Albert Einstein once said: "I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious." A statement that gave the world a glimpse into his character and his belief in human potential.

Fans of the world's most famous genius were offered a much deeper look into Einstein's life on Friday.

The Einstein Papers Project -- provided by Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem -- has digitized a large collection of documents that reveal what the genius was thinking as he developed some of the greatest scientific advances in history.

The thoughts, doubts and loves of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist's life are now available online --- comprising a collection of 5,000 documents from the first 44 years of Einstein's professional and personal life.

The personal documents of the most storied scientist of the 20th century go up to 1923, covering the time up to Einstein’s Nobel prize in physics for the photoelectric effect in 1921, and his long voyage to the Far East the following year.

And it’s all free -- viewable in the original German or translatable into English.

The scientist's early ambition and humour are revealed by his reflections as a 17-year old. Despite being a woefully average student, Einstein predicted he would teach theoretical sciences because he had an “inclination for abstract and mathematical thinking --and lack of practical sense.”

Einstein's transformation into the man who developed the principle of relativity is documented in detail through the thousands of careful experiments, observations and consultations with his peers.

But the newly digitized Einstein Papers Project also provides a unique glimpse into the legendary scientist's personal life including his excitement over the birth of his daughter Lieserl, his marriage and divorce to his first wife, the courtship of his cousin and his decision to become a pacifist after World War One.

The Einstein Papers Project is just one step towards digitizing the 80,000 letters, papers, postcards, notebooks and diaries he left behind in archives, attics and shoeboxes when he died in 1955.

Scholars now have a better understanding of how the famous scientist formulated his remarkable theories and people now have personal access to a genius who was able to capture the imagination and create a connection with the average person.

He once explained his complicated mathematical formula in layman's terms.

"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity," he said.

The 14th volume of the Einstein Papers Project is scheduled to be released in January, with a digitized version expected to be posted on Digital Einstein 18 months later.