Albert Einstein

Early life and the academic record

Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, in the German Empire. His family moved to Munich the next year, where his father Hermann ran an electrochemical-engineering business. The Einstein household was secular and middle-class; his parents were Jewish but did not maintain a strictly observant household.

Einstein's childhood academic record is more mixed than the popular IQ-hero narrative suggests. He was a strong student in mathematics and physics from elementary school onward. He was not an exceptionally early talker - his parents apparently consulted physicians about his slow speech development around age 4. The "Einstein failed math" story that occasionally circulates is incorrect; he was strong in mathematics throughout his school career.

In 1895 he attempted the entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich at age 16 - two years below the standard entrance age - and failed the general portion (history, languages, geography) while scoring exceptionally on mathematics and physics. He spent a year at the Aargau Cantonal School in Aarau, Switzerland, then re-took the entrance exam and was admitted to the Polytechnic in 1896.

The Bern patent office years (1902-1909)

Einstein completed his diploma at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in 1900 and his PhD from the University of Zürich in 1905. His PhD thesis was on the determination of molecular dimensions from solution viscosity - a competent but not headline-making thesis. His early-career academic prospects were limited; he applied for university positions and was repeatedly turned down.

In 1902 he took a position as a third-class patent examiner at the Swiss Federal Patent Office in Bern. The job was a long way from the professorship he had hoped for. He worked at the patent office through 1909 - during which period he wrote the four 1905 papers (the "miracle year" / annus mirabilis) that established his career.

The 1905 papers were: a paper on the photoelectric effect (for which he was later awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics), a paper on Brownian motion (providing the first observational confirmation of the atomic-molecular hypothesis), the special theory of relativity, and the mass-energy equivalence paper (E=mc²). The papers appeared in the German physics journal Annalen der Physik over a single calendar year. Each is now considered foundational.

Academic career, general relativity, and the 1919 confirmation

After the 1905 papers Einstein's academic prospects improved rapidly. He held positions at the University of Zürich (1909-1911), the German University in Prague (1911-1912), the Swiss Federal Polytechnic (1912-1914), and the University of Berlin (1914-1933) as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

The general theory of relativity - his decade-long extension of special relativity to include gravity - was completed in November 1915 and published in 1916. The theory predicted that light passing near a massive body would be deflected by the gravitational field; the prediction was tested during the 1919 total solar eclipse by Arthur Eddington's expedition. The confirmation made Einstein an international celebrity essentially overnight - the kind of global press attention that no physicist had previously received.

He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics (received in 1922) specifically for the photoelectric effect rather than for relativity. The Nobel committee's preference for experimental work over theoretical work and the relative experimental verification status of the photoelectric effect compared to general relativity at the time were the reasons for the specific citation.

The IQ question and the absence of measurement

Einstein never took an IQ test. The Stanford-Binet, the dominant ratio-IQ instrument of the early 20th century, was published in 1916 - eleven years after Einstein's 1905 papers and well into his established academic career. The deviation-IQ Wechsler scales were not published until 1939. Any IQ figure attributed to Einstein is a posthumous popular estimate without a primary-source psychometric document behind it.

The figure of 160 appears in popular accounts and websites without citation to any source. Some accounts attribute it to comparisons with other contemporaries' tests; others trace it to vaguely-cited "Stanford studies." None of these accounts produce a documentable origin. Other popular figures circulating for Einstein range from 160 to 200; the variance itself indicates the absence of any anchoring measurement.

Einstein himself rejected the IQ framework for evaluating his own work. He was characteristically modest in interviews - he attributed his discoveries to "passionate curiosity" and to sustained engagement with problems rather than to a fixed mental ability. His one well-known quote on the topic is "Imagination is more important than knowledge," which carries an implicit position about which cognitive properties IQ tests do and do not measure.

Princeton years, the bomb, and the late life (1933-1955)

In 1933 Einstein left Germany permanently after the Nazi rise to power. He took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he remained for the rest of his life. His professional work during the Princeton years was focused on attempts at a unified field theory connecting gravitation and electromagnetism. The unified-field-theory work did not succeed; the goal of unifying fundamental physics is still unresolved.

In 1939 he co-signed (with Leo Szilard) a letter to Franklin Roosevelt warning that German researchers might develop a nuclear weapon. The letter contributed to the U.S. government's decision to launch what became the Manhattan Project. Einstein himself was not involved in Manhattan Project work - his pacifist political reputation made him a security concern - and after the war he became one of the most prominent voices for international control of nuclear weapons.

He died in Princeton on April 18, 1955, of an abdominal aortic aneurysm at age 76. He had declined surgery, saying he wanted "to go when I want." His brain was removed without family consent by the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey; the subsequent decades of brain studies of Einstein's preserved tissue have produced suggestive but not definitive findings about correlates of his abilities. The brain studies are entirely separate from the IQ-figure question.

Timeline

• 1879Born in Ulm, German Empire.
• 1895Fails general portion of Swiss Federal Polytechnic entrance exam; scores exceptionally on mathematics and physics.
• 1896Admitted to Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich.
• 1900Receives diploma from the Polytechnic.
• 1902Begins work as a third-class patent examiner at the Swiss Federal Patent Office in Bern.
• 1905Annus mirabilis: four foundational papers (photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, E=mc²).
• 1909Leaves the patent office for a position at the University of Zürich.
• 1915Completes general theory of relativity.
• 1919Eddington solar-eclipse expedition confirms the predictions of general relativity.
• 1921Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the photoelectric effect.
• 1933Leaves Germany permanently; takes position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
• 1939Co-signs the Einstein-Szilard letter to Roosevelt warning about German nuclear weapons potential.
• 1955Dies in Princeton, New Jersey, at age 76.

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