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Did Einstein fail math?
No. Albert Einstein never failed math. His school-leaving certificate from 1896 gives him the top mark, a 6 out of 6, in algebra, geometry, descriptive geometry and physics, and he said himself that he had mastered calculus before he was fifteen. What he did fail, at 16, was the entrance exam for the Zurich Polytechnic, and he failed it on languages and general subjects, not on mathematics. Our page on Albert Einstein tells the rest of his life with its sources.
What grades did Einstein get in math?
The best ones available. The image above is his final class at the cantonal school in Aarau, Switzerland, in the autumn of 1896. His certificate from that school, issued in Aarau on Oct 3, 1896, survives, and a scan of it is on Wikimedia Commons, which notes that "6 is the highest, and 1 the lowest grade." We read the marks from the scan:
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| Mark (out of 6) | |
|---|---|
| Algebra | 6 |
| Geometry (plane, trigonometry, solid and analytic) | 6 |
| Descriptive geometry | 6 |
| Physics | 6 |
| History | 6 |
| German | 5 |
| Italian | 5 |
| Chemistry | 5 |
| Natural history | 5 |
| Geography | 4 |
| Art drawing | 4 |
| Technical drawing | 4 |
| French | 3 |
Every mathematics subject on the certificate is a 6. His weakest mark was French.
His earlier school in Munich tells the same story. The American Institute of Physics, in its exhibit on Einstein's early years, says he "got generally good grades (and was outstanding in mathematics)," even though he hated that school, where success depended on memorization and obedience.
Did Einstein really learn calculus as a teenager?
That is what he said, and his biographer agrees. In 1935, a rabbi in Princeton showed Einstein a clipping of Ripley's "Believe It or Not!" headlined "Greatest living mathematician failed in mathematics." Walter Isaacson, writing for TIME in 2007, gives his reply: "I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus." Britannica tells the same story.
Isaacson adds that Einstein was at the top of his primary school class in math, that by 12 he was teaching himself geometry and algebra from textbooks his parents bought him ahead of time, and that he worked out his own proof of the Pythagorean theorem.
So what exam did Einstein fail?
The entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich (today's ETH Zurich), in October 1895. He was 16, two years below the usual age for admission, and had left his Munich school without a diploma. The American Institute of Physics puts it plainly: in 1895 he took the entrance examination for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, "and he failed."
The failure was not in mathematics. An account of his Aarau year on einstein-website.de, which quotes the documents of the period, says he did best of all in mathematics and the sciences, and that his results in languages and history fell short. It also quotes Einstein's own memory of it in his 1946 Autobiographical Notes: "My failure seemed completely justified," with the comfort that the physicist H. F. Weber invited him to sit in on his lectures.
The rector of the Polytechnic recommended a year at the school in Aarau. Einstein took it, earned the certificate above, and entered the Polytechnic in the autumn of 1896.
Where did the "Einstein failed math" myth come from?
No one has pinned it to a single source, but a few things fed it:
- A real failed exam. He did fail an entrance exam, and over the years "failed an exam" became "failed math."
- Ripley's column. The 1935 clipping spread the claim widely in his lifetime. Ripley's own site now says the opposite: "Einstein Never Failed Math."
- Grading scales that run in opposite directions. In Germany a 1 is the best mark, while in Switzerland a 6 is, as einstein-website.de explains. Someone reading Swiss marks with German eyes, or the reverse, could take a top grade for a bottom one. This is a popular explanation, not one tied to a documented mistake, so treat it as a likely part of the story rather than its proven origin.
- A comforting story. Isaacson notes that the claim is repeated "by scores of books and thousands of websites designed to reassure underachieving students."
Was Einstein a bad student at all?
Not a bad one, but not an obedient one. He disliked rote learning and the Munich school's discipline. At the Polytechnic, as the historian Galina Weinstein sums it up, "he skipped classes" and studied before exams from the notebooks of his friend Marcel Grossmann. The AIP quotes Einstein on those notes: "I would rather not speculate on what would have become of me without these notes." As our Einstein page records, he finished with an undistinguished record and could not find a teaching job at first.
The short answer
Einstein did not fail math. His 1896 certificate shows 6 out of 6, the top mark, in every mathematics subject and in physics, and he had taught himself calculus by about 15. The grain of truth is that at 16 he failed the Zurich Polytechnic's entrance exam on its language and general sections, spent a year at school in Aarau, and was admitted the next year.
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