Albert Einstein. Artwork of the German-American physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), holding a violin and a pipe. Behind him is a blackboard on which is written Einstein's famous mass-energy equation. In 1901 whilst employed at the Patent Office in Berne, Einstein began independent work on problems in physics. In 1905 he published papers on the photoelectric effect (which earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize), the motion of molecules, and most significantly the Special Theory of Relativity which includes the famous equation. In 1915 an expanded version The General Theory of Relativity - was published.