Albert Einstein

The patent office

Following graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. After almost two years of searching, a former classmate's father helped him get a job in Bern, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant examiner. His responsibility was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. Einstein occasionally corrected design errors while evaluating patent applications. In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".

Einstein's college friend, Michele Besso, also worked at the patent office. With friends they met in Bern, they formed a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy, jokingly named "The Olympia Academy". Their readings included Poincaré, Mach and Hume, who influenced Einstein's scientific and philosophical outlook.

While this period at the patent office has often been cited as a waste of Einstein's talents, or as a temporary job with no connection to his interests in physics, the historian of science Peter Galison has argued that Einstein's work there was connected to his later interests. Much of that work related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time: two technical problems of the day that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time.

Einstein married Mileva Marić on January 6, 1903, and their relationship was, for a time, a personal and intellectual partnership. In a letter to her, Einstein wrote of Mileva as "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am." There has been debate about whether Marić influenced Einstein's work; most historians do not think she made major contributions, however. On May 14, 1904, Albert and Mileva's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born. Their second son, Eduard Einstein, was born on July 28, 1910.