Was Einstein a Genius?

It is almost foolish to speculate on why or how someone like Albert Einstein was a genius.  People like Einstein and Newton are essentially off the scale of human intelligence.  Yet, they live among us, make very human errors, and act in very human ways. So, we take them for humans, albeit just really smart specimens.

As to Einstein, he told us his formula for discovery. That was through the thought experiment, wherein he would conceive of a physical situation such as what would happen as he looked in a mirror as both were accelerating toward the speed of light. This was, for Einstein, the beginning of relativity.  But what for you and I, had we been given this experiment? The implication is that Einstein dwelled on the problem endlessly until some ideas emerged.  Then, by sheer strength of will he managed those ideas into the beginnings of a theory.  Finally, it became a fait de complet.

What is not mentioned is that Einstein also had an intense proclivity to independently figure out every single step in derivations of all he knew.  For him, it was not enough to read on it and then solve problems at the chapter’s end. Don’t be fooled by stories of Einstein being a slow learner.  He knew most of calculus before most of us had our first date.  It was his depth of investigation that allowed him to penetrate his experiments to fully developed conclusions. This seems to be a characteristic of most great scientists, the compulsion to understand at the level back to the origin. 

For example, Richard Feynman tells us he would derive everything he encountered, copying into notebooks.  Newton was no doubt similar if we understand how he approached economic and monetary theory when he became master of the mint.  Huge notebooks of information were compiled. And this was long after he was already world-famous.

Einstein persisted with such thought experiments throughout his life, confounding the newer quantum theorists/geniuses, with whom he profoundly disagreed.  Such experiments and unexcelled depth,  combined with remarkable persistence and determination, together with a deep knowledge of his subject, plus a terrific mind made this genius.  Not an easy formula to mimic.