However, he was not considered very bright when he was a child. When he was nine, his father told his wife he was very worried about him because he was 'a bit dim'. His teachers complained that he had no sense of discipline and had a bad effect on the other pupils. When he was fifteen, he was thrown out of school, but a few years later he was allowed to study mathematics and physics at a special technical university in Zurich. However, even at university he was hardly 'a good student'. He rarely attended lectures, and was often trouble with the professors because he constantly argued with them. One of them told him:' You are clever, extremely clever. But you have one real faultyou never let your self be told anything!' When he graduated from university he couldn't get a job, partly because none of his professors would recommend him for one. Finally he found one in the Swiss Patent Office in Berne. One of his duties was writing descriptions of new inventions.

This helped him to learn how to write clearly and simply. He lately said that the only thing that made many problems in science seem difficult was the language they were described in. He became very famous for his Theory of Relatively, which concerns time and gravity and how things change when they travel at very high speeds. However, all his life he lived very simply and was totally uninterested in money, power or fame.

He could never understand why so many people admired him and wanted to meet him. He knew that most of them had never read anything he had written and didn't understand his ideas. 'Are they crazy, or am I'? he asked.