He was born in Ulm, a city situated on the Danube River.  His father was a salesman and engineer; who along with his uncle founded an electrical engineering company in Munich.  His mother was a quiet woman, well educated, who had a penchant toward the arts and played the piano. At the age of five she insisted her son begin violin lessons.  Although he was born into a Jewish family, they were non-observant Jews so he attended a Catholic elementary school until the age of ten.

It would appear this young boy’s insatiable inquisitiveness nature was awakened when he was still quite young; he was fond of retelling this story to anyone who would listen: "I encountered a wonder of such a kind as a child of 4 or 5 years when my father showed me a compass. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not fit into the way of incidents at all which could find a place in the unconscious vocabulary of concepts (action connected with “touch”).  I still remember – or I think I do – that this incident has left with me a deep impression.  There must have been something behind things that was deeply hidden. To things which man sees from childhood on in front of him he does not respond to in such a way, he does not wonder about the falling of bodies, about wind and rain, not about the moon nor about the moon not falling down and not about the difference between the animate and inanimate."  The young boy was none other than Albert Einstein.  ...more