Albert Einstein was an early child.
At the age of twelve, he followed his own line of reasoning to find proof of the Pythagoras theorem. At thirteen, he read Kant, just for fun. And before the age of fifteen, he had taught a differential and full calculation himself.
But while the young Einstein was absorbed by intellectual activities, he did not care much about school. He hated heart learning and despised authoritarian school teachers. His feeling of intellectual superiority was felt by his teachers.
In Subtle is the Lord: the science and life of Albert EinsteinAuthor Abraham Pais tells a funny story of Einstein days at Luitpold Gymnasium, a secondary school in Munich now called Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium:
At the gymnasium, a teacher told him one day that he, the professor, would be much happier if the boy was not in his class. Einstein replied that he had done nothing wrong. The teacher replied: “Yes, that's true. But you sit there in the rear row and smile, and it violates the feeling of respect for a teacher needs his class. ”
The same teacher said that Einstein “would never have anywhere in life”.
What has the most disturbed Einstein in Luitpold is its oppressive atmosphere. His sister Maja will write later:
“The military tone of the school, the systematic training in the worship of the authority which was supposed to accustom students at an early age to military discipline, was also particularly unpleasant for the boy. He planned to fear this not too distant moment when he will have to put on the uniform of a soldier in order to fulfill his military obligations. ”
At the age of sixteen, Einstein's parents moved to Italy to continue a business. They told him to stay behind and finish school. But Einstein was desperate to join them in Italy before his seventeenth anniversary. “According to the German laws of citizenship,” said Maja, “a male citizen must not emigrate after his sixteenth year finished; otherwise, if he does not report for military service, he is declared deserter.”
Einstein therefore found a way to obtain the permission of a doctor to withdraw from school under the pretext of “mental exhaustion” and fled to Italy without a diploma. Years later, in 1944, in the last days of the Second World War, the gymnasium Luitpold was erased by an allied bombardment. So we don't have a file of Einstein notes there. But there is a file of a director at the school who seeks the notes of Einstein in 1929 to verify a press report according to which Einstein had been a very bad student. Walter Sullivan writes on this subject in a 1984 Piece in The New York Times::
With 1 as the highest and the lowest, reported the director, the brands of Einstein in Greek, Latin and mathematics oscillated between 1 and 2 until the end, he invariably marked 1 in mathematics.
After abandoning, the Einstein family enlisted a well -connected friend to persuade the Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH, to let him pass the entrance exam, even if he was only sixteen and had not obtained his graduate of high school. He marked brilliantly in physics and mathematics, but badly in other areas. The director of ETH suggested that he finished his preparatory studies in the city of Aarau, in the Swiss canton of Aargau. A cantonal school diploma would guarantee admission to Einstein to ETH.
In Aarau, Einstein was pleasantly surprised to find a liberal atmosphere in which independent thought was encouraged. “Compared to six years of schooling in a German authoritarian gymnasium,” he said later, “this made me clear how much education based on free action and personal responsibility was based on external authority.”
In the first half of Einstein in Aarau, the school has always used the old score method from 1 to 6, with 1 as the highest note. In the second half, the system was reversed, 6 becoming the highest. Barry R. Parker talks about the notes of the first half of Einstein in his book, Einstein: the passions of a scientist::
His notes in the first months were: German, 2–3; French, 3–4; History, 1–2; Mathematics, 1; physical, 1–2; Natural history, 2–3; chemistry, 2–3; drawing, 2–3; And violin, 1. (The beach is 1 to 6, 1 being the highest.) Although none of the notes, with the exception of French, was considered poor, some of them were only average.
The director of the school, Jost Winteleler, who had welcomed Einstein in his house as a resident and had become a substitution father for him during his stay in Aarau, feared that a young man as well brilliant as Albert received medium notes in so many courses. At Christmas in 1895, he posted a bulletin to the parents of Einstein. Hermann Einstein responded with warm thanks, but said he was not too worried. As Parker writes, Einstein's father said he used to see some notes “not so good with very good”.
During the next semester, Einstein's notes improved, but were still mixed. As Toby Hendy of the YouTube channel Tibes The broadcasts in the video above, the final notes of Einstein were excellent in mathematics and physics, but closer to the average in other areas.
Einstein's uneven school yield continued at ETH, as Hendy shows. During the third year, his relationship with the head of the physics department, Heinrich Weber, began to deteriorate. Weber was offended by the arrogance of the young man. “You are an intelligent boy, Einstein,” said Weber. “An extremely intelligent boy. But you have a big mistake. You will never allow yourself to tell yourself anything.” Einstein was particularly frustrated that Weber refused to teach the revolutionary electromagnetic theory of James Clerk Maxwell. He started spending less time in class and reading more time in current physics at home and in Zurich cafes.
Einstein has more and more focused on his attention to physics and neglected mathematics. He came to regret it. “It was not clear to me as a student,” he said later, “that a deeper knowledge of the basic principles of physics was linked to the most complex mathematical methods.”
The classmate of Einstein, Marcel Grossmann, helped him by sharing his notes of the mathematical conferences that Einstein had jumped. When Einstein graduated, his conflict with Weber cost him the teaching position he expected to receive. Grossmann finally returned to the rescue of Einstein again, urging his father to help him obtain a well -paid job as a clerk at the Office of Swiss Patents. Several years later, on the death of Grossmann, Einstein wrote a letter to his widow who transmitted not only his sadness to the death of an old friend, but also his sweet memories of life as a student:
“Our days together come back to me. He is a model student; I disorder and reverie. He in terms of excellent teachers and granted easily; I am away and dissatisfied, not very popular. But we were good friends and our conversations on iced coffee in the Metropol every few weeks belong to my most beautiful memories. ”
Note: an earlier version of this article appeared on our site in 2020.
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When Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin met and became rapid friends (1930)
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