Einstein never failed maths: he had mastered calculus before he was 15.

1896 · 1935 · apart: 39 years

Shown a 1935 newspaper item claiming otherwise, he replied: 'I never failed in mathematics.'

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The event

• Einstein's miracle year and relativity1905 · Bern. In 1905 patent clerk Albert Einstein published four papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and mass–energy equivalence (E = mc²). Together they laid the foundations of modern physics.

19th century · 20th century

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