ECCENTRIC GENIUSES
Both ISACC NEWTON and Albert Einstein were
complex and contradictory characters. Despite his powerfully analytical
mind and his astonishing mathematical genius, Newton held many strange
beliefs. To the end of his life, he studied alchemy and the transmutation
of metals, that is, how to turn lead into gold. He wrote many curious
manuscripts concerning the end of the world and the prophecies of
Daniel, which so embarrassed his friends when they discovered them
after his death that these writings remained hidden for years.
As a child, Albert Einstein had a poor
memory and spent much of his time building card towers or solving
jigsaw puzzles. Einstein slopped going to school when lie was 15;
the next year, he failed the entrance examination to the Zurich
polytechnic. When he finally entered the Polytechnic, he hated learning
so much that, he later claimed, he lost all interest in science
for 12 months. Scraping through his final examinations, he worked
as a tutor and then as an examiner of patents in Bern. It was not
promising start for the greatest scientist of the 20th century.
Yet, only three years after taking up his job in Bern, Einstein
became world famous for his Special Theory of Relativity.
|