"He never bothered about mathematics at all"

Have to see what all these mathematicians think of this.

Talking about Einstein, one of the most surprising things about reading Walter Isaacson's Einstein was to learn that Einstein avoided advanced math in his early education. All the pictures of Einstein you see today generally show him at the blackboard writing some seemingly impossibly complicated mathematical equation. But it seems he was a student adequate in math, yet not much interested in it. The book says later in life he realized this was a great mistake, that math is essential to understanding and theorizing in Physics. Nonetheless the book relates how he made little effort to do more than the minimum effort in the discipline while attending the Zurich Polytechnic, skipping most of his calculus classes for example. To show this was not being a case of already having mastered the material, his worst grades were in Math, maintaining a 4 pt average in a 6 point system. Clearly he makes up for this later, though the book does not make clear how [at least I don't remember and can't find it now]. The quote about "never bothering" comes from one of his Zurich P. professors.

I blogged about this too, expanding on some personal stuff.

Anyway, the book had lots of surprises, but this one floored me. Einstein's general impudence toward his professors just about sunk him too. He wanted to live a Bohemian lifestyle with free love notions too, I knew nothing about that. I have to tell you that it is my opinion that this attitude about shirking math studies today would devastate anyone planning to have a career in science.