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History | Intelligence
Was Einstein Actually a Bad Student?
The true story around the rumors of his underperformance.
1905 was Einstein’s “Year of Miracles”. The 26-year-old physicist published three papers that completely changed science and our perception of reality. The first proved the existence of atoms. The second was the Particle Theory of Light, which won him a Nobel Prize. The third introduced E=mc².
Long before these papers and his name becoming synonymous with brilliance, he is rumored to have been a bad student: lazy, disorganized, disobedient, forgetful. But the answer to whether Einstein was a good or bad student isn’t straightforward.
The origins of a genius
Albert was not your traditional power student as we see them today, obsessed with perfect marks, taking test prep courses every summer. This is partly because such things didn’t exist, but mostly because he wasn’t that type.
He was late to talk as a toddler. In his own words to a biographer, “My parents worried because I started to talk comparatively late and they consulted a doctor about it.” He eventually began talking and caught up, quite quickly.
