The patent clerk who changed physics in one year

After graduating in 1900, Albert Einstein applied for academic jobs across Europe and was turned down everywhere. In 1902 a friend’s father helped him get a post as a technical expert, third class, at the Federal Patent Office in Bern.

The work suited him. He examined inventions, many of them electrical devices, and later said judging patents trained him to think precisely. He often finished the day’s work quickly and used the rest of his time for physics. He called the office his “worldly cloister”.

In 1905, aged 26, he published four papers. One explained the photoelectric effect using particles of light. One provided evidence that atoms exist, through Brownian motion. One introduced special relativity. A short follow-up contained the most famous equation in history: E = mc².

He did all this without a lab or a professorship, while working six days a week. It was the photoelectric paper, not relativity, that won him the 1921 Nobel Prize. He didn’t leave the patent office until 1909.