Today happens to be the anniversary of a murderous Nazi assmunch shooting himself in the head in a Berlin bunker. But fuck that guy. Let’s talk about a Jewish super genius instead.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 30, 1905--
Don’t believe the myth. Unlike me, Albert Einstein was actually good at math. He was a gifted student, but not a well-behaved nor attentive one. He considered himself “a pariah” among academics who was misunderstood for his nonconformity. And it is the nonconformist who looks at the genius work of Newtonian mechanics and says it’s not good enough.
Many have heard 1905 referred to as Einstein’s “miracle year.” While working at the Swiss Patent Office, he published four ground-breaking papers in his spare time, one of which was that E=MC2 stuff. But overlooked from the same year is that on April 30, at the age of 26, he finished his doctoral thesis, titled A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, and was awarded his PhD by the University of Zurich.
It is worth noting there is significant historical debate as to how much contribution Einstein’s first wife Mileva Marić, a mathematician and physicist, made to her husband’s theories. Some historians say it was considerable, others say not at all. Albert dumped her in 1913 and married his cousin.
Einstein had only taken the job at the patent office because he’d spent two fruitless years attempting to find a teaching position, but his miracle year was a harbinger of change, launching his academic career in earnest. He held teaching positions at universities in Bern, Prague, his alma mater in Zurich, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. It was during his tenure at the latter that he developed the theory of general relativity in 1915 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
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In 1933 Einstein was visiting the United States when a certain genocidal assdouche came to power in Germany. Among many, many other atrocities, one was a new law that barred Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. Einstein said fucking Nazis can inhale a bag of dog farts and decided to stay in America, which, as history shows, was a wise decision.
Berlin’s loss was Princeton’s gain, with Einstein taking a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he was an intermittent lecturer until his death in 1955. It is often said that those who can’t do, teach. In the case of Einstein, the reverse was true. He was an outstanding researcher, but his biographer Walter Isaacson said, “Einstein was never an inspired teacher, and his lectures tended to be regarded as disorganized.” Kinda like his hair.
And FYI, before you share a meme with a “quote” by Einstein, google that shit first. He is one of the most popular figures to whom quotes are misattributed.
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