controversy" section). Because of Einstein's late speech development and his later childhood tendency to ignore any subject in school that bored him � instead focusing intensely only on what interested him � some observers at the time suggested that he might be "retarded", such as one of the Einstein family's housekeepers. This latter observation was not the only time in his life that controversial labels and pathology would be applied to Einstein. (See again, "Speculation and controversy".)
Albert's family members were all non-observant Jews and he attended a Catholic elementary school. At the insistence of his mother, he was given violin lessons. Though he initially disliked the lessons, and eventually discontinued them, he would later take great solace in Mozart's violin sonatas.
When Einstein was five, his father showed him a small pocket compass, and Einstein realized that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience as one of the most revelatory events of his life. He built models and mechanical devices for fun and showed great mathematical ability early on.
In 1889, a medical student named Max Talmud (later: Talmey), who visited the Einsteins on Thursday nights for six years, introduced Einstein to key science and philosophy texts, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Two of his uncles would further foster his intellectual interests during his late childhood and early adolescence by recommending and providing books on science, mathematics and philosophy.
Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received a relatively progressive education. He began to learn mathematics around age twelve; in 1891, he taught himself Euclidean plane geometry from a school booklet and began to study calculus; Einstein realized the power of axiomatic deductive reasoning from Euclid's Elements, which Einstein called the "holy little geometry book"[3] (given by Max Talmud). While at the Gymnasium, Einstein clashed with authority and resented the school regimen, believing that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in such endeavors as strict memorization.
In 1894, following the failure of Hermann Einstein's electrochemical business, the Einsteins moved from Munich to Pavia, a city in Italy near Milan. Einstein's first scientific work, called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields", was written contemporaneously for one of his uncles. Albert remained behind in Munich lodgings to finish school, completing only one term before leaving the gymnasium in the spring of 1895 to rejoin his family in Pavia. He quit a year and a half prior to final examinations without telling his parents, convincing the school to let him go with a medical note from a friendly doctor, but this meant that he had no secondary-school certificate. That year, at the age of 16, he performed the thought experiment known as "Albert Einstein's mirror". After gazing into a mirror, he examined what would happen to his image if he were moving at the speed of light; his conclusion, that the speed of light is independent of the observer, would later become one of the two postulates of special relativity.
Although he excelled in the mathematics and science part of entrance examinations for the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Z�rich, today the ETH Z�rich, his failure of the liberal arts portion was a setback; his family sent him to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school, and it became clear that he was not going to be an electrical engineer as his father intended for him. There, he studied the seldom-taught Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and received his diploma in September 1896. During this time, he lodged with Professor Jost Winteler's family and became enamoured with Sofia Marie-Jeanne Amanda Winteler, commonly referred to as Sofie or Marie, their daughter and his first sweetheart. Einstein's sister, Maja, who was perhaps his closest confidant, was to later marry their son, Paul, and his friend, Michele Besso, married their other daughter, Anna. Einstein subsequently enrolled at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in October and moved to Z�rich, while Marie moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post. The same year, he renounced his W�rttemberg citizenship.
In the spring of 1896, the Serbian Mileva Mari� started initially as a medical student at the University of Z�rich, but after a term switched to the Federal Polytechnic Institute to study as the only woman that year for the same diploma as Einstein. Mari�'s relationship with Einstein developed into romance over the next few years, though his mother would cry that she was too old, not Jewish, and physically defective.
In 1900, Einstein was granted a teaching diploma by the Federal Polytechnic Institute. Einstein then submitted his first paper to be published, on the capillary forces of a drinking straw, titled "Folgerungen aus den Capillarit�tserscheinungen", which translated is "Consequences of the observations of capillarity phenomena" (found in "Annalen der Physik" volume 4, page 513). In it, he tried to unify the laws of physics, an attempt he would continually make throughout his life. Through his friend Michele Besso, an engineer, Einstein was presented with the works of Ernst Mach, and would later consider him "the best sounding board in Europe" for physical ideas. During this time, Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends, including Besso and Mari�. The men referred to themselves as the "Olympia Academy". Einstein and Mari� had a daughter out of wedlock, Lieserl Einstein, born in January 1902. Her fate is unknown; some believe she died in infancy, while others believe she was given out for adoption.
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