Einstein was boring before he was brilliant

Based on what I've read (mainly the Isaacson biography) I don't think this is true. He may have done well in secondary school but he graduated second to last in his undergraduate physics program. This was from what was at the time a second rate school in a country of less than 8 million people (it later became very prestigious because of Einstein). I doubt someone with a comparable record could get into a PhD program in the US today.

The key detail often missed in this story is that while Einstein was a patent clerk, he was continuing to work toward his doctoral degree. He had an adviser, he was reading and writing, he met regularly with a study group (pictured above).

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In reality, innovation almost always requires long periods of quite traditional training.

Einstein was brilliant and original, but until he finished a full graduate education, he didn’t know enough physics to advance it.

He may have had a thesis adviser but I don't know what finishing "a full graduate education" means here. I doubt he would have had any course work requirements and he didn't get his PhD until 1905, the year he revolutionized all of physics.

He received his PhD on March 30 for a thesis on calculating Avogadro's number. His paper on the photoelectric effect which launched quantum mechanics and for which he was later awarded the Nobel prize was received on March 18 and published on July 9.

His paper on Brownian motion, which convinced people that atoms were real, was received May 11 and published on July 18.

The dates for his two papers on special relativity were June 30/September 26 and September 27/November 21.