Albert Einstein: Rebellious Wunderkind

TL;DR

This paper explores the mythologized childhood of Albert Einstein, highlighting his rebellious nature, learning style, and self-education, contrasting biographical stories with historical facts.

Contribution

It critically examines the discrepancy between Einstein's biographical myths and actual childhood experiences, emphasizing his independent learning and rebellious traits.

Findings

Einstein was a rebellious and impulsive child.

He self-educated in science and philosophy.

Biographies often romanticize his childhood traits.

Abstract

Childhood and Schooldays: Albert Einstein, and the family members seemed to have exaggerated the story of Albert who developed slowly, learned to talk late, and whose parents thought he was abnormal. These and other stories were adopted by biographers as if they really happened in the form that Albert and his sister told them. Hence biographers were inspired by them to create a mythical public image of Albert Einstein. Albert had tendency toward temper tantrums, the young impudent rebel Einstein had an impulsive and upright nature. He rebelled against authority and refused to learn by rote. He could not easily bring himself to study what did not interest him at school, especially humanistic subjects. And so his sister told the story that his Greek professor, to whom he once submitted an especially poor paper, went so far in his anger to declare that nothing would ever become of him. Albert learned subjects in advance when it came to sciences; and during the vacation of a few months from school, Albert independently worked his way through the entire prospective Gymnasium syllabus. He also taught himself natural science, geometry and philosophy by reading books that he obtained from a poor Jewish medical student of Polish nationality, Max Talmud, and from his uncle Jacob Einstein.