By Mahesh Paudyal
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. He was the first child born to Hermann and Pauline Einstein, a bourgeois Jewish couple married three years earlier. Hermann began work as a merchant in the featherbed industry, but when his business collapsed, he moved his family to Munich to start an electrical-engineering business with his brother Jakob. This venture was largely supported by the Kochs, Pauline Einstein's parents. Pauline, a talented musician, introduced her son to the piano when he was a small boy and encouraged his passion for the violin, an instrument he studied from ages six to thirteen.