Myths and Misconceptions

"He Failed Math"

False. Einstein had mastered calculus by about fifteen and consistently earned top marks in mathematics. In 1935 a rabbi in Princeton showed him a clipping of a Ripley's "Believe It or Not!" column making the claim. He laughed and said he had never failed in mathematics.

Two things probably fed the story. He did fall short on the 1895 entrance examination for the Zurich Polytechnic, taken two years early, but in the non-science sections; his mathematics and physics were excellent. And his Swiss school reversed its grading scale while he was there, so that 6, the lowest mark one year, became the highest the next. His final certificate shows sixes in mathematics and physics.

"He Was a Bad Student"

Mostly false. He was near the top of his class as a child. What is true is that he loathed authoritarian teaching, left his Munich school without finishing, and annoyed his university professors by skipping lectures.

"He Was a Late Talker"

Probably true to some degree, according to his own recollection and his sister's. Claims that he was dyslexic or autistic are modern guesses with no real evidence.

"He Won the Nobel Prize for Relativity"

False. The 1921 prize was for his services to theoretical physics and especially for the law of the photoelectric effect. He gave his Nobel lecture on relativity anyway.

"He Built the Atomic Bomb"

False. He signed a letter in 1939 urging research, and a follow-up in 1940. He was denied a security clearance and took no part in the Manhattan Project. $E=m{c}^2$ explains why nuclear reactions release energy; it is not a design for a weapon.

"His First Wife Did the Work"

Unproven. Mileva Marić was a trained physicist, and the two discussed physics as students. Some writers have argued that she was a co-author of the 1905 papers. The historians who edited Einstein's papers have found no documentary evidence of a scientific contribution from her, and her surviving letters do not discuss the ideas. It is fair to say that she was a sounding board, that her own scientific career was cut short by circumstances partly of his making, and that the stronger claim has not been established.

"He Called the Cosmological Constant His Biggest Blunder"

Uncertain. The phrase reached print through George Gamow in 1956, after Einstein's death, and two other physicists later recalled hearing him say much the same, but historians who have studied the question disagree about whether he said it. See Cosmology.

"He Wrote a Letter to His Daughter About Love as a Universal Force"

Fabricated. The text circulates widely online. No such letter exists in the archives, and it does not sound like him.

"His Brain Was Different"

Unclear, and probably unknowable. The pathologist Thomas Harvey removed Einstein's brain at the autopsy in 1955, without the family's prior consent, and kept it for decades. A few studies of the preserved pieces reported unusual features. They compare one brain against small groups of others, were not conducted blind, and have been widely criticized. Nothing reliable has been learned about genius from it.

"He Said That"

Very often, he did not. See Quotes for the famous lines he never said.

True, Though It Sounds Like a Myth

• He co-invented a refrigerator. See Refrigerators, Magnets, and Blue Skies.
• He was offered the presidency of Israel.
• He did not wear socks.
• He was born on 14 March, which written as 3.14 is now celebrated as Pi Day.