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Einstein’s next move was to Zurich, to sit for the entrance examinations for the polytechnic there. His first attempt was a failure. He distinguished himself only in mathematics, for he had done little to prepare for the exam. After a year’s schooling in Zurich, he was allowed to take the exam again. This time, he passed. Beginning His Work Young Einstein was now beginning to think about physics, and in particular about electricity and magnetism. His first experience with magnetic effects had come at the age of five, in a famous incident. His father had shown him a pocket compass, and Albert had observed how the compass needle always pointed in one direction, toward the north. He is reported to have grasped immediately the very difficult idea of a force transmitted through empty space. This force acts on the compass needle to keep it pointing in that one direction. Now, at the age of sixteen, Einstein wrote a short essay on the subject of magnetic forces. He sent it to his uncle Cäsar Koch, with whom he maintained a close relationship for many years. Einstein worked very hard while attending the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, but not at the lectures and courses he was supposed to attend. These were too boring and old-fashioned for him. With increasing arrogance and self-confidence, he worked at what he considered important. He spent much of his time studying theories of electricity and magnetism that had been proposed some years earlier by the great Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell. “In view of the standards of university teaching,” Einstein was later to comment, “it is surprising that knowledge did not long ago die out.” Nevertheless, when the time came for him to take his degree examinations at the end of his fourth year at the polytechnic, he passed with the highest honors. He achieved this with the help of his friend Marcel Grossmann, whose lecture notes he borrowed and studied for the exams. In 1900 a bright young man with a first-class degree might expect to find a position to stay at a university to carry out some research on his own ideas. Such positions were found for Einstein’s colleagues, but for arrogant young Einstein, who “would not be told anything,” his professors at the polytechnic found they had no room.

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