For Immediate Release Contact: Pat Kremer/Nancy O’Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) Test Your Einstein Quotient True or False? 1. Einstein was a poor student. A popular myth, especially among students, but false. Young Albert was actually a good student—except perhaps in French. While he abhorred the rote learning of the schools in Germany, often skipped classes, and eventually dropped out of high school there, he successfully completed his secondary education in the more progressive schools of Switzerland. His final certificate shows he received the highest possible marks in mathematics, science, and history. 2. Einstein was the quintessential solitary genius. False. While Einstein did do much of his work in his head and on paper, he had many friends and was an active part of the larger scientific community, participating in conferences with scientists from around the world who were working on related problems. During his university years, Einstein often borrowed lecture notes from his friend Marcel Grossman, who introduced him to the non-Euclidean geometry that would be crucial to the general theory of relativity. Einstein also spent a great deal of time talking with his closest friend, Michele Besso, about science, philosophy, and the nature of time. It was after one such discussion that Einstein realized time is not absolute. Later, he worked with assistants and collaborators, and he frequently exchanged views (both scientific and political) with other prominent scientists, including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and even Sigmund Freud. 3. Einstein was the first to introduce the concept of relativity into science. Not by a long shot. Centuries earlier, Galileo had applied this idea to everyday objects, noting that how we perceive the world depends on our frame of reference. Einstein showed that the speed of light was an exception to this rule, and that therefore time and space themselves were relative. 4. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of relativity. Not officially, at least. Einstein did receive the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics, several years after the general theory of relativity was published. But relativity was still a controversial idea at the time, even among scientists, and the citation says the award is “for his services to theoretical physics and in particular for his discovery of the photoelectric effect,” a paper published in 1905. Nevertheless, it was the theory of relativity that Einstein addressed in his Nobel Prize lecture. 5. Einstein was the father of the atomic bomb. False. When Einstein learned that German scientists had split the uranium atom and might soon be able to build atomic weapons, he urged President Roosevelt to start a similar research program here. This may have spurred the U.S. effort. But the Army denied Einstein the security clearance he would have needed to work on the Manhattan Project. His famous equation, E = mc², explains the energy released by an atomic bomb, but doesn’t explain how to build one. Continue>>