The gift of creativity.

What does it mean for a child to be gifted and in particular, scientifically gifted?

It has even been suggested in a postmodernist vein that giftedness is a social construction! In today's society where elitism is frowned upon, downplaying giftedness is perhaps understandable. I disagree. Is it not a fact that some children - and adults, too - are simply smarter and/or more talented than others? How do we account for that exalted tier of those who are gifted with creative genius, those in the sciences who are incredibly clever problem solvers which, of itself demonstrates a genius for problem solving? What do we call the supergeniuses in science whose work changes a world view, similarly to the supergeniuses in the arts and humanities, who also discover new ways to represent our world.

No amount of education or hot house atmosphere can grow Einsteins or Picassos or Mozarts or, for that matter, Michael Jordans. Even the very gifted scientist, composer, or athlete practices their craft at great length daily and yet never reach the exalted heights of these, shall we say, super-gifted or super-genius people.

This article compares and contrasts the early years of two super-geniuses: the great polymath Henri Poincare (1854-1912) and the very icon of the 20th century science, Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Similarities and dissimilarities are discussed in how they reacted to their educational systems and vice versa from which lessons are drawn for identification and support of gifted children.

Einstein is used as the reference point for comparison because he is better known. Since Henri Poincare may not be as familiar to readers, an overview of some of his scientific achievements follows. (For biographical details see Miller, 1996). Poincare took all philosophical, scientific and mathematical knowledge to be his province. Besides being one of the greatest mathematicians in the history of that discipline, he made significant contributions to every branch of physics and astronomy, as well as formulating a unique viewpoint of the philosophy of science called conventionalism. Today, mathematicians agree that many of Poincar6's papers are still not completely understood and promise new riches. For example, in some of his earliest mathematical research, in 1890, he discovered what is now known as chaos theory.

No two early lives of highly creative scientists could have differed more than those of Poincare's and Einstein's. Dramatic contrasts emerge between their school careers, personal lives and early reception of their research efforts. Whereas Poincare's giftedness and genius were early recognized, Einstein's life is the stuff of which movies are made.

They are the key players in a classic episode in the history of ideas: in 1905 they both possessed the same data and mathematical formalism to formulate a theory of relativity. Yet only Einstein succeeded. Einstein's visual mode of thinking, in contrast to Poincare's nonvisual mode, made the difference here (Miller, 1996).

The two men knew of each other through their work and met at least once. Their meeting at the Solvay Conference in the Fall of 1911 in Brussels was not totally successful owing to Poincare's disagreement with Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity. Einstein brashly wrote to a friend in November 1911 that "Poincare ... showed little understanding of the situation" (Miller, 1981, p. 255). Nevertheless, Poincare was sufficiently impressed with Einstein to write a letter supporting him for a position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, known in German as the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH).

A Comparative Study of Poincare and Einstein as Young Men

Poincare was born 29 April 1854 at Nancy where his father Leon, age 26, was a physician and professor of medicine at the University; his mother, Eugenie (nee Launois), was age 24. Henri spoke at nine months, and read at six years. Besides exhibiting an early talent for mathematics, Poincare demonstrated tenacity for continuous work on a problem, a trait common to genius.

At the lycee in Nancy, 1862-1873, since renamed the Lycee Henri Poincare Poincare was one of the top students in every subject, exhibiting unusual ability in mathematics and being highly praised by all his teachers. In 1873 Poincare entered l'Ecole Polytechnique and graduated in 1875. Already there were numerous good natured stories of his distracted demeanor. Studies in problem solving in which there is a dependence on incubation, or unconscious processing, indicate that distraction and day dreaming permit wider ranging of activation in long-term memory (Mandler, 1994).

During 1875-1879 he was a student at l'Ecole des Mines. Poincare's school career at both Grandes Ecoles was exemplary. In 1879 he was awarded a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris. Two years later Poincare married Louise Poulaine d'Andecy (1857-1934). In 1881 Poincare moved to Paris where he spent the rest of his illustrious career, eventually assuming chairs at the Sorbonne as well as at l'Ecole Polytechnique.

Like Poincare's, Albert Einstein's childhood was set within an upper middle-class household. Einstein was born 14 March 1879 in Ulm, Germany where his father Hermann, age 32, owned a featherbed business; his mother Pauline (nee Koch), was age 21. As a child, Albert entertained himself, doubtless due in no small part to difficulties with language learning. While Poincare spoke at nine months, Einstein did not speak well until 2 1/2 years and showed no early precocity.

As praised as Poincare was at the lycee, Einstein's teachers considered him to be only moderately talented, apparently owing to the length of time he needed to mull over a problem. For the most part, during his childhood Albert was a solitary child, preferring private games that required patience and perseverance, like building elaborate houses of cards. These traits, combined with tenacity in thought, would stand Einstein well in his scientific research; they are traits he shared with Poincare.

Contrary to Poincare's lack of success in learning to play the piano, Einstein had more than moderate success with the violin which he began at age six. Einstein really started to enjoy the violin at age 13 or 14 when he discovered Mozart's violin sonatas. Until then he had to tolerate teachers who emphasized mechanical or rote learning, a mode of learning that Einstein detested, as did Poincare. Although playing Mozart's sonatas was beyond his technical competence as a teenager, Einstein practiced them repeatedly, but not systematically. He also stopped violin lessons at this time.

At about age 13 or 14, Einstein demonstrated the ability to solve difficult mathematical problems posed to him by his paternal uncle Jakob Einstein. These diversions, in addition to insightful recognition of young Einstein's talents by a medical student who boarded in the Einstein household, were necessary counter balances to the disastrous situation he faced at school. The influence of uncles and aunts is not to be overlooked. As we know, these family members hold a privileged position with children at an impressionable age. As siblings of the parents, they are be seen as representing a more nonautocratic style and exhibiting the more outgoing side of the parents' psyche. Bertrand Russell recalled an uncle who "did a great deal to stimulate my scientific interests" (Russell, 1968, p. 19).

Einstein began his school career in 1886 at a public school in Munich where his parents had moved in 1880. In 1888 he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium, Munich, at which the curriculum focused on rote learning of, for example, classics in Greek and Latin read in those languages. Throughout Einstein's life he conversed comfortably only in German, his foreign language ability being much poorer than Poincare's.

Some years later Einstein described his entire student career as a "comedy," although the humor was found only in retrospect. Einstein recalled that the "teachers in the elementary school seemed to me like sergeants and the teachers in the [Luitpold] Gymnasium like lieutenants" (Einstein, 1987, p. lxiii) These remarks were aimed at the rote learning demanded by authoritarian teachers. In what few science classes were available, Einstein sometimes asked a question that Herr Professor could not answer. Instead of admitting this, praising the student for asking such a question, and then promising to come back the next day with a reply, the teacher kept on trying for a solution, thereby exacerbating the situation. In the meanwhile, young Einstein sat with an ever-widening grin. A teacher of Greek told Einstein that he would never amount to anything -- he never did in Greek. Another time the same teacher scolded him severely for something he was not at all involved in, asserting that "your mere presence in class destroys respect for me of the other students" (Einstein, 1987, p. lxiii).

Even though he was among the top students at the Luitpold Gymnasium in mathematics and physics, this tongue lashing was the last straw. Moreover, the prospect of military service was impending, which Einstein dreaded. Poincare graduated from l'Ecole Polytechnique which had a military curriculum and required that he spend a period of time in the French army. However, if Einstein did not emigrate before age 16, according to German citizenship laws, he would have to serve in the army or be declared a deserter.

In defense of the Gymnasium system, most students blossomed in its classical and autocratic atmosphere. Take, for example, the great German physicist Werner Heisenberg whose precociousness in mathematics and science were much encouraged by his Gymnasium teachers. Either he did not ask embarrassing questions and/or the Gymnasium he attended in Munich was more progressive (Cassidy, 1992). Probably the former is closer to what happened.

The electrical business owned by Einstein's father at this time failed and the family moved to Milan, Italy, where business prospects seemed better. (The featherbed business had failed some years earlier.) They left Albert behind in Munich to complete his Gymnasium education. The parents' move gave Einstein the idea to resolve both the Gymnasium situation and the army problem. Einstein obtained a doctor's certificate to the effect that he was nervous and depressed. On 29 December 1894 at age 15, Einstein withdrew from the Luitpold Gymnasium without a diploma. He joined his parents in Milan as a high school dropout. The Luitpold Gymnasium was destroyed during World War II. Ironically, it was rebuilt and renamed the Albert Einstein Gymnasium.

Until the fall of 1895 Einstein traveled through Northern Italy. As had been the case for Goethe some hundred years before, the Italian sunshine and landscape impressed the young man, freeing him of the Sturm und Drang of the Munich years. During this period, however, Einstein did not neglect his love of science. By this time he knew the integral and differential calculus, self-taught at about age 13. In the summer of 1895 Einstein wrote his first scientific essay which he sent to his maternal uncle Caesar Koch. The essay demonstrates that Einstein was conversant with advanced topics in electromagnetic theory. Even so, there are no signs of genius in it. Yet, in retrospect, the perseverance and self-discipline needed to learn difficult subjects is an indication of things to come. Einstein was an autodidact.

As Einstein had promised his parents prior to withdrawing from the Gymnasium, he prepared himself for the entrance examination to the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich. Whereas Poincare went from a stellar stay at the lycee in Nancy directly to l'Ecole Polytechnique, Einstein failed the entrance examination to the ETH due to deficiencies in foreign languages, biology and historical subjects, all of which require rote learning. Owing to Einstein's excellent grades in the mathematics and physics portions of the entrance examination, one of the school's most eminent professors, Heinrich Friedrich Weber, encouraged Einstein to attend his lectures if Einstein stayed in Zurich. Instead Einstein decided to take the advice of another professor to spend a year at a preparatory school in the Swiss canton of Aarau in order to correct the deficiencies that had caused him to fail the entrance examination.

The strong impression made on Einstein by the cantonal school was due to its unpretentiousness and to its seriousness which was in no way dependent on a teacher's authority. The school also emphasized the power of visual thinking, a mode of thought to which Einstein found himself disposed, contrary to Poincare While at Aarau, Einstein conceived of a thought experiment that, 10 years later in 1905, he realized contained the "germ of the special theory of relativity" (Einstein, 1949, p. 53).

Einstein's educational experience at the ETH during 1896-1900 was bittersweet. Almost immediately difficulties arose. The role of visual thinking was de-emphasized and the outdated physics curriculum focused on applications. Einstein liked neither the subject matter nor being coerced to memorize large quantities of what to him was unessential material.

Einstein recalled that his independence of thought was not appreciated by the professors at the ETH, particularly not by the eminent Herr Professor Doctor Weber, with whom Einstein had many intense personality conflicts. For example, Einstein would position himself within earshot of Weber and then refer to him as Professor Weber, instead of the formal Herr Professor Doctor Weber: titles mattered in the heavy Wilhelmine atmosphere of Northern Switzerland. The upshot was that Weber, the man who had encouraged Einstein to pursue studies at the ETH, tried to prevent him from graduating. Having failed, he refused Einstein any letter of recommendation upon graduation. Whereas Poincare was accepted for advanced studies at the prestigious l'Ecole des Mines, while also pursuing advanced mathematical study at the University of Paris, Einstein was the only one of four students in his class who passed the final examination to be refused a position as Assistant to a professor at the ETH. Whereas Poincare eagerly pursued mathematical problems after graduation, Einstein recalled in 1946 that it took him a year to recover from the ETH and to reacquire his taste for scientific research (Einstein, 1949, p. 17).

During 1900-1902 Einstein had only intermittent employment and was denied positions as assistant to several major physicists. He was convinced that somehow Weber was behind this situation. In this period Einstein developed a chronic stomach ailment caused by malnutrition that plagued him throughout his life. As Einstein wrote to his girlfriend and wife to be, Mileva Maric, on 4 April 1901, "Soon I will have honored all physicists from the North Sea to the southern tip of Italy with my offer" (Renn, 1992, p. 42). He persevered: In 1901 Einstein submitted a doctoral thesis to the University of Zurich which was rejected (another was accepted in 1905), but he succeeded in publishing his first paper in the prestigious German physics journal the Annalen der Physik.

Finally, through intercession of the father of a college friend, Einstein obtained a position as technical expert third class (provisional) at the Swiss Federal Patent Office, Bern. In reply to someone's comment that he might be bored in this position, Einstein wrote to Mileva in February 1902, "certain people find everything boring -- I am sure that I will find it very nice and I will be grateful to Haller [the Director of the Patent Office] as long as I live" (Renn, 1992, p. 76). And he was.

Einstein's Bern period (1902-1909) was the most creative of his life. While working at the Patent Office eight hours a day, six days a week, he published 50 papers. Although during 1901-1904 he had published five papers in the Annalen, nobody was prepared for what happened in 1905. Whereas Poincare clearly exhibited a certain genius in mathematics at age 17, there was no forewarning of Einstein's creative outburst in 1905. After all, in 1905 Albert Einstein was a 26 year old middle level junior civil servant with an academic record that was distinctive in retrospect only by its lack of distinctness. His score on the cumulative final exam at the ETH was 4.91 out of six, good but not superlative; he had failed once to obtain a Ph.D., and was denied letters of reference from his undergraduate school. To make ends meet for his wife and child, Einstein gave private classes in physics. Yet at eight week intervals, starting in March 1905 Einstein submitted three papers that were published in the September 1905 Volume 17 of the Annalen. In retrospect, each paper was worth a Nobel Prize. The third one is the relativity paper. Later, in 1905, Einstein published a fourth paper in the Annalen which contained a result he had overlooked in the relativity paper: the equivalence of mass and energy, E = mc2. These four papers changed the course of physics in the 20th century, not to say life itself on our planet (Miller, 1981).

Contrary to the reception accorded Poincare's first great mathematical discovery, Einstein's early research results were at first appreciated, mostly for the wrong reasons, if at all, including the 1905 paper on special relativity. That Einstein had an Annus Mirabilis in 1905 became clear only in retrospect from the 1920's when all of his contributions from that year were duly acknowledged. Special relativity was not recognized as an achievement until 1911.

Whereas Poincare remained married to Louise for the remainder of his life, Einstein s personal life was less settled. In 1902 he married Mileva, with whom he had a tumultuous love affair since 1899. Their published love letters attest to the passion of the relationship and allude to the encouragement she gave her emotional and intellectual soul mate. Unfortunately, by around the time they were married the relationship had begun to cool. They were divorced acrimoniously in 1919. Later that year, Einstein married his cousin Elsa with whom he had a liaison for some time. Einstein's love life is a complex and highly interesting topic which is outside the theme of this essay. But this much seems to be the case - Einstein's liaisons may well have been an inspiration to his research, just like in the lives of artists, musicians and writers. What other scientist can you think of whose love letters have been published? (Renn, 1992)

Poincare, Einstein, and the Gift of Creative Genius

The comparative educational experiences of Poincare and Einstein offer educators an important lesson. Einstein was not identified as a gifted child; on the contrary he was considered a problem student both in grade school and university. Nor was he considered to be an especially gifted adult, until about 1911 at age 32. It was not until 1919 that Einstein achieved the status of supergenius. This occurred as a result of verification of the spectacular prediction from his general theory of relativity, formulated in 1915, of the bending of starlight in vicinity of massive bodies. The image of a solitary person sitting in his study and seemingly divining laws of the universe struck a war-weary world like a thunderbolt. The name "Einstein" became synonymous with genius.

Yet Einstein was among those students who continue to fall through the net of educational systems. He, however, had the tenacity to work independently; most give up.

Poincare, on the other hand, was identified early on as gifted and probably of genius caliber. After his during 1890-1900 he was considered supergenius in capability. Poincare received all of the opportunities available in the French educational system which included education at the Grandes Ecoles. His trajectory of achievement was straight up. Einstein's couldn't have gone any lower until recognition began to emerge in 1906. Did he not sit in the Patent Office until 1909 when he was offered an academic position as an Associate Professor at Zurich University?

Particularly in the sciences, teachers have to be exceedingly patient with gifted children. Their precocity can emerge in ways that many teachers find difficult to handle. They can be poor at rote learning because of a strong desire to find patterns instead of blind memorization. Consequently their grades in subjects such as foreign languages, English, history and biology could be out of line from those in mathematics and physics. Gifted children in the sciences are sometimes capable of asking teachers questions that cannot be answered immediately. With a less experienced and confident teacher this can lead to a disastrous situation for teacher and student. This is not to say that recognition and encouragement is never given to gifted children. The famous American physicist Richard Feynman recalled a high school geometry teacher letting young Feynman take charge of the class (Gleick, 1992). This would never have occurred in a German Gymnasium. It doesn't always occur in American schools either.

Whether the gift of creative genius can prevail against all odds is a question that cannot be answered at this time. Einstein prevailed because of support at home in addition to his own tenacity. Other scientists of the ilk of a Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were, like Poincare and Feynman, recognized early in their school careers and encouraged. How to research the problem of losing naturally gifted children is a deep and challenging question that educators should confront. The results may call for a profound rethinking of the educational process itself.

REFERENCES

Cassidy, D.C. (1992). Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg. New York: Freeman.

Einstein, A. (1949). Autobiographical Notes, in P.A. Sehilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. La Salle, IL, Open Court. (pp. 2-94).

Einstein, A. (1987). Tile Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: Volume 1, The Early Years, 1879-1902. J. Stachel, D.C. Cassidy, and R. Schulmann (eds.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gleick, J. (1992). Genius: The Lift' and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Pantheon.

Mandler, G., (1994). Hypermnesia, Incubation, and Mind Popping: On Remembering without Really Trying, In C. Umilta and M. Moscovitch (eds.), Attention and Performance XV. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Miller, A.I. (1996). Insights of Genius: Imagery and Creativity in Art and Science (1996). New York: Springer.

Miller, A.I. (1981). Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; Scheduled to be reprinted in 1996 by New York: Springer.

Renn, J. and R. Schulmann (eds.). (1992). Albert Einstein: The Love Letters. Translated by S. Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Russell, R. (1968). Tire Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, The Early Years: 1872-World War I. New York: Bantam (Original work published 1967).

Arthur I. Miller is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Head of the Department of Science & Technology Studies at University College London. His most recent book is Insights of Genius: Imagery and Creativity in Science and Art (Springer-Verlag, 1996). His latest project is investigating how the creative abilities of young people can best be promoted through education. This initiative is spearheaded by Professor Ken Robinson, Chair of The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, which is a committee put together at the behest of Tony Blair's Labor Party.

Manuscript submitted March, 1997. Revision accepted November, 1998.