Albert Einstein was a German physicist who is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. He was born on March 14, 1879, in the city of Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, in what is now Germany. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer, while his mother, Pauline Koch, was a homemaker. Einstein had one sister, Maja, who was two years younger than him.