We all need a little inspiration from time to time, especially when everything seems to be going wrong, and one of the best ways to get that is by reading about the setbacks and problems some very successful people had, and how they overcame them and went on to considerable success. . One of the best examples is Albert Einstein. The early years of his life were filled with disappointments and failures, but he fought through them and eventually became the greatest scientist who ever lived.

One of his first disappointments came when he was only fifteen years old. His family had moved to Milan, Italy, and he had stayed in Munich to finish high school. Depressed and alone, he decided to follow them and, without telling them, took a train to Milan. They were happy to see him but disappointed that he had dropped out of school; however, he promised them that he would take the entrance exams at the nearby Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. And in October 1896 he traveled to Zurich and took the exams. They consisted of two parts: one for general information and the other for math and science. He did very well on the math and science section, but he failed the general information portion and, as a result, failed the general exam.

Therefore, he was forced to go back to high school to complete his final year, and he did so in the nearby city of Aarau. The following year he was able to enter the Polytechnic without retaking the exams. But he was not an ideal student; he was cocky and arrogant and several of his teachers soon began to dislike him. Also, he preferred to study on his own and rarely attended lectures.

She skipped so many classes, in fact, that she had to study too hard for her final exams; luckily he had a friend who lent him the tickets. It was an experience that Einstein remembered as unpleasant, and when the results came back he was disappointed. Of the five people in his class, he came in fourth place; the only person he hit was his girlfriend, Mileva, and she failed.

After graduation, Einstein hoped to get a job as an assistant to one of his professors, but they had discovered that he was a difficult student and no one wanted him. Even his physics teacher selected mechanical engineers over him. Therefore, he began to apply to various universities throughout Europe, but to no avail. One of the professors he applied to was Friedrich Ostwald at the University of Leipzig. He waited for a reply for several weeks, but did not receive it, so he replied, but did not receive it either. Unbeknownst to him, his father also wrote to Ostwald, telling him that his son was very depressed and begging him to “send her a few lines of encouragement.” He didn’t get an answer either. (Ironically, only a few years later, Ostwald would recommend Einstein for the Nobel Prize.)

Desperate, Einstein finally took a temporary job as a substitute teacher, but soon discovered that he couldn’t get along with the school supervisor, and before long he had an argument with him and was fired.

Due to his problems, he decided to try to get a Ph.D. This required a thesis, but Einstein had been working on several research projects and decided to present the results of one of them (it was on molecular forces). He took it to Dr. Alfred Kleiner of the University of Zurich, but Kleiner rejected it almost immediately. Einstein then presented his “Theory of Relativity”, which he had been working on. He was not complete at this stage, but Einstein was sure that Kleiner would be impressed. Kleiner reviewed it, but couldn’t understand it, so he passed it on to several of his colleagues, and they couldn’t understand it either, so he rejected it.

Einstein then discovered that his girlfriend Mileva was pregnant. He was not sure what to do as he knew that her mother was strongly against him marrying her because she was a Serb. So he kept it a secret from her.

Finally, a ray of hope came to him when a friend told him about a job at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland. He would be examining patent applications to see if they had any merit, not the kind of work he expected. However, he requested it and a few months later he got it.

Then, just as he was starting to get back on his feet, tragedy struck again: his father died of a heart attack. He had been particularly close to his father and was devastated. He found it difficult to study, but he continued to work on various scientific problems.

Then came 1905, now known as one of the greatest years of science. During 1905, Einstein published five of the most important papers ever published in physics. Among them was his “Theory of Relativity”, which soon revolutionized physics, and a paper that later won him the Nobel Prize.

Einstein knew they were important, but the silence that followed their publication worried him. Gradually, however, scientists began to recognize his importance, and after years of setbacks and disappointments, he soon became the most famous scientist who ever lived.