Here’s Einstein’s Advice to His Son on How to Accelerate Learning
Geniuses might be distinguished by their ability to grasp incredible complexity, but that doesn’t mean if you somehow managed to corner one of the greatest minds in history for a chat you’d be perplexed by what they had to say. According to Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, the true hallmark of genius is the ability to explain things simply.
If that’s true, it’s yet another sign of Albert Einstein’s incredible gifts (as if we needed further proof).
A glimpse of Einstein as doting dad
In 1915, Einstein was living in Berlin and working on his theory of general relativity while his estranged wife tended his two sons in Vienna. In an age before the Internet, that meant a regular exchange of letters between the great physicist and his family, one of which was recently dug up by Maria Popova of the always intriguing Brain Pickings blog.
The short note to 11-year-old Hans Albert Einstein not only shows Einstein in a less familiar light as a caring father, but also illustrates Feynman’s point — geniuses don’t talk in riddles but in language that’s exceptionally clear.
In this case, Einstein uses this forceful simplicity to offer young Hans Albert — and all of us readers listening in a hundred years later — some…
