37. Albert Einstein Was at Max Genius In His Mid Twenties
The popular image most of us have of Albert Einstein is of an aging man, with disheveled and wild white hair. So it stands to reason that most people would assume that Einstein’s most important work must have occurred at the tail end of a long life, spent doing complex physics and math stuff.
In reality, Einstein’s greatest contributions to science, such as his theory of relativity, had taken place by the time he was 26. In 1905, after graduating from the University of Zurich, Einstein was working as a patent office examiner, and dabbling into some physics stuff in his free time. During a span of a few brief months, he came up with four theories that revolutionized science.