Albert Einstein, a German Jew who touched the world and who left Germany when Hitler arrived

Albert Einstein
Originally uploaded by ThomasThomas

In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. One of the first actions of Hitler's administration was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which removed Jews and politically suspect government employees (including university professors) from their jobs. In response to this growing threat Einstein had prudently traveled to the U.S. in December 1932. For several years he had been wintering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California,[79] and also was a guest lecturer at Abraham Flexner's newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.[80]

He was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Einsteins bought a house in Princeton (where Elsa died in 1936), and Einstein remained an integral contributor to the Institute for Advanced Study until his death in 1955.

During the 1930s and into World War II, Einstein wrote affidavits recommending United States visas for a huge number of European Jews who were trying to flee persecution.