It might surprise you to learn that Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest genius of all time, was a high-school dropout. In addition, when Einstein applied at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic to become a teacher, he failed the entrance exams and was forced to attend a technical school. The fact is, the great physicist’s young life was riddled with setbacks. His father, a manufacturer of electrical equipment, uprooted his family when Einstein was young and moved them out of Ulm, Germany, to Munich and later to Milan following the failure of his business. In school, Einstein’s dislike of formal instruction led him to be frequently disruptive and caused his parents enormous concern. Even his married life was difficult. He wed his university girlfriend but World War I broke out while she was vacationing in Switzerland, and she could not get back to Germany to rejoin Einstein. The extended separation took its toll: they divorced in 1919.

Still, the constant throughout these years was Einstein’s passion for mathematics and science, which he pursued with fervor. He published his first four papers at age 26, and without any academic connections, yet these papers would forever alter the course of 20th-century physics. When the Royal Society of London photographed a solar eclipse in May 1919, its calculations confirmed the predictions Einstein had made in his unproven general theory of relativity. Two years later, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. Today the name Einstein is synonymous with genius.