A little investigation into Einstein makes it pretty hard to believe he was even smart, let alone a genius - Time's 1999 man of the century.

Encyclopedia Britannica says in his early education he "showed little scholastic ability" and at 15 "with poor grades in history, geography, and languages, he left school with no diploma." In 1895 he failed a simple entrance exam to an engineering school in Zurich. He went to a lesser school (Swiss Federal Polytechnic School) and graduated in 1901 with the lowest grade averege in his class but still could not get into the better engineering school and with the help of a friend, got a job at the patent office in Bern where he was a technical expert third class.

After 6 years and publishing his so-called groundbreaking papers of 1905 he could only get elevated to second class patent clerk. He had displayed an inability to grasp the concepts according to his employment reviews. He continued working at the patent office until 1909 before getting a position at a university. So while working full time at the patent office, without the aid of university colleagues, grad students, or a laboratory, he published four ground-breaking essays in theoretical physics in 1905.

Recognizing the near impossibility of this, he then claimed it all came to him in a dream. But there is a simpler explanation. He stole them. The four ideas were: (1) photon theory of light (2) Equivalence of mass and energy; (3) Explaining Brownian motion in liquids; and (4) special theory of relativity

His fame started in 1919 when American and British press began to sing his praises. The general theory of relativity came in 1915.

• The Special Theory of relativity says the speed of light is a constant. However James Maxwell published this in 1878 in the Britannica Encyclopedia. By 1887, after much debate and the attention of Lorentz, Michelson and Morley, they concluded that the velocity of light was independent of the velocity of the observer. This key piece of relativity was thus 27 years before Einstein wrote about it.
• Michelson and Morley conducted experiments that showed light could not be explained by Newtonian mechanics although they did not understand the cause was relativity. FitzGerald first proposed that the Michelson-Morely experiment could be explained if "the length of material bodies changes, according as they are moving through the ether or across it, by an amount depending on the square of the ratio of their velocities to that of light." This is the theory of relativity, 13 years before Einstein's paper. In 1892, Lorentz began to expand the idea and this relationship became known as the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction.
• By 1904, Lorentz had created the equations explaining relativity including increase of mass, contraction of length and dilation of time. There was nothing new in Einstein's paper.
• In 1898 Poincare wrote a paper unifying many of the ideas. He wrote - 7 years before Einstein's paper - "We have no direct intuition about the equality of two time intervals. The simultaneity of two events or the order of their succession, as well as the quality of two time intervals, must be defined in such a way that the statements of the natural laws be as simple as possible."
• Poincare was busy bringing the world up to speed on relativity. No one credited Einstein or mentioned his work as most scientists knew he was a fraud.
• Brownian motion, observed by Robert Brown in 1827 was already explained by Gibbs and Boltzmann in the 1890's. The math equations contain the Boltzmann constant, k. There was nothing new contributed by Einstein.
• The mass and energy equivalence E=mc2 was already been shown in the laboratory by Thomson and Kaufmann and published in Atte by Olinto de Pretto in 1903. In 1900 Poincare had shown a mass relationship for all forms of energy, not just electromagnetic. Friedrich Hasenohrl had published a paper on the topic in 1904 - in the same journal Einstein published his paper in 1905. Hasenohrl credited the work of Thomson and Kaufmann. Hasenohrl had already received a prize for this work from the Vienna Academy of Sciences. In addition, Maxwell's already established equations had already established a mass and energy relationship, although not in that form, but it was still debated until the experiments had proven it. All this was before Einstein wrote his paper. Hasenohrl and confirmed it. In Einstein's plagiarized article, he made a ridiculous speculation indicating he didn't understand what he was writing: "Perhaps it will prove possible to test this theory using bodies whose energy content is variable to a high degree (e.g., salts of radium.)"
• Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on photoelectric effect. His main point was that light is emitted and absorbed in discrete packets called quanta. However, Hertz had already explained this phenomena in 1888. Wien and Planck had established radiated energy in quanta, which is the term they used in 1900. The only difference was that Einstein restricted his discussion to light instead of general electromagnetic energy. Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard received the Nobel Prize for discovering the photo-electric effect. Einstein's wife studied under him and Einstein plagarized his work in the same year without reference to Lenard.
• When Einstein finally got a university position in 1909, he began to have access to use other people's work. In 1912 he began to see gravitational work using calculus. However, the math work was done by Grossmann who used the principles developed by Riemann who was the first to develop a sound non-Euclidean geometry which is the basis for general relativity.
• Einstein’s first paper in 1913 was filled with errors and claimed credit for convincing Hilbert and Klein. But the fact was that Hilbert and Klein had published their work before Einstein. Einstein’s papers contained the errors that Hilbert had corrected before he published his paper. Einstein had received the early draft with the errors! Both men had given lectures in advance of the papers being published. Einstein presented his paper Nov 25, 1915 in Berlin. Hilbert presented his paper Nov 20, 1915 in Gottingen. Hilbert received a letter from Einstein thanking him for the draft on Nov 18. Einstein began to publicly belittle Hilbert.
• Famed genius Stephen Hawkings wrote a history of relativity and acknowledged that Hilbert had published the general theory of relativity before Einstein and acknowledges that FitzGerald and Lorentz deduced the concept long before Einstein. Hawkings also wrote that Einstein was "horrified" by the work of Heisenberg and Dirac and Schrodinger who developed quantum mechanics. As this is the basis for chemistry, molecular biology, electronics and virtually all modern technology. Einstein was too stupid to ever believe it, not allowing resolution of the conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics.
• From a political perspective, German scientists such as Schrödinger who supported Hitler could not be given credit. So crediting a Jew, even a fraud, was far more desirable by the world press.
• In 1934 Einstein further demonstrated his stupidity in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a front page story claiming the power of the atom could never be used for usable energy.
• After his Nobel Prize, Einstein began his political campaigning for Zionism and never "contributed" to science again. Perhaps because no one would send him advance copies of manuscripts anymore.
• Einstein never credited his sources. He said "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
• In the 1920's he became a founder of "Friends of the New Russia" and promoted communism. In the 1930's he campaigned against all war but later advocated war against Germany. He wrote letters to FDR to develop the atomic bomb to be used against Germany, not Japan. This was true of many of the jews who helped develop the atomic bomb. Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhatten Project, is reported to have hated these Jews and wanted them imprisoned during the project and executed after the project because of their pro-marxist treasonous behavior. Einstein had no ability to help develop the bomb, however, and was never a resource used in developing it. (By now this should not be a surprise.) After WWII, Einstein continued to promote communism and world government with Israel as the only autonomous nation. He helped in the creation of the state of Israel and was offered its presidency but declined.
• Perhaps another of demonstration of his "brilliance" was what he said about Germany "The nation has been on the decline mentally and morally since 1870. Behind the Nazi party stands the German people, who elected Hitler after he had in his book and in his speeches made his shameful intentions clear beyond the possibility of misunderstanding. The Germans can be killed or constrained after the war, but they cannot be re-educated to a democratic way of thinking and acting."