How much did Albert Einstein report? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to larn from others and better empathize the world.

Respond by Jack Fraser, Primary's Physics, University of Oxford, on Quora:

In that location are a lot of myths and rumors flying effectually about Mr Einstein: from the idea that his wife did all his famous work (she didn't), to the fact that he was just some random guy who only sauntered past, and showed all those boring 20th century physicists where they'd all been going incorrect, without the normal years and years of report.

That's not quite the truth. In fact, information technology's a rather far weep from anything even resembling the truth.

Let'due south look at Albert Einstein's education history:

  • Built-in 1879
  • 1884–1887, attended a Catholic Primary school in Munich
  • 1887–1894, attended Luitpold Gymnasium
  • 1895–1896, attended the Argovian Cantonal School in Switzerland
  • 1896 - 1900, attended ETH Zurich for a BA in physics
  • 1900–1905, attended University of Zurich for a doctoral caste

By mid-1905, he was awarded his PhD in physics.

By the terminate of 1905, he had published four seminal papers (they would later exist known every bit the annus mirabilis papers), which established special relativity, the existence of atoms, and the photoelectric effect.

Thus, he established his name in the field (and the history books), and by 1908 he was pretty darned famous in the physics community.

It then took until 1915 before he published his General Theory of Relativity, with much help along the fashion from Marcel Grossmann, and others.

Einstein therefore attended education institutions virtually-continuously from the age of five to xx-six, with only a cursory gap in 1894/1895 (aged 15/sixteen) whilst his family moved around Europe.

Of those twenty-ane years of teaching, ix of them were at a university studying physics.

This is slightly longer than is typical nowadays — today, v years for a PhD (in Europe) is long, though it wasn't unusual back so. The average nowadays is three years.

Einstein started working for the Swiss Patent Role in 1902, which yous will note was halfway through his PhD. He did this because he could not find a satisfactory teaching post with which to support himself, and hence he needed some other income source.

He was non, every bit I take stressed dozens of times, an uneducated savant who institute himself stuck behind a desk at a patent office.

He was a doctoral candidate, who already had 6 years of university education behind him, and who was actively engaged in studying for a PhD in physics.

Einstein had 1 of the best educations available to him at the time.

It really bugs me when I come across people try to downplay Einstein's educational activity, and attempt to paint him as a misunderstood genius (often the idea that he failed at maths at school gets thrown in there besides). This is all nonsense.

Einstein was excellently educated, and he was excelling at mathematics and physics from a immature historic period.

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