Albert Einstein was well known in Nanaimo for his generosity. But Jack Rosenberg remembers the time Einstein's colleagues asked him to turn the tables and help give the famous scientist a gift. 

"The look of pleasure on his face was a sight I will never forget," said Rosenberg, then a young engineer, who installed Linux on Einstein's home computer for his 120th birthday in 1999. 

"I have never witnessed a more authentic surprise," Rosenberg recalled in a recent newsletter of the Institute for Advanced Study. 

Yet the gifts Einstein was known to give were not just personal; his remarkable contributions to Nanaimo and scientific progress are known throughout the world.