Albert Einstein

Who the Albert Einstein type is

People who match the Einstein type tend to think in thought experiments. They ask what would happen if the rules were slightly different, then follow that question wherever it leads. Conventional answers are interesting to them mainly as a starting point, and they often find simple, surprising ways to explain complicated ideas.

This type is warm and a little rumpled in spirit. Einstein-style personalities rarely care much about appearances or formality, and they can be wonderfully absent-minded about everyday details while being sharply focused on what fascinates them. They enjoy good conversation, music and a joke, and they tend to treat curiosity itself as one of life's great pleasures.

Signature traits

Playfully curious

The Einstein type explores ideas for the fun of it, turning hard questions into games of imagination.

Big-picture thinker

People of this type look for the underlying principle that connects many small details.

Happily unconventional

Rules and habits are open to question. This type is comfortable doing things its own way.

What Albert Einstein is known for

Germany, Switzerland & USA, 1879–1955

• The special and general theories of relativity
• The equation E = mc², linking mass and energy
• The 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for explaining the photoelectric effect
• Becoming one of the most recognizable scientists in history

Fun facts about Albert Einstein

• He developed several of his most famous 1905 papers while working at the Swiss patent office in Bern.
• He was a keen amateur violinist and played for most of his life.
• The chemical element einsteinium is named in his honor.
• 1905 is often called his miracle year because he published four groundbreaking papers in it.