Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879 and made revolutionary contributions to physics and our understanding of the universe. Some of his most important theories included special relativity, which established that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference; mass-energy equivalence (E=mc2); and general relativity, which revolutionized our understanding of gravity. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 and is regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time.