How Einstein really studied at school - photo. Was Albert Einstein a loser? How Einstein studied at school
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the southern German city of Ulm, into a poor Jewish family.
The scientist lived in Germany and the USA, however, he always denied that he knew English. The scientist was a public figure and humanist, an honorary doctor of about 20 leading universities in the world, a member of many academies of sciences, including a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1926).
The discoveries of the great genius in science gave enormous growth to mathematics and physics in the 20th century. Einstein is the author of about 300 works on physics, as well as the author of more than 150 books in the field of other sciences. During his life he developed many significant physical theories.
AiF.ru has collected 15 interesting facts from the life of the world famous scientist.
Einstein was a bad student
As a child, the famous scientist was not a child prodigy. Many doubted his usefulness, and his mother even suspected her child’s congenital deformity (Einstein had a large head).
Einstein at 14 years old. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Einstein never received a high school diploma, but assured his parents that he himself could prepare to enter the Higher Technical School (Polytechnic) in Zurich. But he failed the first time.
After all, having entered the Polytechnic, student Einstein very often skipped lectures, reading magazines with the latest scientific theories in cafes.
After receiving his diploma, he got a job as an expert in a patent office. Due to the fact that assessing the technical characteristics of the young specialist most often took about 10 minutes, he spent a lot of time developing his own theories.
Didn't like sports
Apart from swimming (“the sport that requires the least energy,” as Einstein himself said), he avoided any vigorous activity. A scientist once said: “When I come home from work, I don’t want to do anything other than work with my mind.”
Solved complex problems by playing the violin
Einstein had a special way of thinking. He singled out those ideas that were inelegant or disharmonious, based mainly on aesthetic criteria. Then he proclaimed a general principle by which harmony would be restored. And he made predictions about how physical objects would behave. This approach produced stunning results.
Einstein's favorite instrument. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The scientist trained himself to rise above a problem, see it from an unexpected angle and find an extraordinary way out. When he found himself at a dead end, playing the violin, a solution suddenly popped into his head.
Einstein "stopped wearing socks"
They say that Einstein was not very tidy and once spoke about this as follows: “When I was young, I learned that the big toe always ends in a hole in the sock. So I stopped wearing socks."
Loved to smoke a pipe
Einstein was a life member of the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club. He had great respect for the smoking pipe and believed that it “contributes to a calm and objective judgment of human affairs.”
Hated science fiction
To avoid distorting pure science and giving people a false illusion of scientific understanding, he recommended total abstinence from any type of science fiction. “I never think about the future, it will come soon enough,” he said.
Einstein's parents were against his first marriage
Einstein met his first wife Mileva Maric in 1896 in Zurich, where they studied together at the Polytechnic. Albert was 17 years old, Mileva was 21. She was from a Catholic Serbian family living in Hungary. Einstein's collaborator Abraham Pais, who became his biographer, wrote in a fundamental biography of his great boss, published in 1982, that both of Albert's parents were against this marriage. Only on his deathbed did Einstein's father Hermann agree to his son's marriage. But Paulina, the scientist’s mother, never accepted her daughter-in-law. “Everything in me resisted this marriage,” Pais quotes Einstein’s 1952 letter.
Einstein with his first wife Mileva Maric (c. 1905).
2 years before the wedding, in 1901, Einstein wrote to his beloved: “...I have lost my mind, I am dying, I am burning with love and desire. The pillow you sleep on is a hundred times happier than my heart! You come to me at night, but, unfortunately, only in a dream...”
However, after a short time, the future father of the theory of relativity and the future father of the family writes to his bride in a completely different tone: “If you want marriage, you will have to agree to my conditions, here they are:
firstly, you will take care of my clothes and bed;
secondly, you will bring me food three times a day to my office;
thirdly, you will renounce all personal contacts with me, except those necessary for maintaining social decency;
fourthly, whenever I ask you to do this, you will leave my bedroom and office;
fifthly, without words of protest you will perform scientific calculations for me;
sixthly, you will not expect any manifestations of feelings from me.”
Mileva accepted these humiliating conditions and became not only a faithful wife, but also a valuable assistant in her work. On May 14, 1904, their son Hans Albert is born, the only successor of the Einstein family. In 1910, a second son, Edward, was born, who suffered from dementia since childhood and ended his life in 1965 in a Zurich psychiatric hospital.
Firmly believed that he would receive the Nobel Prize
In fact, Einstein’s first marriage broke up in 1914; in 1919, during the legal divorce proceedings, the following written promise from Einstein appeared: “I promise you that when I receive the Nobel Prize, I will give you all the money. You must agree to the divorce, otherwise you will get nothing at all.”
The couple were confident that Albert would become a Nobel laureate for the theory of relativity. He actually received the Nobel Prize in 1922, although with a completely different wording (for explaining the laws of the photoelectric effect). Einstein kept his word: he gave all 32 thousand dollars (a huge amount for that time) to his ex-wife. Until the end of his days, Einstein also took care of the handicapped Edward, writing letters to him that he could not even read without outside help. While visiting his sons in Zurich, Einstein stayed with Mileva in her house. Mileva had a very hard time with the divorce, was depressed for a long time, and was treated by psychoanalysts. She died in 1948 at the age of 73. The feeling of guilt before his first wife weighed on Einstein until the end of his days.
Einstein's second wife was his sister
In February 1917, the 38-year-old author of the theory of relativity became seriously ill. Extremely intense mental work with poor nutrition in warring Germany (this was the Berlin period of life) and without proper care provoked acute liver disease. Then jaundice and a stomach ulcer were added. The initiative to care for the patient was taken by his maternal cousin and paternal second cousin Elsa Einstein-Lowenthal. She was three years older, divorced, and had two daughters. Albert and Elsa had been friends since childhood; new circumstances contributed to their rapprochement. Kind, warm-hearted, motherly and caring, in a word, a typical burgher, Elsa loved to look after her famous brother. As soon as Einstein's first wife, Mileva Maric, agreed to the divorce, Albert and Elsa got married, Albert adopted Elsa's daughters and had excellent relations with them.
Einstein with his wife Elsa. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Didn't take troubles seriously
In his normal state, the scientist was unnaturally calm, almost inhibited. Of all the emotions, he preferred smug cheerfulness. I absolutely couldn’t stand it when someone around me was sad. He didn't see what he didn't want to see. Didn't take troubles seriously. He believed that jokes made troubles go away. And that they can be transferred from a personal plan to a general one. For example, compare the grief from your divorce with the grief brought to the people by war. The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld helped him suppress his emotions; he constantly reread them.
Didn't like the pronoun "we"
He said “I” and did not allow anyone to say “we”. The meaning of this pronoun simply did not reach the scientist. His close friend only once saw the imperturbable Einstein in rage when his wife uttered the forbidden “we”.
Often withdrawn into himself
To be independent of conventional wisdom, Einstein often isolated himself in solitude. This was a childhood habit. He even started talking at the age of 7 because he did not want to communicate. He built cozy worlds and contrasted them with reality. The world of family, the world of like-minded people, the world of the patent office where I worked, the temple of science. “If the sewage of life licks the steps of your temple, close the door and laugh... Do not give in to anger, remain as before as a saint in the temple.” He followed this advice.
Relaxed, playing the violin and falling into a trance
The genius always tried to stay focused, even when he was babysitting his sons. He wrote and composed, answering the questions of his eldest son, rocking his youngest son on his knee.
Einstein loved to relax in his kitchen, playing Mozart melodies on his violin.
And in the second half of his life, the scientist was helped by a special trance, when his mind was not limited by anything, his body did not obey pre-established rules. I slept until they woke me up. I stayed awake until they sent me to bed. I ate until they stopped me.
Einstein burned his last work
In the last years of his life, Einstein worked on the creation of the Unified Field Theory. Its main purpose is to use one single equation to describe the interaction of three fundamental forces: electromagnetic, gravitational and nuclear. Most likely, an unexpected discovery in this area prompted Einstein to destroy his work. What kind of work were these? The answer, alas, the great physicist took with him forever.
Albert Einstein in 1947. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Allowed me to examine my brain after death
Einstein believed that only a maniac obsessed with one thought could achieve significant results. He agreed to have his brain examined after his death. As a result, the scientist’s brain was removed 7 hours after the death of the outstanding physicist. And then it was stolen.
Death overtook the genius at Princeton Hospital (USA) in 1955. The autopsy was performed by a pathologist named Thomas Harvey. He removed Einstein's brain for study, but instead of making it available to science, he took it for himself.
Risking his reputation and job, Thomas placed the brain of the greatest genius in a jar of formaldehyde and took it to his home. He was convinced that such action was a scientific duty for him. Moreover, Thomas Harvey sent pieces of Einstein’s brain for research to leading neurologists for 40 years.
The descendants of Thomas Harvey tried to return to Einstein’s daughter what was left of her father’s brain, but she refused such a “gift”. From then to this day, the remains of the brain, ironically, are in Princeton, from where it was stolen.
Scientists who examined Einstein's brain proved that the gray matter was different from normal. Scientific studies have shown that the areas of Einstein's brain responsible for speech and language are reduced, while the areas responsible for processing numerical and spatial information are enlarged. Other studies have found an increase in the number of neuroglial cells*.
*Glial cells [glial cell] (Greek: γλοιός - sticky substance, glue) - a type of cell in the nervous system. Glial cells are collectively called neuroglia or glia. They make up at least half the volume of the central nervous system. The number of glial cells is 10–50 times greater than that of neurons. Neurons of the central nervous system are surrounded by glial cells.
school leaving certificate /on a six-point system, 6 is the best score/
Einsteins Dissertation, 1905
Albert Einstein auf einer deutschen Sonderbriefmarke zum Jahr der Physik 2005
Einstein and Niels Bohr
1930 Brussels.
st. Albert Einstein in Bern.
Many of us have heard stories of recognized geniuses, great people known today to the whole world, who, in turn, were not successful at school, even more so - many of them were given a disconsolate diagnosis by teachers: mental retardation. These include: Thomas Edison, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Winston Churchill, Isaac Newton and others. Of course, first of all, this list is headed by Albert Einstein. This is exactly what will be discussed in the current article.
So what do we know about him? Degrees in chemistry, mathematics, but most importantly, in physics - precisely the area of knowledge in which Albert Einstein made more than one discovery, recognized as the greatest in our history. Chemistry – after all, Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize for achievements directly related to this discipline. Well, without deep knowledge of mathematics, hardly anything would have worked out with the rest. In addition, another fact is known: one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century could not pass the final exam.
But is this really the case?
At the age of 17, a graduate of a Swiss school, young Albert received a matriculation certificate, which included the following marks:
- Physics, algebra, geometry, history – 6 points;
- Chemistry, German and Italian languages – 5 points;
- French – 3 points;
- English – not certified.
So, one of the first biographers made a mistake, because of which all the fuss began. Having confused the Swiss system of knowledge assessment with the German one, where there was an inverse relationship, namely: one corresponded to an “excellent” (sehr gut), two points corresponded to a “good” (gut) and so on, up to “insufficient” (ungenügend ), which corresponded to 6 points – the lowest score. Based on this, indeed, Einstein could be said to be a total loser. But “the whole point” is that in fact, the greatest scientist, even in school, shone with his knowledge, if not in all, but in most disciplines!
Apart from grades, Albert did not have a good relationship with his teachers. By nature, already at a young age, he was free-thinking. We all know the attitude of most teachers towards any dissent. The student did not even try to hide his dislike for the teachers; he did not tolerate the authoritarian attitude towards himself (as well as other students) from the teachers. One of the teachers once told the young genius: “It will be great when you eventually leave the gymnasium,” further reinforcing his belief. with the statement: “Your indifference to what we teach undermines the reputation of the entire educational institution.” Disputes and conflicts between 6th grade students and teachers were not uncommon.
Einstein had an extremely negative attitude toward mechanical cramming of “incoherent nonsense.” But at the same time, I studied a lot on my own and read a lot. All this testifies to the extraordinary nature of his personality.
Yes, regarding the failure of the final exam and problems with obtaining a certificate. His father insisted that Albert completely throw out “philosophical nonsense” from his head and, since his son was so good at the exact sciences, decided to send him to a technical school to major in engineering. But German universities were excluded only so that the young man would not be drafted into the army at the age of 17, and at the same time, teaching had to be conducted in German. The choice fell on the Zurich Polytechnic, despite the fact that Einstein was only 16 years old at the time, instead of the required 18. He did not like the specialty chosen for him by his parents, therefore, he practically did not prepare for those disciplines that were not interesting to him: languages, zoology, botany. He had no chance of getting in, even though he excelled in physics and mathematics in the exams. The lack of a certificate, which he never received at the gymnasium, also played a role. However, the director of the university, being amazed by the applicant’s abilities in the exact sciences, recommended one of the Swiss schools in order to still obtain a certificate of completion of secondary education. A year later, having received a certificate, Albert Einstein was admitted to the university without exams. But this story gave birth to the myth that the future genius could not pass the final exams the first time due to poor performance.
Do you know that the great scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein, during his school years was considered lazy and unable to study well?
Einstein's teachers indeed considered his mental abilities to be very poor. Because of this, Albert Einstein, at the end of his studies at the gymnasium, was not able to receive the matriculation certificate that other students received. He couldn’t even get into the Zurich Polytechnic on his first try.
But all these facts, in fact, were evidence not of the meager mind of a genius, but of errors in the educational process. Einstein himself, as an adult, admitted that he was disgusted by existing methods of education. According to him, they completely killed all the creative processes that arose in the minds of students. Here is an exact quote from his words: “they killed sacred curiosity, a property necessary for scientific research.”
Einstein was very negative about rote memorization of scientific material; he considered this method harmful, since the creative thinking process is incompatible with simple “memorization.”
This is an interesting fact in the life of the greatest scientist Albert Einstein. This fact should give pause to those people who shape our modern educational system. After all, if Einstein himself considered the mechanical study of material harmful for the development of thinking, then do we, “mere mortals,” have the right to argue with him? This is something worth thinking about for each of us.
What do we really know about this person?
The associative mechanism of the brain slipped in images and formulas - hair on the head disheveled in creative chaos, a lush mustache, E = mc2, a protruding tongue in a super-popular photograph, I remembered the postulates of the theory of relativity, the speed of light, and so on, which, as it turned out, had nothing to do with to the man Einstein, but rather represented his pop projection in consciousness. A sort of simplified image with two or three labels. I felt ashamed, and I decided to get to know the biography of the great namesake more closely. The result of the work was this short, but I hope interesting excerpt from seven little-known facts that took place in the life of a genius.
Einstein was born a weak and sickly child during a difficult birth. His gigantic, irregularly deformed head aroused serious suspicion among doctors that the child had congenital mental retardation. Concerned parents watched in horror as the boy grew up and remained silent. Albert did not speak a single word until he was four years old. But even after reaching this seemingly sufficient age for conversation, the boy spoke very slowly, which aggravated the suspicion of some kind of developmental delay.
In 1952, when the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, died, the country's prime minister invited Einstein to lead the state. Hey guy, you should do the same for your country's politics as you do for physics, he suggested to the scientist. However, he refused the honorary position, expressing regret over the lack of the necessary personal qualities for big-time politics - “I’m afraid I don’t have the natural abilities and experience to deal with politicians and properly manage the state,” the scientist was “frostbitten.”
Einstein died in 1955, at the age of 76. He needed an urgent operation, then he could live for several more years. But the scientist refused, telling the doctors: “I want to leave when my body asks for it. Prolonging life artificially seems to me to be in bad taste. This is my destiny, my time to leave. I will do it elegantly." Seven hours after his death, autopsy expert Thomas Harver removed the scientist's brain for study without the consent of his family and friends. Moving from one state to another for work, Harvey carried the genius’s brain preserved in alcohol with him everywhere. After all, already in the 90s. last century, the brain was found in a new laboratory at Princeton University, where Harver extracted it from the skull of the great scientist.
The brilliant physicist had an illegitimate daughter from Mileva Maric, his first wife. They formalized their relationship a year after the birth of the child. Interestingly, nothing is known about the girl’s further fate. At this time, Maric lived with her parents in Vojvodina without a lover. Most likely, the girl died or was given away to foster care. A year later, in 1903, Einstein and Maric got married in Bern, and in 1904 their son Hans-Albert was born.
Before dying in his sleep, Einstein spoke his last words to the nurse in German, which she did not speak. Thus, these words were forever lost to posterity. The last entry ends mid-sentence: “Political passions fan the flames, people are definitely their victims...”
Let's expose! Was Einstein a loser? July 22nd, 2013
Many poor students console themselves with the thought that Albert Einstein, the great physicist, author of the famous theory of relativity, Nobel laureate, was also a poor student in childhood.
Is this true?
Facts speak better than words. So, here is Albert Einstein’s matriculation certificate, which he received at the cantonal school of Aarau (Switzerland) in September 1896 at the age of 17 (grades were given on a six-point system).
Translation:
German language – 5
French - 3
English language - -
Italian language – 5
History - 6
Geography - 4
Algebra - 6
Geometry (planimetry, trigonometry, stereometry and analytical geometry) – 6
Descriptive geometry – 6
Physics - 6
Chemistry - 5
Natural history - 5
Artistic drawing – 4
Technical drawing - 4
As you can see, Einstein shone in the exact sciences, and had decent grades in other subjects. He received the highest score in history, algebra, trigonometry, geometry and physics. In other subjects, grades are a little more modest. The lowest grade - 3 - was received by him in French. However, during a visit to Jerusalem in 1923, he free gave a lecture in French. Einstein was not certified only in English, and this circumstance made his life very difficult when he moved to the United States in 1933.
Where then did the myth about the poor performance of a genius come from?
The thing is that Einstein studied most of the time in Germany, but received a school certificate in Switzerland, where the grading system was the opposite of the German one: in Germany the highest score was one, just below two, and so on, and Swiss teachers used a straight six-point system.
At school (Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich), Albert Einstein was indeed not one of the first students (although he never had problems with mathematics, Latin and physics). The reason for this was the free-thinking of the future Nobel laureate. He did not tolerate the authoritarian attitude of teachers towards students, or the atmosphere in the gymnasium, which was close to a military one. “Teachers in the lower grades behave like sergeants, and in the upper grades like lieutenants,” Einstein later recalled. “I despise those who gladly march in formation to a music lesson - they were given a brain by mistake. A spinal one would be enough!” - he wrote. The student did not hide his hostility towards the teachers, and it was mutual. One day one of the teachers confessed to him: “How great it will be when you finally leave the gymnasium.” When Einstein objected that he had done nothing wrong, he explained: “Your presence and indifferent attitude towards everything we teach in class undermines the reputation of the entire school.”
In addition, in the sixth grade of the gymnasium, Albert began to have serious problems with some of the teachers due to the fact that he “constantly demanded evidence of religion and chose free-thinking.” Such skepticism was very rare in those days and was not encouraged, especially in an educational institution of this type.
Passport
Thus, Einstein was a “bad” student only in the sense of behavior in a militarized school system that was reduced to rote learning (“I was ready to endure any punishment, just so as not to learn incoherent nonsense from memory”). But this is just another proof of the extraordinary personality of the future Nobel laureate. Meanwhile, he studied a lot on his own and was fond of reading. Of his childhood impressions, Einstein later recalled as the most powerful: Euclid’s “Elements” and I. Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” In addition, on his mother’s initiative, he began playing the violin at the age of six. Einstein's passion for music continued throughout his life. Already in the USA in Princeton, in 1934 Einstein gave a charity concert in favor of scientists and cultural figures who emigrated from Nazi Germany, where he performed works by Mozart on the violin.
A significant role in the creation of the myth of Einstein the poor student was also played by the mistake of one of the early biographers of the genius, who confused the Swiss system of assessing knowledge with the German one.
Thus, dear poor students, there is no need to justify your laziness and lack of diligence with tales that the author of the most incomprehensible theory in the world did not study well - this is pure fiction. To get closer to Einstein, first try to get straight A's in mathematics or understand something in the works of Immanuel Kant.
By the way…
Here we should dispel another myth from the same series: that Einstein failed his final exam and passed it only the second time. To do this, we will tell you in more detail about the history of obtaining the certificate, a copy of which is given on this page.
In fact, Einstein left the gymnasium without receiving a certificate, for the reasons disclosed above.
The young man’s father insisted that he get all this “philosophical nonsense” out of his head and think about how to get an intelligent profession; he was leaning towards the engineering field, since his son was so keen on mathematics and physics. I had to follow my father's advice. At the family council, it was decided to send Albert to a technical school. Moreover, it was necessary to choose one where teaching was conducted in his native German language. Germany was excluded - Albert intended to renounce German citizenship so as not to serve in the army, where he was drafted at the age of 17. Outside Germany, the Zurich Polytechnic Institute (Polytechnic) was the most famous, and Einstein went there in the fall of 1895, although he was 2 years short of the required 18 years to enroll.
If you believe his own memories, he did not like the specialty that his parents had chosen for him to such an extent that he practically did not prepare for those subjects that did not interest him - botany, zoology, foreign languages. Accordingly, he passed them almost worse than all the applicants, although he distinguished himself in exams in mathematics and physics. The lack of a high school certificate also played a role: he was not accepted. However, the director of the institute, amazed by the young man’s mathematical erudition, gave him good advice: finish one of the Swiss high schools to obtain a certificate and a year later try again to enter the institute. He recommended the cantonal school in the small town of Aarau as the most advanced both in teaching methods and in the composition of teachers. Albert did just that, and in September of the following year he successfully passed all the final exams, and already in October 1896 he was admitted to the Polytechnic to the Faculty of Pedagogy without exams.
Well, “by the way,” the physicist received the Nobel Prize not for the theory of relativity, as many believe, but for the development of the quantum theory of the photoelectric effect.
Well, I’ll refrain from one more revelation or clarification.
If you have never seen this photo, it is at least strange. But few people know how the famous photo appeared. And it all happened on March 14, 1951, when Albert Einstein celebrated his 72nd birthday. He left Princeton University with Dr. Eidelot and his wife. The three of them got into the car after celebrating the birthday of a physics genius at the university. They were constantly harassed by photographers and reporters. But one of them stood aside, waiting for the main crowd of journalists to disperse. Having waited, Arthur Szasz approached those sitting in the car and asked the professor to smile for a photo card on his birthday.
In response, Einstein showed his tongue!
Here's what the full version of the famous photo looks like. This frame has become a legendary symbol of the originality of a man of genius.
In the editorial office where Artur Sas worked, they could not decide for a long time whether it was worth publishing such an unusual shot, and the shot was published anyway. Seeing himself with his tongue hanging out on the front page of a newspaper, Albert Einstein fell in love with the photo. He immediately cut the photo to the sizes we were used to and made copies, which he sent to his friends as postcards. A year before his death, he wrote to one of his friends that
German Wikipedia states that this myth is associated with the mistake of Einstein's first biographer. Both Germany and Switzerland have adopted a six-point rating scale. But in Germany the best score is 1, the worst is 6. And in Switzerland it’s the other way around: the best is 6, the worst is 1. And so, they say the biographer mixed up the grades in the Swiss certificate with German ones.
True, this theory does not explain how Einstein, according to the biographer, was able to enter the Polytechnic Institute with a “6” in all mathematical disciplines and physics, as well as a “5” in chemistry and a number of other subjects.
Here is a hypothesis about the origin of the myth:
Das Gerücht, dass Einstein allgemein ein schlechter Schüler war, ist falsch: Es geht auf Einsteins ersten Biografen zurück, der das Benotungssystem der Schweiz mit dem deutschen verwechselte.
Objectively, Einstein was not a bad student(in Russian - “a bad student” or “a three student”), just as he was not a “very excellent student” or even a “good student.” Even as a child, he was very self-willed, did not particularly want to study subjects that did not interest him (and those that interested him, on the contrary, studied beyond the curriculum; at the same time he lost his religiosity at the age of 12) - he received appropriate grades (but at least satisfactory), and was not afraid to express his opinion and argue with authorities (teachers, the director of the gymnasium or his own father: at least on the issue of higher education, he went to the polytechnic, where he himself wanted, and not where his father wanted to send him).
Einstein did not graduate from the German gymnasium not because of poor academic performance (he did not have unsatisfactory grades), but because of a conflict with the director and teachers. They believed that Einstein behaved too badly and, moreover, negatively influenced others. In a word, he does not respect authorities and does not fit into the system. However, Einstein was not expelled, but simply left on his own. At the age of 15, by the way. Moreover, the parents already lived in another country (Italy), and after a couple of years they were threatened with conscription for service in the Kaiser’s army (it was enough to live to 17 years in Germany to become liable for military service), which Einstein did not want at all. By the way, he soon also renounced German citizenship and for a number of years had no citizenship at all.
At the age of 16 - in Italy - he wrote his first scientific article(“On the study of the state of the ether in a magnetic field”), which he sent to his uncle in Belgium for review. (What scientific article did you write when you were 16? I, for example, didn’t have one.) The work was not sent to scientific journals and was not published.
Then the family moved to Switzerland and Einstein tried to enter the polytechnic. Since he did not have an education that would give him the right to enter a university (in Germany this is called Abitur, in Switzerland - Matura), he had to take entrance exams (by the way, if he remained in the gymnasium, he would still continue to study and would not enter any university at the age of 16 would). I failed either the French exam (as the German Wikipedia claims), or also botany (as the Russian one claims), or - to the heap - also zoology (as stated in the previous answer). In any case, he passed everything else, although he did not complete his studies at the gymnasium, and, it seems, he did not take private lessons (except for learning to play the violin).
On the recommendation of one of the Polytechnic professors, Einstein accepted to complete their studies at a Swiss school, where he received his certificate for passing exams for this very Matura (French - 3, that is, in a five-point system - a three with a minus). Then entered the polytechnic, where he continued in his former spirit: he skipped lectures on subjects that did not interest him (he prepared for exams using the notes of his fellow students). This time it was mathematics that fell into disgrace, as being too theoretical and far from the problems of physics. Subsequently, while working on general relativity, Einstein allegedly changed his mind on this matter and expressed regret about absenteeism from mathematical lectures during his studies at the Polytechnic.
