One year before he won the 1921 Nobel prize for physics, Einstein, shown here outside his Berlin laboratory, was already being compared with everyone from Jesus to Copernicus. His general theory of relativity having been recently proven correct, the 40-year-old physicist reacted with typically dry humor: "I feel now something like a whore. Everybody wants to know what I am doing all the time and everybody wants to criticize."

PHOTO: BETTMANN/CORBIS