Was Einstein really a poor student? | Hacker News Reader

Was Einstein really a poor student?

skeptics.stackexchange.com

87 pointsmak12039 comments

This has a few roots:

* It's said he didn't speak till he was (I forget) ~8. I'd believe it - speech develops at different times, and I doubt it has any reflection on adult intelligence.

* He joked that his math wasn't very good. That makes him modest, not a bad student.

* He didn't know how to do the math for non-Euclidian, to develop general relativity (though he did have a vague idea that he needed a curved space, and what it meant, and he vaguely remembered doing it at uni - which shows he wasn't too ignorant), and had a friend help him get up to speed.

* He was probably not the sharpest mathematician in the room, once he was famous enough that every room he walked into would quickly become crowded with the sharpest mathematicians in the world.

* He may not have really liked school, but he obviously liked learning.

Most importantly, everyone likes to think that you can succeed without trying.

He was probably not the sharpest mathematician in the room, once he was famous enough that every room he walked into would quickly become crowded with the sharpest mathematicians in the world.

This, I can't help thinking, would be a good problem to have :)

To summarize a post above, his math indeed wasn't very good (or at least very advanced) for a research-level mathematician because he was a physicist, not a mathematician.

Here is Einstein's certificate for the year 1879 (he was 10):

http://www.scienceblogs.de/frischer-wind/einsteins-zeugnis.j...

Long story short, he obtained the best score (6) in the three mathematical topics (algebra, geometry and descriptive geometry) and in physics.

I guess one of the reasons the myth has endured so long may be that it makes for such a great story. A sort of intellectual rags-to-riches, so to speak.

Edit: corrected the physics score.

I was a top student (always perfect score) up until I was 11

After that I was still a great student, but not the top and not straight As. I still liked math.

By the end of high school, I was extremely dis-interested in math and specially in calculus. It all seemed like arbitrary pointless rules. (I blame the teachers and the curriculum).

I was a top student up until they put me in the special classes for top students, which mostly just involved extra work which I was too lazy to do.

I bet a lot of people here can relate to this.

Very much so. Poll?

How do we change this?

How do we change this?

Here are some suggestions for improving the mathematics education of pupils who show early advanced abilities in mathematics:

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?pa...

(Summary of the advice linked above is make sure students learn mathematics beyond the standard school curriculum, which is not designed for the top students, and make sure the top students have a chance to meet one another and to challenge themselves with difficult problems that they can discuss afterwards. The site that provides those links provides many of the opportunities necessary, largely for free.)

Here is commentary by a Fields medalist on what successful mathematics education looks like over the long haul:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math/pdf/0503/0503081v1.pdf

(Summary of Thurston's advice is emphasize connectedness of mathematics and deep understanding over racing through the standard curriculum.)

The problem comes from the teachers, who themselves don't really know the subject. They know it as a set of rules, and thus thats how they teach it. Get teachers who actually know the material and the problem will mostly solve itself.

A more practical solution would be to change how the books themselves are written. Math is taught as just a set of rules to be memorized. We've lost the fact that math was motivated by real problems that real people had. We need to teach it in a problem-analysis-solution manner rather than "here are some rules and now here are some contrived problems for practice".

Wrong: Algebra, geometry, descriptive geometry AND physics are all 6 (obviously the highest possible).

Chemistry and the history of nature are 5, as well as German and Italian, art drawing and geography are 4 and some "..drawing" I can't recognize. French 3.

Moreover as far as I see it's his final degree score of his whole secondary education (the last step before university).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(school)#Final_degree

Thank you for pointing the mistake out.

However, it is not so obvious that 6 is the highest score. While it was the case in Switzerland (where Einstein was studying at that age), it was the exact contrary in Germany at that time - 1 being the best score and 6 the lowest.

As pointed out in the Stack Exchange's answers, this discrepancy in scoring systems may also have contributed to the myth of Einstein's poor performance at school.

othello: (in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2339956) "Here is Einstein's certificate for the year 1879 (he was 10)"

Wrong, in the certificate it's clearly written that he's born in 1879 and that the exams happened in 1896, as he was obviously 17. As I already claimed it is a "final degree" score before the university.

This poster was prominently displayed in one of my math lectures at university.

http://www.allaboutmovies.com.au/images/pictures/store/E/ein...

He is of course not implying that he is bad at math as many students believe, but rather that the math he had to cope with was much harder.

Possibly Technischen Zeichen - That would go well as a contrast to Kunstzeichen.

Einstien was born on 14 March 1879 - so the date there must be his birth date

Edit: the second date there is 1896 which makes him 17 years but that marks sheet seems to indicate 3 or 4th grade - so not sure exactly which grade the marks sheet was for?

I don't know whether he was a "good" or "bad" student. He was certainly a disinterested one, as there wasn't great overlap between what he thought about and what they were trying to teach. He must have been an effective one, however, as he picked up the information needed to solve problems in many fields, expand physics, and have a "typically European scientist" level of culture.

For those in science, most dream of having a career that can compare to his 1905.

Most? You can think of an exception?

Some do science to teach, and many do science to cure a particular problem. The first set is probably orthogonal, but while most people won't equate a successful drug launched to market as 1905-like, those trying to cure a disease would disagree.

Different strokes for different folks. Hell, some probably do science for the bucks, as being an academic with the hot med/bio topic can result in serious coin.

The story that I have always heard is not that he got bad grades, but that he was a "poor student" in a more general sense, that he was extremely disinterested. I remember hearing claims that his teachers complained to his parents: "he just sits at the back and smiles."

I'm reminded of what was probably my favorite single Calvin and Hobbes strip: "You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, mine are even worse!"

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), co-winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics, wrote this statement about his own schooling, in an autobiographical essay he wrote for the introductory material of a book about his role as a philosopher of science:

". . . I worked most of the time in the physical laboratory [at the Polytechnic Institute of Zürich], fascinated by the direct contact with experience. The balance of the time I used in the main in order to study at home the works of Kirchoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, etc. . . . In [physics], however, I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect [upon me] that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year. In justice I must add, moreover, that in Switzerland we had to suffer far less under such coercion, which smothers every truly scientific impulse, than is the case in many another locality. There were altogether only two examinations; aside from these, one could just about do as one pleased. This was especially the case if one had a friend, as did I, who attended the lectures regularly and who worked over their content conscientiously. This gave one freedom in the choice of pursuits until a few months before the examination, a freedom which I enjoyed to a great extent and have gladly taken into the bargain the bad conscience connected with it as by far the lesser evil. It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly."

http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html

John Kemeny, who was Einstein's assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study, commented on Einstein's pattern of developed abilities that "Einstein did not need help in physics. But contrary to popular belief, Einstein did need help in mathematics. By which I do not mean that he wasn't good at mathematics. He was very good at it, but he was not an up-to-date research level mathematician. His assistants were mathematicians for two reasons. First of all, in just ordinary calculations, anybody makes mistakes. There were many long calculations, deriving one formula from another to solve a differential equation. They go on forever. Any number of times we got the wrong answer. Sometimes one of us got the wrong answer, sometimes the other. The calculations were long enough that if you got the same answer at the end, you were confident. So he needed an assistant for that, and, frankly, I was more up-to-date in mathematics than he was."

http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/math/Kemeny.html

I fact he was the sole-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/

Yes. Awarded a year later, which may be the detail I was remembering.

Is it common in the Swiss school system for students to take classes in four different languages (German, English, French, Italian), or did Einstein attend a special/elite school?

It wouldn’t surprise me since French, Italian and German are three of the four official languages of Switzerland. (I don’t know whether that was the case in 1897 but those three languages were definitely all spoken in Switzerland in 1897.)

Today students in Swiss secondary education have to learn at least two non-native languages (besides their native language), one of those two has to be one of the official Swiss languages. Einstein only learned one more language, that doesn’t seem extraordinary.

It would be nice if someone from Switzerland could shed some more light on this. The situation in, for example, Germany is as follows: If you want to continue on to university learning two languages is standard, learning a third language is optional but possible pretty much everywhere. The four available languages in my school were English, French, Latin [0] and Spanish and you could pick up to three of those. (Only certain combinations were possible, English was always the first foreign language and you had to take it.)

[0] I still hate myself for picking Latin. It’s beyond useless.

You are correct.

I am from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, I started learning German in kindergarten (though those lessons were mostly useless until 7th grade). By 9th grade I had French, German, English and two options : Latin and Ancient Greek. (All students were required to stay from 8AM to 4PM at school, those who didn't study ancient languages just sat in a room guarded by a teacher whose task was to make sure they did not talk to each other too much).

In High School it was a bit different, you had to choose between German and Italian (Two of the four official languages) and between English and Ancient Greek (Yes, some people actually pick Ancient Greek) and an option, which spans from Math, Biology/Chemistry or Psychology to Latin, Spanish or Italian.

None of these choices actually restrict what you can study later in college.

I remember reading in a book ("Sparks of Genius") that he went to a very specialized school. The book talked about there being a focus on the importance of conceptualization/visualization. If I remember correctly, the example that was given was of Einstein doing a physics problem involving a sail boat. He describes the importance of being able to feel as if you yourself were the boat -- to have the waves cut through your body, to feel the wind against the sail, to feel and hence form a deep and comprehensive understanding of all the large and minute interactions. This focus would clearly be a very important skill in theorizing...

German, French, and Italian being three of the four official languages, that wouldn't be surprising if it was common.

But Einstein did attend an elite university in Swiss, the Zurich Polytechnicum

When I hear about geniuses that lived, most of the time I hear about how awesome their memory was ... which worries me, as I can't even remember the names of people I meet without effort and this would mean that I may never be good enough for anything, so why bother?

But Einstein wasn't one of those people. His IQ may have been great, but he wasn't one of those people that could recite all U.S. states or presidents at age 6.

What I like about Einstein is that he worked hard for his whole life. Whatever disability he may have had regarding his memory, he compensated multiple times by being persistent and obsessed with his work.

Yes, he could not say the names of all US presidents at age 6. I doubt Einstein ever tried memorizing the names of all US presidents when he was child. He wasn't in the US then. :)

I don't know about Einstein's memory, but I do know that people often mistake having a good memory for obscure facts and above average verbal ability for intelligence.

I never heard this memory thing. In any case it is a bad excuse for you to not even try anything.

If memory specifically bothers you, buy a book about memory techniques. They are fairly easy to learn, and a lot of special techniques exist for memorizing people's names.

I went to a talk by a memory trainer once and he said this is THE main thing CEOs always want to train: remembering people's names. Guess it helps when dealing with employees.

You might also like to look at Grothendieck. He wrote how he felt like a plodding turtle compared to his peers. Hilbert also must've seemed slow.

Of course, when people write stories on mental feats, they'll choose a more showoffy person who can do well on the tests that people remember from childhood. That means fewer stories about people taking time to think about things in their own way.

(What horrors would result if a schoolchild got it into her head that maybe she should just take a day off from school and lie in a hammock and think? That kind of crazy thinking gets you Clojure. (http://clojure.blip.tv/file/4457042/))

(I checked Grothendieck's quote after I got home. It wasn't "plodding turtle" but rather "dumb ox.")

If you're not talented at math when you're younger, there's practically no hope for you to be good at it later. Given that Einstein did a good bit of math for the physics he was involved with, you can be pretty confident he was sharp when he was younger.

I seem to recall he had trouble getting into university... which I guess is supported by him being a patent examiner, instead of a student.

No, it was that he had trouble getting a teaching post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Patent_office

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