Pierre Curie was born in Paris on May 15, 1869. He was educated at home by his father. He showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and geometry even in his early teens. In 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques demonstrated that an electricity was possible generated when crystals were compressed, and the next year they demonstrated the reverse effect: that crystals could be made to deform when subject to an electric field. Almost all digital electronic circuits now rely on this phenomenon, known as piezoelectric effects, in the form of crystal oscillators.