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Albert Einstein failed his polytechnic entrance examination papers and had to re-sit them. He only managed to scrape through the entrance examinations on his second attempt and where we may never have seen Einstein's great insights emerge if he had failed a second time as he would most certainly have had to obtain a working job to support himself. Indeed after that event, Einstein may have had no alternative but to forget the possibility of obtaining access to further leading-edge knowledge and the thinking of the time. Again this proves that we should never disregard anyone, no matter how low his academic achievements might be, for they may also be a modern-day Einstein also. Great scientists are always stereotyped as hard-headed boffins but where this is generally not the case. They are in fact very caring and concerned people. In this respect you can see clearly in the photograph that even Einstein had a great sense of humour when once asked to pose for the press. Michael Faraday as I have previously stated was a mere bookbinder working in London. Reading the scientific manuscripts of the time that he was binding aroused his interest. Indeed, without any qualifications whatsoever and only rudimentary learning achieved at school up to the age of 14 years, he inspired the Director of the Royal Institution with a personal manuscript that persuaded the director to take him on as a helper in the institution's laboratories. Sir Humphrey Davy later said that Faraday was his greatest invention. Therefore the question has to be asked, without the insights of a mere bookbinder would the world have progressed so quickly? These and other things tell us that in many ways the world has evolved through sheer chance and that the world has developed through the thoughts of lone individuals or inventors generally outside the confines of advanced centres of research and development. |