![]() ![]() “But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up.” So it was that in 1905, while he was toiling away as a third-class examiner in the Swiss patent office after graduating fourth out of the five students in his class at the Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the universe by coming up with the two pillars of contemporary physics: relativity theory and quantum theory. “The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time,” Einstein once explained. ![]() And his slow verbal development allowed him to observe with wonder the everyday phenomena that others took for granted. These traits made Einstein the patron saint of distracted schoolkids everywhere.īut Einstein’s contempt for authority also led him to question received wisdom in ways that well-trained acolytes in the academy never contemplated. ![]() ![]() The family maid dubbed him “der Depperte,” the dopey one, and a relative referred to him as “almost backwards.” He also harbored a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to amuse history by declaring that he would never amount to much. He was slow in learning to speak as a child–so slow that his parents consulted a doctor. ![]()
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