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had started at the local secondary school, the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he was very unhappy. He rebelled against the rigid discipline, and was horrified at the fear used in the teaching methods there. The teachers considered him an unruly child. In 1894, after another business failure, his father moved to Italy. The school was not sorry to lose an unpromising pupil who, in the words of a teacher, “could not be expected to make a success of anything.” Albert was not sorry to leave. He took with him a hatred of pointless rules and regulations and a distrust of authority. Only one year after leaving the Luitpold Gymnasium, he insisted on giving up his German nationality. This was an unusual step for a boy of fifteen, although not as difficult as it would be today.

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) unified the laws of electricity and magnetism, thereby discovering the nature of light and radio waves. Maxwell was also known for his work on the behavior of gases.

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