Geniuses Who Failed School

Einstein's primary school teacher in Munich reportedly sent a note home saying he was mentally slow and would never amount to much. He failed the entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich on his first attempt in 1895 — not because he lacked ability, but because his French was poor and he had little patience for subjects outside mathematics and physics. He eventually graduated but struggled to find academic work, taking a job as a patent clerk. His four papers of 1905 — written from that clerk's desk — included special relativity and E=mc². He won the Nobel Prize in 1921.

Edison attended school for only three months. His teacher in Port Huron, Michigan, described him as "addled" — meaning confused or unable to learn — and sent him home. His mother, a former teacher, homeschooled him instead and gave him free rein to experiment. By age twelve he had set up a chemical laboratory in the basement and was selling newspapers on the railroad. He never returned to formal education. He held 1,093 patents and invented the phonograph, the practical light bulb, and motion pictures.

Darwin's father, a successful physician, was so disappointed by Charles's lack of academic focus that he sent him to study medicine at Edinburgh — which Darwin found unbearable — then Cambridge theology, which interested him primarily as a vehicle for collecting beetles. He graduated tenth from the bottom of his class. A Cambridge professor recommended him for the Beagle voyage specifically because Darwin's academic career showed no particular promise and the voyage might give him something to do. The voyage produced On the Origin of Species.

Churchill was placed in the lowest form at Harrow and finished near the bottom of his class throughout his schooling. He failed the entrance examination for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst twice before passing on his third attempt. His headmaster wrote to his father that he "has no ambition." Churchill later said his time in the remedial English class at Harrow — where he was forced to repeat the fundamentals over and over while his cleverer peers studied Latin and Greek — gave him his mastery of English prose. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.

Newton was an unremarkable student at the King's School in Grantham — not failing, but not distinguished either. At sixteen, his mother withdrew him from school to manage her farm. He was, by all accounts, a terrible farmer, distracted by books and mechanical experiments when he was supposed to be overseeing the livestock. An uncle eventually persuaded his mother to send him to Cambridge. The rest is history — including the two years (1665–67) when Cambridge was closed by the plague and Newton, farming again at Woolsthorpe, invented calculus and discovered the laws of gravity.

Beethoven's teachers in Bonn reported that he was inattentive in general subjects and completely unable to manage arithmetic. He never learned to multiply or divide reliably. His biographer Anton Schindler noted that Beethoven's inability with numbers persisted into adulthood — he was regularly cheated by publishers and tradespeople because he could not verify calculations. The part of his brain that could write the Ninth Symphony — composed when he was completely deaf — could not reliably compute 12 × 7.

Faulkner was admitted to the University of Mississippi as a special student after World War I and left without completing a degree, having reportedly failed English. His postmaster job at the university was terminated when the postmaster general received complaints that he was reading on duty and ignoring the mail. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 and two Pulitzer Prizes. His Nobel speech is one of the most celebrated in the prize's history.