In 1905, Albert Einstein's mother thought he was a genius, his sister thought he was a genius, his father thought he was a genius – but that was about it, says author David Bodanis. His latest book is "Einstein's Greatest Mistake: A Biography" (goo.gl/vGbnSk). Read more at BigThink.com: bigthink.com/videos/david-bodanis-on-einstein-and-his-persistence-and-regret Follow Big Think here: YouTube: goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - 1905 Albert Einstein's mother thought he was a genius; his sister thought he was a genius; his father thought he was a genius, but he was stuck in the patent office in Bern Switzerland and nobody else thought he was a genius at all. We had mouthed off to his professor at his university. He didn't get any good job. His department of theoretical physics was the top drawer of his desk and he would slam it close. And he had tried all sorts of things. He was about 25/26, we had tried lots of ideas while he was stuck at the patent office. Nothing had really come together. And then suddenly in the spring of 1905 it was like a storm burst in his head. He poured out one of paper after another about four of them were worthy of the Nobel Prize. And the final two were Special Relativity and E=mc2. Einstein once said he wasn't smarter than other people but he said I have the persistence of a mule. And he was really honest about it. When he was a little kid and he made card castles he'd make layer after layer after layer of card castles and if they blew down well he'd take a deep breath and build it up again. So he knew he wanted to understand how the universe worked. He'd always thought the universe was like a series of books waiting on a shelf that if we were really lucky we could take them down and look inside and there would be all the truths of the universe inside there. It might be the Sermon on the Mount for Matthew, it might be what he later discovered things like E=mc2, and most of the time we couldn't look in those books, but occasional he we could and that's what drove him. All through his early 20s he was happily married at the beginning to a really hot young Serbian physics students the only woman in his class and Polytech in Zürich And they had great dreams of maybe becoming professors together, but reality got in the way. He was stuck at the patent office and until 1905 when he was 25/26, he couldn't get any fresh ideas and he and his wife they begin slowly to drift apart. They didn't have money for childcare. She was stuck at home taking care of the kids. She couldn't really participate in his work. Read Full Transcript Here: goo.gl/J6Fzh0.

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