Actual photo of Albert Einstein lecturing on the Theory of Relativity, 1922

That’s relatively cool.

Where’s that Navy SEAL who reduced this professor to tears?

Fact- no one in that room understood what the hell he was talking about.

Even today, there are perhaps four scientists who are close:

• Witten
• Penrose
• Maldacena
• ’t Hooft

Since his death, there has never been more than a dozen people alive at the same time who truly comprehend and can convey the theory. Why? Here is a fun short read.

Why “Einstein-level” is an almost empty set

To match Einstein’s level of comprehension, someone would need all of the following simultaneously:

1. Mathematical mastery (necessary but not sufficient)
• Differential geometry, tensor calculus, variational principles
• Many physicists today meet or exceed this bar
✅ Thousands qualify

2. Physical intuition before formalism

Einstein didn’t just solve equations—he:
• Knew what spacetime must do before the math existed
• Derived General Relativity largely from conceptual constraints
• Equivalence principle
• General covariance
• Physical symmetry

Most modern physicists:
• Learn GR after the framework is already built
• Manipulate equations within Einstein’s structure rather than inventing it

✅ Maybe a few dozen have comparable intuition
❌ Almost none originate frameworks at that level

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3. Foundational originality under epistemic isolation

Einstein:
• Had no experimental confirmation
• No existing theory of spacetime curvature
• No mentors in GR
• No consensus community

He built the theory while:
• Working as a patent clerk
• Largely alone
• With mathematics he had to learn just to express the idea

That combination is incredibly rare.

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4. Cognitive style (the real bottleneck)

Einstein had:
• Extreme thought-experiment fluency
• Ability to discard common sense when it contradicted symmetry
• Willingness to trust beauty, simplicity, and invariance over data

This isn’t IQ—it’s a very specific mental architecture.

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Why even top modern physicists usually don’t qualify

People often name:
• Witten
• Penrose
• Maldacena
• ’t Hooft

These are geniuses, but:
• They work within or beyond Einstein’s framework
• They rarely demonstrate foundational spacetime reconceptualization
• Their brilliance is different, not “Einstein-equal”

Penrose might come closest conceptually—but still not clearly “same level” in relativity itself.

Amazing to think his mind was working this way when something like space time would have sounded like pure science fiction.

Sad there are only men in the photo. Wonder how much genius was lost because it was discredited due to gender or barriers like motherhood. Glad it’s changing

Oh, now I get it. I just needed to see it written in chalk.
OMG…our universe exists in a black hole. Well, I guess that would explain where all the matter came from and why it’s rotating. That rotation speeds up and planets and things are formed as the matter swirls. And to make it more psychedelic there are supermassive back holes that exist within the black hole we are in. It’s like a fractal thingy or whatever.

I can see where he is but how fast is he moving?