Myths and famous claims
Did Einstein fail math?
What is documented
Einstein did not fail math. In primary school he was at the top of his class and well ahead of requirements in math, and he said he had mastered differential and integral calculus before he was 15. The story spread through a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! newspaper column, and Einstein denied it in 1935.
Want your own number? The test is 25 visual puzzles, about 12 minutes, no sign-up.
The myth
The story goes that Albert Einstein failed mathematics at school. It is usually told as encouragement: if Einstein could fail math, a bad grade means nothing. The intention is kind. The story is false.
The short verdict
Einstein was strong at mathematics from childhood. Walter Isaacson, writing in TIME, reports that in primary school Einstein was at the top of his class and well ahead of requirements in math (Isaacson, TIME 2007). Einstein himself said he had mastered differential and integral calculus before he was 15.
Where the story came from
The myth appeared in a Ripley's "Believe It or Not!" newspaper column (Isaacson, TIME 2007). It reached Einstein in 1935, when a Princeton rabbi showed him a Ripley's clipping headlined "Greatest living mathematician failed in mathematics." Einstein denied it, and gave the calculus answer above. So the record contains both the myth and its rebuttal, from the man himself, more than eighty years ago.
Try one · Quantitative Reasoning
Which number comes next?
3, 27, 7, 24, 11, 21, ?
Tap the option you think is right, or show the answer.
Show the answer
The next number is 15 (option 4).
How to solve it
- The gaps jump around, so look at every other number.
- The 1st, 3rd, 5th numbers (3, 7, 11) go up by 4 each time.
- The 2nd, 4th, 6th numbers (27, 24, 21) go down by 3 each time.
- The missing number continues the first series: 11 + 4 = 15.
That was 1 puzzle. The full test has 25.
Why it persists
We can only offer a modest explanation. The story is short, surprising and comforting, and it has a famous name in it. A striking claim about a celebrity is easy to repeat and hard to check. Einstein's denial is a quieter story, and quieter stories travel less.
The same pattern with Einstein's IQ
Einstein attracts myths in both directions. One says he failed math. The other gives him an exact, enormous IQ. Neither has a record behind it. Psychologist Russell Warne concludes that Einstein very likely never took an intelligence test, because he was already an adult when the first successful test appeared in 1905 (Warne 2023). The figures quoted for him range from 150 to 207, and Warne concludes that none of them is credible. The page on Einstein's IQ traces where those numbers came from.
What is actually true
- Einstein did well in school math and was ahead of requirements in primary school.
- He said he had mastered calculus before 15.
- The failed-math story circulated through a Ripley's column and was denied by Einstein in 1935.
- There is no known IQ score for him.
What a bad grade does mean
The kind intention behind the myth is still worth keeping, without the false example. A single grade, like a single test score, is a snapshot. School grades and IQ scores are related, but the link is far from perfect: the 1996 APA task force put the correlation at about .50, which accounts for only about 25% of the variance in grades (Neisser et al., 1996). You cannot really fail an IQ test either, since it reports a position, not a pass mark. See can you fail an IQ test and can your IQ change.
For other well-known claims about famous scientists, see how historical IQ estimates were made and the 10% of the brain myth, which has also been falsely attached to Einstein.
Sources
- Isaacson, W. (2007, April 5). Making the Grade: Did Einstein flunk math? (20 Things You Need to Know About Einstein). TIME content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1936731_1936743_1936758,00.html
- Warne, R. T. (2023, September 14). The search for Albert Einstein's IQ. russellwarne.com (blog of a research psychologist) russellwarne.com/2023/09/14/the-search-for-albert-einsteins-iq/
- Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., Halpern, D. F., Loehlin, J. C., Perloff, R., Sternberg, R. J., & Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51(2), 77-101. doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.51.2.77