LogFAQs > #978922375

tri-sapphire posted...

Heck, another European also invented modern calculus independent of Newton around the same time period.

And his version was easier to use and resembles the way we use it today more. Although that's less because he was smarter, and more because he collaborated with other mathemetiticans to make it better while Newton largely kept it to himself.

That said, both Newton and Einstein were extremely smart. They were in different times working on very different problems so I don't see much point in trying to say who was smarter, it's an apples and oranges comparison.

What most people get wrong is that they assume because they're geniuses in their field, that means they're super smart about everything. But outside of physics and related areas, Einstein wasn't particularly smart. In his everyday life he was just a regular dude and there were no doubt plenty of things he was dumb about.

Like, I remember there was a Melanie Griffith romantic comedy where she and her husband Tim Robbins are in the 1950s living near Albert Einstein, and because he's Einstein of course he has some deep wisdom about love to share that helps them understand true love or whatever. When in real life he was married several times and none of the marriages went well, apparently, so Einstein probably would have been a terrible person to go to for advice about love.