Einsteins job as a patent examiner helped him develop his physics
Summary
- Einstein's job as a patent examiner helped him develop his physics theories in multiple ways.
Details
- It gave him the time to work on his theories
- His boss told him "You have to remain critically vigilant." The ability to question every premise and conventional wisdom are both necessary to review patents .
- originality and creativity where not assets for climbing the academic ladder
References
Quotes
In addition, his boss Haller had a credo that was as useful for a creative and rebellious theorist as it was for a patent examiner: "You have to remain critically vigilant." Question every premise, challenge conventional wisdom, and never accept the truth of something merely because everyone else views it as obvious. Resist being credulous. "When you pick up an application," Haller instructed, "think that everything the inventor says is wrong." 73
Einstein had grown up in a family that created patents and tried to apply them in business, and he found the process to be fulfilling. It re- inforced one of his ingenious talents: the ability to conduct thought ex- periments in which he could visualize how a theory would play out in practice. It also helped him peel off the irrelevant facts that surrounded a problem.74
Had he been consigned instead to the job of an assistant to a professor, he might have felt compelled to churn out safe publications and be overly cautious in challenging accepted notions. As he later noted, originality and creativity were not prime assets for climbing academic ladders, especially in the German-speaking world, and he would have felt pressure to conform to the prejudices or prevailing wisdom of his patrons. "An academic career in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts creates a danger of intellectual superficiality," he said.
As a result, the happenstance that landed him on a stool at the Swiss Patent Office, rather than as an acolyte in academia, likely reinforced some of the traits destined to make him successful: a merry skepticism about what appeared on the pages in front of him and an independence of judgment that allowed him to challenge basic assumptions. There were no pressures or incentives among the patent examiners to behave otherwise.