Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein displayed his talent for mathematics as a very young child. When he could not find a teaching job after graduating from college, he went to work at the Swiss patent office as a technical examiner, evaluating applications for electromagnetic devices. His most famous work stems from the intellectual output of a single year, 1905, in which he published four papers recognized today as prodigious accomplishments of insight into physics. Einstein and his family left Europe for Princeton, New Jersey, just as the Nazis were beginning their rise to power. At the same time that Einstein was helping Jewish scientists leave Europe, Nazi scientists were trying to eradicate his discoveries from the German intellectual landscape. Einstein used his fame as an intellectual to oppose oppressive political regimes and support the cause of civil rights.
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