I had a high school student come into my office on campus one day. He
had been encouraged by his mother to come visit the physics department
to discuss his ideas because she thought he was brilliant. The
department chair, in his infinite wisdom, sent the young man to me.

For a half hour, the lad drew pictures on my chalkboard of a new
unified field theory. No math, mind you, just a lot of enthusiastic
description and squiggly figures and semiplausible notions.

Still chewing on my sandwich, I stopped him at one point and asked him
to calculate something ... anything ... with his model -- or at least
set it up so that I knew in principle the calculation could be done.

He looked at me in all earnestness and said, "Oh, I view myself as sort
of the Einstein type. I come up with the Big Idea, and then I let
everyone else work out the details."

I stopped chewing, swallowed carefully, and composed my thoughts.

For the next half hour, we discussed what it really meant to be a
physicist, how Einstein had to study the state of the art for years
before even being ready to work on a Big Idea, and what would be
required of this young man on his journey to becoming a theoretical
physicist, which is what he wanted more than anything else in the
world. Unquestionably, he was shaken. He had no idea that it took more
than just intelligence and a blinding stroke of insight.

I have no qualms about having directed him this way. Any profession in
the world requires an extraordinary amount of work to become tops in
the field, and much of it is grinding toil. Physics is no different.
Anyone who enters into such a field should not be shielded from this
information, lest the moment of disillusionment come after years of
wasted, dreamy ignorance. The good ones will embrace the challenge.

The other aspect of this, though, was my alarm at his perception of how
Einstein worked, how he did what he did. Few of the everday Einstein
fans recall, for example, that the same year he was publishing his
seminal papers, he was struggling to get his PhD thesis approved, and
he was working at a side job because no one at the university could
find money to support him. In this 100th anniversary of some of his
singular accomplishments, I think it's worthwhile reminding people
about how much hard work, how much formal training, and how much time
spent simply learning, went into those accomplishments.

PD