He wasn't always the white-haired absent-minded professor
Einstein's image as the quaint little absent-minded professor with the
wavy white hair who wore sweaters and played the violin was carefully
cultivated during his later years at Princeton and well after his death
in 1955. Our stereotypical images of scientists still go with either the
pocket-protector thick glasses with white tape in the middle nerd or
the Einstein of his later years.
It has only been in the last decade or so that we've learned how rebellious
and ambitious he really was in his youth, which only makes sense with a
person who made such revolutionary discoveries in physics.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/family/index.htm