Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote: > > All the better. The line between mental health and genius has always been > blurred and inversely correlated – going back to the Greeks. > > Newton, Einstein, Dirac, Curie, Socrates – all nutty as a fruitcake. > Newton was a bit nutty, I think. I disagree about Einstein. I don't know about the others. This article says:
Albert Einstein has also been subject to scrutiny. Einstein was a loner as a child and didn’t speak until he was three, then he repeated sentences obsessively for several years. In adulthood he lacked grooming (note the wild crop of hair) and was reportedly lax about hygiene. I have read that is not true. He spoke at the normal age, and he had a happy childhood. He also got excellent grades in school contrary to what you read in some accounts. That I confirmed with original sources, which are now online. He was somewhat lax about grooming but most physicists were then and still are. It is an in-group thing. Programmers in the 1970s and 80s also resembled an unmade bed, including me. Here is a wonderful clip from the movie "IQ" portraying the grooming habits of 1930s physicists. This includes one of my favorite movie lines: "This is a tie. This will hold up your pants." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7stiKJsGjY Einstein was popular with the ladies, and had many affairs. Evidently they did not mind his grooming. - Jed
