Albert Einstein

The chart they were born with

Read from: ascendant sign and its lord · Moon sign · birth nakshatra · panchang at birth · avakhada

Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 at 11:30 in the morning in Ulm, on a Friday, in Krishna paksha Saptami under the Siddhi yoga. The chart rises in Mithun (Gemini) at 19°29', in the fourth pada of Ardra — a Mercury-ruled ascendant whose classical signature is restless intelligence, questioning, and a habit of holding two ideas at once. Ardra belongs to Rudra and is associated with upheaval and with storms that clear the air. His Moon sits in Vrishchik (Scorpio) in Jyeshtha, debilitated, giving an inner life far more turbulent and private than the public image of a genial old man suggests. The Sun is in Meen (Pisces), where the imagination is at home and the boundaries of things are not felt to be fixed.

Early life and family

Read from: 4th house and its lord · 2nd house and its lord · Moon · the mahadashas running in childhood

He was born to Hermann and Pauline Einstein and the family moved to Munich the following year, where his father and uncle ran an electrical engineering business. The chart's fourth house — home, mother and inner security — is Kanya, ruled by Mercury, and that Mercury sits far away in the tenth house of work, debilitated and combust: the domestic base is subordinated to the working one, and in 1894 that is literally what happened, when the Munich business failed and the family left for Italy without him. Ketu occupies the second house of family. These childhood years ran under the Mercury mahadasha to December 1888 and then Ketu's to 1895 — the lagna lord and then the most detached of the nodes.

Education and formation

Read from: 4th house · 5th house · 9th house · Mercury · Jupiter · the mahadasha of their youth

His schooling was not smooth. He left the Luitpold Gymnasium in 1894 without finishing, spent a year at the cantonal school in Aarau, and entered the Zurich Polytechnic in 1896 having renounced his German citizenship. He graduated in 1900 and then could not get an academic post at all. The chart is unusually direct about this: Mercury, lord of the ascendant and the natural significator of study, is debilitated in Meen AND combust the Sun, and Shadbala ranks it sixth of seven at 5.99 rupas against a requirement of 7 — the weakest standing in the chart apart from Saturn. A formal education system was never going to be where this mind was recognised. Jupiter, wisdom and higher learning, sits by contrast in the ninth house of its own natural domain.

Work and public life

Read from: 10th house and its lord · the strength of the 10th lord · Sun · Saturn · the mahadasha when public life began

In June 1902 he took a post as assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, and held it for seven years. He left in 1909 for a professorship at the University of Zurich, moved to Berlin in 1914, and from 1933 was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The tenth house of career is the busiest place in this chart by a wide margin: Sun, Mercury, Venus and Saturn all occupy Meen there, with Venus exalted. Shadbala ranks the Sun first of all seven at 8.71 rupas and Venus second at 8.52 — the two strongest planets in the chart both sit in the house of public work. That the work itself was done in obscurity at a patent desk, and the recognition arrived much later, is legible in the same picture: the tenth lord Jupiter is placed away in the ninth, and Saturn there is combust and the weakest planet in the chart.

Marriage and relationships

Read from: 7th house and its lord · Venus · Manglik status · the mahadasha at the time of marriage

He married Mileva Marić, a fellow student from the Polytechnic, on 6 January 1903; their son Hans Albert was born in May 1904. The marriage ended in divorce in February 1919, and in June of the same year he married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal, who died in December 1936. The seventh house is Dhanu, ruled by Jupiter, which sits in the ninth. Venus, the significator of marriage, is exalted — but in the tenth house of work rather than anywhere domestic. The chart carries Manglik dosha from the ascendant, with Mars exalted in the eighth. Both marriages are recorded as difficult, and both dates fall in the long Venus and Sun periods.

Height of achievement

Read from: yogas present · the strongest planets by Shadbala · Ashtakavarga high points · the mahadashas of their peak years

In 1905 he published four papers in a single year in Annalen der Physik — on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy. He completed the general theory of relativity in November 1915. On 6 November 1919 the Royal Society announced that eclipse observations had confirmed its prediction that starlight bends, and he was world-famous within days. The 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics followed in November 1922, awarded for the photoelectric effect rather than for relativity. The chart forms Gaja Kesari, Budhaditya, Malavya and a kendra-trikona Raja Yoga. The whole productive stretch from the Polytechnic to general relativity — 1895 to 1915 — falls inside a single twenty-year Venus mahadasha, Venus being exalted in the tenth; and the fame and the Nobel fall inside the six-year Sun period that follows it, the Sun being the strongest planet in the chart and likewise in the tenth.

Trials and opposition

Read from: 6th house · 8th house · 12th house · malefic placements · doshas present · the harder mahadashas

The difficulties are as plainly marked as the achievements. His Moon is debilitated in the sixth house — the house of conflict, illness and adversaries — which is the classical signature of a private life lived under strain, and his was: the failure of the first marriage, long estrangement from his sons, and his younger son Eduard's institutionalisation. The eighth house holds exalted Mars with Rahu, and the Sarvashtakavarga puts its highest count of the whole chart, 41 bindus, in that eighth house — strength in what is hidden, researched and overturned rather than in what is comfortable. He left Germany in 1933 under the Mars period and did not return.

Later years

Read from: the final mahadashas · 8th house and longevity · 12th house · Saturn

He signed the letter to President Roosevelt on 2 August 1939 warning that Germany might build an atomic weapon, and later called it the one great mistake of his life. He became a United States citizen in 1940, declined the presidency of Israel in 1952, and died in Princeton on 18 April 1955 of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, having refused surgery. These last sixteen years fall entirely within the Rahu mahadasha, which ran from December 1938 to December 1956 — Rahu placed in the eighth house of transformation and of endings, alongside exalted Mars.

What remained

Read from: 9th house (dharma) · 11th house (gains and influence) · Jupiter · the ascendant lord

His name became the common noun for genius, and the two relativity theories remain the foundation of how gravity and motion are understood. The ninth house of dharma and conviction holds Jupiter in Kumbh — an Aquarian Jupiter, which is to say a moral seriousness pointed at humanity in general rather than at any nation or creed, and he was stateless, then Swiss, then American, and refused a country's presidency. Mercury, lord of the ascendant, is the weakest of the classical planets in his chart and the one the world remembers him for.

The Mercury period covers his birth and earliest childhood in Ulm and Munich. Mercury is his ascendant lord, placed in the tenth house but debilitated and combust.

Under Ketu he left the Munich gymnasium unfinished and the family broke up its household for Italy. Ketu sits in the second house of family and settled circumstances.

The twenty years of Venus carry almost everything he is remembered for: the Polytechnic, the patent office, his first marriage, the four papers of 1905, the professorships, and general relativity in 1915. Venus is exalted in the tenth house of work.

The Sun period brought the recognition rather than the work. The eclipse results were announced in November 1919 and the Nobel followed in 1922. The Sun is the strongest planet in his chart by Shadbala, and it too sits in the tenth.

The Moon period was his decade of global celebrity, and of a private life under strain. His Moon is debilitated in the sixth house.

Under Mars he left Germany in 1933 and settled at Princeton, and Elsa died in 1936. Mars is exalted, in the eighth house of upheaval.

The Rahu period covers the letter to Roosevelt, American citizenship, the declined presidency of Israel, and his death in 1955. Rahu is in the eighth house.