History offers that most tantalizing of visions – the
unerring view of hindsight. Call it the big What If? Looking back in time, the
whims of fate and destiny stand out for all to see, if indeed one chooses to
look at them at all. Look hard enough, though, and you're bound to find some
good ones.
In researching and writing Einstein: His Life and
Universe, a comprehensive biography
of Albert Einstein, author Walter Isaacson uncovered one playful little tidbit.
In 1895, while enrolled in a college preparatory school in Switzerland, the 16
year-old Einstein was already being recognized as an exceptional student. No
surprise there. Yet what scant records survived from that time show that he scored
the second highest rank in his class
that year.
But, says Isaacson, "Alas, the name of the boy
who bested Einstein is lost to history." 1
So the man whose name and face is to this day
synonymous with genius, the man who helped usher in the atomic age and told us
how the universe worked, was, at one point in his youth, not the smartest kid
in his class. Somebody else was.
Of course a grade point average is a subjective
measurement of academic effort, nothing more. And there is no law that says
every gifted prodigy must always be at the very top of the class. Still, it
tickles the imagination to think of someone beating out one of the greatest
thinkers the world has ever known. And then disappearing forever.
This happened before the age of overnight celebrity
(although years later Einstein would become the world's first and only science superstar).
This happened before the age of mass communication overload. Things were
simpler back in 1895, and in at least one way more is the pity.
For if he was alive today, might not the man who once
outranked Einstein be the subject of curious, if not intense, scrutiny? What
journalist or news editor wouldn't love to expose him to the world, take his
picture and ask a few questions? What did you end up doing with your life? What
great things can you tell us? Why didn't you end up more like Mister Einstein?
Yes Fate can be cruel, too.
Left alone, this young student probably lived a full
and normal life, raising a family and caring little how he had a slight brush
with immortality. Again we'll never know.
Which brings us to the question of who, or what,
determines greatness? Is it our own individual hard work and free will? The aid
and mentoring from others? Or is it the placement from a Higher Order, a touch
of Divine Grace that randomly taps the shoulder of one life and not the next?
In his later years Einstein had this to say about it
all:
"Everything is determined, the beginning as well
as the end, by forces over which we have no control…we all dance to a mysterious
tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player." 2
He might have been on to something there. Like the
mystery of the boy who once bested Einstein, the tune plays on.
͠
1. Isaacson, Walter. Einstein:
His Life and Universe, Simon & Schuster, New York, p. 30.
2. Ibid., p. 392.
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