36. Young Einstein’s Miracle Year
In January and February of 1905, Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, demonstrating that Isaac Newton was wrong in positing that space and time were absolute. In March, he again revolutionized science with his work on quantum theory. Then in April and May, he published a pair of papers that proved the assumed but hitherto unverified existence of the atom.
Einstein did all of that by the time he was 26, and for the remainder of his life – he lived another half-century, before dying in 1955 – no scientific contribution of his matched what he had done in 1905. Which is not to say that he coasted for the rest of his life on the accomplishments of his youth, but if he had done, it would have been OK: the man’s accomplishments in that single year exceeded the contributions of the entire lifetimes of multiple geniuses.