BOSTON — Before wandering through the Museum of Science with her father and younger sister this week, 7-year-old Emma Boardman had barely heard of Albert Einstein.

But after seeing demonstrations on Einstein's groundbreaking contributions to the world's understanding of light, time, energy and gravity, Emma said she understood why her teacher once called one of her classmates, "an Einstein."

"He was really, really smart," she said of the physicist best known for formulating the theory of relativity.

"Einstein," a touring exhibit that opened at Boston's Museum of Science on March 13, is touted by organizers as the most comprehensive exhibition ever presented on the life and theories of the man whose name is synonymous with genius.

The exhibit uses interactive displays, a learning lab and computer simulations to help children and adults understand Einstein's theories. But it's not necessarily a fun-and-games exhibit.

"It takes some effort," said Professor Hanoch Gutfreund, chairman of the Einstein collection at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which loaned many of the items for the exhibit.

"You have to give yourself some time to read (the documents in the exhibit) and think about his theories," Gutfreund said. "Afterward, you will have a sense of his basic ideas and what is new, what he has changed with respect to our previously accepted view of the physical world."

Visitors can use an interactive blackboard to help them understand Einstein's famous mathematical equation, E=mc2, a kinetic light sculpture to visualize Einstein's theories on the nature of light.

But visitors are also invited to get to know the man behind the scientific theories. Through handwritten letters, photographs and other artifacts, the exhibit traces Einstein's life, from his birth in 1879 to his complicated love life to his years as a pacifist and political activist. Einstein was born in Germany and became a U.S. citizen in 1940. He died in 1955.

Visitors can see Einstein's final report card from high school — on which he received outstanding grades in physics, algebra and history, but a poor grade in French — and his 1919 divorce decree from his first wife, in which he agrees that she will receive the proceeds from the Nobel prize he will receive.

"Not 'if,' but 'when' he receives the Nobel Prize," notes Gutfreund. Two years later, in 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics.