Contribution. Special relativity (the 1905 paper), the light quanta paper, and general relativity, which took about eight years, from 1907 to November 1915.
Factor coverage
Favorable entries (helped or barrier absent) and adverse entries (barrier or not overcome) by factor. Factor tags are this site's classification.
Entrance exam. At 16, two years below the usual age, he took the Swiss Federal Polytechnic entrance exam. He got the best results in math and science but failed languages and history. Contrary to a popular myth, he did not fail math.
Stability. His key years (1905 to 1915) preceded persecution. He completed general relativity in Berlin during World War I but was not drawn into the war.
Early curiosity. In his Autobiographical Notes (1949), he described a compass fascinating him as a child and, at 12, a Euclidean geometry book he called his "holy geometry booklet."
A stable job with bandwidth. The Bern patent office paid a steady income. The workweek was 48 hours, and the science library usually closed before he got off, but the routine work left his mind free.
Marcel Grossmann shared lecture notes, his father recommended Einstein for the patent office job, and in 1912 he pointed Einstein to Riemannian geometry for general relativity. Einstein later downplayed Grossmann's role, but historians generally view it as significant.
The Olympia Academy. Einstein, Maurice Solovine, and Conrad Habicht met to discuss philosophy and spent weeks on Hume's critique of substance and causality.
Max Planck, co-editor of Annalen der Physik, accepted Einstein's light quanta paper despite disliking the idea and was the first scientist to report favorably on relativity.
Open publication.Annalen der Physik scrutinized first papers, then published later ones with little refereeing. With five prior papers, his relativity paper was probably accepted on receipt.
A field ready for a breakthrough. Physics was in crisis around 1900: the Michelson-Morley null result (1887), Lorentz's and Poincaré's electrodynamics, and Planck's 1900 quantum hypothesis. Einstein felt someone else would have found special relativity, but regarded general relativity as harder and more original.
His brain. Witelson, Kigar, and Harvey (1999) reported unusual parietal lobe features. Falk, Lepore, and Noe (2013) described an unusual prefrontal cortex and parietal lobes, calling their interpretations tentative. Hines (2014) concluded these studies do not show his brain structure explains his abilities. One brain and small comparison groups cannot establish cause.
Mileva Marić. A 1901 letter mentions "our work on relative motion," but most historians reject the claim that she was an unacknowledged coauthor. She was an intellectual companion during his formative years.
Galison's hypothesis. Galison (2003) argued that reviewing clock-synchronization patents may have shaped his thinking on simultaneity. This is a plausible hypothesis, not an established fact.
Pattern summary
Element
In this case
Door-opener
Grossmann, Planck
Knowledge source
Talmey's books, ETH
Institutional support
Patent office, Annalen
Built on recent work
Lorentz, Planck
Setback overcome
Unemployment
Barrier not overcome
Later persecution
Not independently verified. The family business, the Aarau school's Pestalozzi approach, the light-beam thought experiment, Besso's acknowledgment, the pre-1905 physics context, and Galison's hypothesis were not independently verified. They appear in standard biographies such as Isaacson (2007) and Pais (1982).
Sources
Einstein, A. (1949). Autobiographical Notes. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Evanston, IL: Library of Living Philosophers.
Witelson, S. F., Kigar, D. L., & Harvey, T. (1999). The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein. Lancet, 353(9170), 2149-2153. DOI10327-6)
Falk, D., Lepore, F. E., & Noe, A. (2013). The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein. Brain, 136(4), 1304-1327. DOI
Hines, T. (2014). Neuromythology of Einstein's brain. Brain and Cognition, 88, 21-25. DOI
Isaacson, W. (2007). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Pais, A. (1982). Subtle Is the Lord. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Galison, P. (2003). Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps. New York: Norton.
Also relevant: Bell, A., Chetty, R., Jaravel, X., Petkova, N., & Van Reenen, J. (2019). Who becomes an inventor in America? Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2), 647-713. All references