Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879 and showed an early interest in asking philosophical questions. He studied physics and published several groundbreaking papers in 1905 on special relativity and the particle theory of light. In 1915, Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which proposed that gravity results from the curvature of space and time by masses. This revolutionary theory changed scientists' understanding of space, time, mass, and energy. Later in life, Einstein fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to the United States, where he spent the rest of his career teaching at Princeton University.