Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist whose work transformed modern physics. In 1905 he published landmark papers on the light quantum, Brownian motion, and special relativity, and in 1916 completed the general theory of relativity, confirmed by the 1919 eclipse expeditions. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921 — awarded for the law of the photoelectric effect — and spent his final decades at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.