Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jakob Johann Laub was a physicist born on the 7th of February 1884 in Rzeszów, in what was then Austria-Hungary. He is best known for collaborating with Albert Einstein in the early period of special relativity, including co-authoring papers on the basic electromagnetic equations of the theory in 1908.
In 1908, Laub and Einstein co-wrote several papers on the basic electromagnetic equations of special relativity. Their goal was to replace Hermann Minkowski's four-dimensional spacetime formulation of electrodynamics with a simpler, more classical approach. Minkowski's framework ultimately proved more fundamental and became the standard.
Laub studied at the University of Vienna, the University of Kraków, and the University of Göttingen, where his teachers included David Hilbert, Woldemar Voigt, Walther Nernst, Karl Schwarzschild, and Hermann Minkowski. He completed his doctorate at the University of Würzburg in 1907.
Laub emigrated to Argentina in 1911 with his wife Ruth Elisa Wendt. After arriving, he worked at the geophysical and astronomical observatory in La Plata and later held a leading position in a physics department in Buenos Aires. He eventually accepted Argentine nationality and entered the country's diplomatic service.
After returning to Germany in 1947 and settling in Freiburg, Laub encountered financial difficulties and sold part of his correspondence with Einstein. The letters documented decades of contact between the two men, beginning with their scientific collaboration in 1908.
Laub and Einstein both considered Minkowski's four-dimensional spacetime formulation of electrodynamics too complicated, and they worked together in 1908 to replace it with a more classical approach. Their alternative did not prevail; Minkowski's formalism proved fundamental to the further development of special relativity.