The Boy Who Bested Einstein

Albert Einstein

How do you stack up against the competition? Where do you fall in the percentile rankings others may use to measure and project future success? Well here's a little side note from history that might provide some perspective to these tricky questions. 

 

Young Einstein, the Student

 

In his comprehensive biography Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon and Schuster, 2007), author Walter Isaacson uncovered a tantalizing morsel concerning Einstein’s early education. In 1895, while enrolled in an exclusive college preparatory school in Aargau, Switzerland, sixteen-year-old Albert was already being recognized as an exceptional student. Okay, no surprise there.
 

But according to Isaacson, and what scant school records still exist, in that particular year young Master Einstein scored the second highest rank in his class.

Adds Isaacson with a twist, "Alas, the name of the boy who bested Einstein is lost to history." 1
 

So the man whose name and face is to this day synonymous with genius and unrivaled brilliance, the man who would go on to tell us more or less how the universe worked, not to mention ushering in the atomic age, was at one point in his young life not considered the smartest kid in his class.
 

Proof enough that the value of any number ranking or grade point average is a totally subjective, perhaps meaningless, measurement of academic performance, nothing more. And for that matter, there is no law of nature that says every gifted prodigy always has to finish at the top of his class. Still, it does tickle the imagination to think of some young man (Aargau was an all boys school back then) quietly sitting at his desk and beating out one of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known. Then quietly disappearing forever.

 

If He Were Alive Today

 

Needless to say this was long before the days of overnight celebrity and instant personality profiles. If he were alive today, might not the grown man who once beat Einstein be the subject of curious, if not intense, scrutiny?
 

What journalist, blogger or news editor wouldn't love to expose this man to the world today, take his picture, and ask a few pointed questions like, What did it feel like to be the only one who ever finished ahead of Albert Einstein? Did you ever once think to yourself, What if it would  have been me instead of him that went on to great fame? Any regrets? By the way, what did you end up doing with the rest of your life?

Yes, fate can – and does – ask cruel things of us all.
 

Left alone, however, the mystery student in Switzerland probably grew up and went on to live a full and very unassuming life, working hard to earn a living and raise a family. He may never have been aware of his brush with immortality. Maybe he didn't even care. Again, we'll never know.
 

All of which brings up the point of what ultimately determines success, even greatness, in a person.  What does it take to make the grade these days? Is success somehow preordained or does it fall to hard work and free will? How does one judge who will make it and who won't? Does it come down to better credentials and a proven track record? Or is there more to it than that?

As for Einstein himself, he took his belief to a higher level when, in his later years, he said, "Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control...we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player." 2
 

Food for thought from the one and only Albert Einstein. And, yes, from the young boy who once bested him.