One day, when five-year old Albert Einstein was sick in bed with a cold, his father brought a compass home to entertain him. That compass was one of the most important gifts Albert ever received.  It seemed to prove that there was some kind of hidden meaning behind things, and it aroused in him a desire to understand the mysteries of the universe. 

Thus was born the scientific curiosity that led Albert Einstein to make some of the greatest discoveries in the history of science.

Marie Hammontree opens her story of Albert Einstein's childhood with this significant but seemingly unimportant event. She goes on to show, through other real and imaginary incidents, how Albert's interest in science grew until it overcame his dislike of school and made him a great scientist.

Albert lived in Munich, Germany, where his father and uncle owned an electrical shop. His Uncle Jacob, who was an electrical engineer, stimulated his interest in science and mathematics and indirectly helped him to decide upon a career.

Albert liked Munich, but he resented the atmosphere of militarism that dominated the Germany of those days. He was a gentle person who wished only to be left alone with his thoughts, and militarism frightened and repelled him. Even as a boy he was eager to escape the regimentation that he saw everywhere around him.

As Miss Hammontree shows, he was not a good student.  He was too original to feel at home in the tradition-bound schools of Germany. When he was fifteen, his  teachers embarrassed by his questions, asked him to leave school, and his scholastic career in Germany came to an end.

How he finished school in Switzerland, where he was more successful; how he became a patent examiner and wrote papers about physics in his spare time; and how he finally became a university professor of growing renown and moved to America—all this is told in the later chapters of this absorbing story.

In these pages the youthful reader becomes acquainted with Einstein the man—gentle, friendly, humble, greatly loved and admired everywhere except in his own land.

There was something fascinating and inspiring about Albert Einstein's personality, and Miss Hammontree has succeeded in catching that something in the pages of this book. It is a worthy successor to her other volumes in the Childhood of Famous Americans Series.

From the dust jacket