Courtesy of Library of Congress

Albert Einstein 1879-1955

So great were Albert Einstein's contributions to the worlds of mathematics and physics that in 1999 Time magazine named him "Person of the Century" and a Gallup poll ranked him the fourth most admired person of the twentieth century. Many schoolchildren can recite Einstein's pioneering theory of relativity - E=mc2 - which helped determine how we understand the universe but the scientist's contributions to our understanding of the physical world extend far beyond the formula he discovered. A Holocaust refugee long affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in theoretical physics, which later would play a key role in the development of fiber optics, telecommunications networks, solar cells, and global positioning systems.