1
Two Trajectories

From the very beginning, Mileva Marić's courage, determination, and ambition were evident as she overcame a physical disability, maintained a steady performance while moving from school to school, became one of the first women to study physics at the high school level in Austria-Hungary, and, especially, left her family and her native Serbia for Switzerland in order to realize her dream.

Enter Mileva

Mileva Marić was born on December 19, 1875, in the town of Titel in the predominately Serbian province of Vojvodina on the southern border of Hungary. Hungary was at that time joined with Austria in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its capital in German-speaking Vienna. Across the Hungarian border to the south lay the Kingdom of Serbia, which, at Mileva's birth, was still part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. It gained independence in 1878. To the west lay Croatia, then also part of Hungary.

Most of the Serbs of Vojvodina (Voy-va-di-na) were Serbian Orthodox Christians descended from those who had fled north and west into the Hungarian province during the invasions of the Muslim Ottoman Turks in previous centuries. After the founding of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, Serbian independence and the declining Ottoman Empire accelerated a Pan-Slavic cultural and political revival. The drive for national unity culminated at the end of World War I in the creation of the independent Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929 (Palmer, Colton, and Kramer 2007). Vojvodina is today an autonomous province of Serbia.

According to biographical accounts (T-G 1983, 1988; Zackheim 2000; Krstić 2004; Milentijević 2015), which often neglect source citations, Mileva's father Miloš Marić was born in 1846 into a peasant family in the town of Kać (Katch), Vojvodina. Kać lay near the town of Novi Sad, the political and cultural capital of Vojvodina. In 1694 Serbian merchants crossed the Danube River to found the new city of Novi Sad under pressure from Ottoman Turks and “Germans” immigrating into Hungary from Austria.

Miloš Marić arrived in Titel in 1862 on military service at the age of sixteen. As a buffer against the Ottomans, Hungary had established a Military Frontier along its southern border that was well manned through local military conscription. Sergeant Marić received most of his schooling in a German-speaking battalion military school for non-commissioned officers in Titel. His mastery of German and mathematics opened the door to a career as a civil servant after he left the military (Krstić 2004, 18–20).

Five years after arriving in Titel, Miloš married Marija Ruzić, the daughter of one of the wealthiest landowners in the city. Following the unfortunate deaths of their first two children at early ages, Mileva Marić became their first surviving child. Two more children followed: a sister, Zorka, and a brother, Miloš Jr. When baby Mileva began to walk, it was discovered that she had a congenital dislocation of her left hip, a condition passed down through her mother's side of the family. Mileva's sister Zorka reportedly also suffered from this condition (Milentijević 2015, 21). It left Mileva with a noticeable limp and one of the lifelong burdens she would have to bear.

Primary School

As the Ottoman threat subsided, Hungary dissolved its Military Frontier, and Miloš returned to civilian life in the year of Mileva's birth. Apparently well endowed financially through his dowry and a civil service job at the court of justice in nearby Vukovar, he purchased a large estate near his hometown of Kać that included farmland tilled by local peasants (Milentijević 2015, 20). Miloš later built a large two-story summer home on the Kać estate, which became thereafter a favorite summer retreat for family and friends. In 1877 he was appointed clerk at the district court of justice in the town of Ruma, Vojvodina (Krstić 2004, 21). Rather than settling at Kać, the family moved to Ruma, about 30 kilometers south of Novi Sad, where Miloš began his job as clerk and Mileva, aged six, began school in 1882.

Upon completing four years of primary education in Ruma, Mileva enrolled in fall 1886 for the first year of middle school in the Serbian Higher Girls School in Novi Sad, “higher” referring to more advanced education. Her very supportive father arranged for room and board with a widow in the capital city (Milentijević 2015, 24).

While in primary school, Mileva encountered the unfortunate teasing of her classmates because of her limp. “Her understandable reaction to this ridicule was to withdraw into herself and avoid other children,” writes Milentijević (2015, 23; see also Krstić 2004, 22). She was often taciturn in later years. Mileva reportedly showed early academic promise in Ruma and Novi Sad. According to Trbuhović-Gjurić, a Ruma teacher told her father: “Take good care of this child! She is a rare [seltsames] phenomenon” (T-G 1983 and 1988, 21). Dord Krstić wrote: “At the end of [the Novi Sad] school year she received the grade of ‘excellent’ in all subjects”; in addition, in 1961 a former classmate told Krstić that Mileva was the brightest girl in the class, “She always knew everything” (Krstić 2004, 22). These authors offer no further details, but Mileva's father seemed determined that she would receive an education as far as her abilities would take her—this despite the prevailing hurdles for women in education

European students normally attended four or five years of primary school. Mileva attended four years at Ruma. Those bound for university and professional careers then attended a nine-year academic middle and high school, often called a gymnasium (pronounced ghim-nah-ze-um), following the Latin usage for “school.” This generally resulted in fourteen years of schooling before arriving at the university, instead of the twelve in American schools. The gymnasia of the day were typically segregated by gender and were usually attended only by males in countries such as Austria-Hungary that excluded women from higher education. Most offered an academic curriculum emphasizing classical languages and literature. After successfully completing the gymnasium, those wishing to go on to higher education had to pass, in addition to the last year's final examinations, further examinations for the Matura (Abitur in Germany), a certificate granting admission to higher education (Clark 2008, 167–176).

Middle Schools

Since Austria-Hungary did not permit women to enroll as students in its universities or to receive a degree, there was no gymnasium for Mileva to attend after completing primary school. Instead, like most girls, she attended a girls’ middle school, the Serbian Higher Girls’ School in Novi Sad, which paralleled the early years of a male gymnasium. That level of education for women was apparently deemed sufficient for their future role in starting their sons on a route to the higher education and professional careers barred to their mothers.

After just a year at the Serbian Girls’ School, Mileva transferred in fall 1887 to another middle school, the Royal Lower Secondary School in Sremska Mitrovica on the Sava River not far from her family's home in Ruma (“lower” referring to the gymnasium grades) (CPAE 1, 380–381). Milentijević (2015, 25) attributes this move to her desire to attend “a school better suited to challenging her academic talents.” Three years later, having completed four years of “middle school,” Mileva was now fourteen, and, writes Ruth Lewin Sime (1996, 6), “public school for girls was over at age fourteen.” Rather than spending “the next few years helping at home, sewing, and daydreaming of marriage” (Sime 1996, 7), as did most Austro-Hungarian girls of that era, Mileva was determined to continue her education at an actual gymnasium in order to prepare for higher education. She and her resourceful father found a solution. Twelve years earlier the Kingdom of Serbia, to the south, had gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, and Serbia did allow women to enroll in its universities, which meant it also admitted them to its gymnasia.

Gymnasium

Mileva headed just across the border to the town of Šabac, Serbia, farther down the Sava River but still west of Belgrade, the Serbian capital. There, in fall 1890, she enrolled in the fifth of nine classes (or annual “forms”) at the Royal Serbian Gymnasium. She remained there for the following school year, 1891–92. But during that year the Marić family experienced a major change. In December 1891 the government issued a decree appointing Miloš Marić to a new position, as of May 1892, as “the lower judicial official at the High Court of Justice in Zagreb,” the capital of Croatia, which was then a province of Austria-Hungary (Krstić 2004, 27–28, citing the decree). The Marić family moved from Ruma to Zagreb in May, a move that required Mileva to withdraw from the Šabac gymnasium before she could complete her sixth gymnasium year.

Once settled in Zagreb, Mileva's father, a civil servant at the High Court, managed to obtain permission for Mileva to enroll as a private student, and without the necessity of paying fees, in the public male Royal Upper Gymnasium (also called the Royal Classical Gymnasium) in Zagreb. After passing the entrance exams, Mileva enrolled in the gymnasium in fall 1892. In the following year she even received a stipend (Krstić 2004, 28–29).

The Croatian State Archive in Zagreb kindly provided Allen Esterson with Mileva's school records, including her grade transcripts, for the two years she attended the Zagreb Gymnasium. (The grade transcripts are reproduced in figures 1.1 and 1.2 and in translation in appendix A.) The records indicate that she was admitted in 1892 into the sixth class of the gymnasium, which they designated as “VI a,” a possibly referring to a second simultaneous class at the same level.

Figure 1.1 Grade report for Mileva Marić, class VI a, Royal Classical Gymnasium, Zagreb, Croatia, 1892–1893. Translations and remarks by archivist Mihaela Barbarić. See appendix A. Courtesy of State Archive in Zagreb, HR-DAZ6–102, I. Klasična Gimnazija u Zagrebu, Glavni Imenik Za VI a. Razred Sa Šk. God 1892–1893, call no. 25353.

Figure 1.2 Grade report for Mileva Marić, class VII, Royal Classical Gymnasium, Zagreb, Croatia, 1893–1894. Remarks by the archivist. See appendix A. Courtesy of State Archive in Zagreb, HR-DAZ6–102, I. Klasična Gimnazija u Zagrebu, Glavni Imenik Za VII. Razred Sa Šk. God 1893–1894, call no. 25353.

The curriculum at the Zagreb gymnasium was heavily weighted toward languages. In addition to the two classical languages, standard at a “classical” gymnasium, Mileva enrolled in German and Croatian language classes—a remarkable four language classes in all. Of the roughly forty students in her class in the first year and sixty students in the second year (from her school records), two were private students in the public school, except for only one private student (Mileva) in her second semester. It is not known if the other private students were girls as well.

Mileva held her own ground at the male gymnasium. Her semester grades for 1892–93, her first year there, were nearly all “very good” (corresponding to a US/American B), including for mathematics. She received for Greek the grade “excellent” (A), her only “excellent” while at the school. (See figures 1.1 and 1.2, and appendix A.) But then something happened. In Mileva's second year at the Zagreb gymnasium, 1893–94, most of her grades dropped a notch, and two landed near the bottom at “satisfactory” (D). We can only surmise what happened. Two possibilities come to mind. One is that she became ill that semester and her grades suffered. Trbuhović-Gjurić writes that when she left the school at the end of her second year she was in ill-health. This was reportedly the reason she postponed her final exams for 1894 from June to September (T-G 1983, 28).

A second possibility derives from the special permission she obtained from the education ministry to enroll in physics that year (T-G 1983, 26). The school permitted only boys to enroll in physics. The audacity of one of the few (or only) girls in the school to utilize a higher authority to force her way into the male world of physics could have awakened resentments and even harassment from the other students. Her performance, or the assessment of it by her male teachers, dropped across the board (except in Latin). Her previous “very good” (B) in mathematics and German dropped to “good” (C) and “satisfactory” (D), respectively; and her first-semester grade in physics was only a barely passing “satisfactory” (D). Whatever the nature of the situation, she persevered and even managed to thrive as best as possible. She was indeed a survivor. The education ministry did not issue its official permission for her to attend the physics class until February 14, 1894, about the time the second semester started (Krstić 2004, 29, quoting the document). With any opposition now silenced, her grades suddenly improved. As shown in the transcripts and in appendix A, Mileva's final semester grades for the delayed exams on September 4, 1894, were all “good” (C), with the exception of mathematics and physics. Her mathematics grade jumped from “good” (C) to “very good” (B), and her physics grade jumped two whole notches, from D to B.

Mileva's best grades were in math and physics that semester, but they were still one notch below “excellent” (A). Some authors have reported these results in confusing, even misleading, terms. Trbuhović-Gjurić, who likely saw Mileva's student records, wrote rather ambiguously, “She had passed the final examination of the seventh class in September 1894 with the best grades [mit den besten Noten] in mathematics and physics” (T-G 1983 and 1988, 26–28; see also Frize 2009, 274). More precisely, according to the grade report, these were her best grades for that semester.

Zurich Higher Girls’ School

After taking the 1894 exams in Zagreb, Mileva traveled with her father to Zurich in Switzerland, which was among the few European countries that fully admitted women to higher education and degrees. The University of Zurich began admitting women students in 1864; the other Swiss universities and institutes, including the Zurich Polytechnic, followed in 1872. Many wealthy and aristocratic women who could afford the expense traveled to France and Switzerland from other nations that barred women from higher education: those with German language skills (such as Mileva Marić) generally went to German-speaking northern Switzerland, while those with French skills (such as Marie Skłodowska, later Curie) went to France (Clark 2008, 184–189; Kien and Cassidy 1984). The University of Vienna, in contrast, began admitting women only in 1897. Although the gymnasia there continued to exclude women, women were permitted to enter the university if they could somehow pass the Matura exams. After intensive private instruction and study, the Austrian physicist Lise Meitner managed to pass the Matura examinations administered at a male gymnasium in Vienna in 1901. She entered the University of Vienna the same year, and in 1906 she became the second woman awarded a doctorate in physics by that university (Sime 1996, 8–9). The University of Zurich had awarded its first doctorate to a woman, a Russian medical student, in 1867 (Clark 2008, 185).

Mileva enrolled in November 1894 for her last years of preparatory schooling at Zurich's Higher [advanced] Girls’ School (Höhere Töchterschule). Her father found room and board for her in the home of a Miss Bächtold; hers was one of the many homes that served as rooming houses for Zurich students. But all was not well in the Marić family. Krstić writes that Mileva's father suffered from rheumatism, and in June 1895, just as Mileva completed her first year in Zurich, he took paid sick leave from his position at the High Court in Zagreb. In January 1896 he retired at the age of forty-nine with a pension nearly equal to his annual salary, but it did not include the housing allowance he had received (Krstić 2004, 31). Soon after taking sick leave, Miloš moved his wife and remaining children back to Vojvodina from Zagreb and purchased a house in Novi Sad, where they settled. From then on, Mileva regarded Novi Sad as home. Her father died in 1922.

Unlike the Zagreb gymnasium, the Zurich girls’ school not only prepared and encouraged its female students to take the Matura examinations, but it also expected them to pass, thereby qualifying them for direct admission to higher education. According to a facsimile of Mileva's entrance certificate to the Zurich girls’ school, published by Trbuhović-Gjurić (1983 and 1988, 32), she passed the entrance exams to the school, but the school still required her to take private instruction in French and “perhaps [eventuell]” in history, geography, zoology, and botany. She had taken a year of biology and zoology in Zagreb, but French was not offered. Her French classes in Šabac, followed by reported private lessons, were apparently not sufficient (Krstić 2004, 27). As one of Switzerland's four national languages, French was required of all Matura students (the other three languages were/are German, Italian, and Romansh). Although Mileva had studied history and geography, they were probably oriented toward Serbia and Croatia, rather than Switzerland.

Entering the Polytechnic

Mileva passed the Matura examinations in the spring of 1896. She took the exams, not in Zurich, but at the Swiss Federal Medical School in Bern, apparently because she intended at that point to study medicine (Marić, Student Record; T-G 1988, 31–33; Krstić 2004, 21–32). Her grades at the Zurich girls’ school and on the Matura examinations have not been found. Trbuhović-Gjurić (1983, 33) provides an extensive list of the school's subjects with instructors, including those in mathematics and physics, probably from a school publication, but no grades.

However, we do have one set of examination results for Mileva in 1896. After attending courses in the University of Zurich's medical program during the summer semester 1896, she decided to study physics and mathematics at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute, or Zurich Polytechnic. She began to do so in the winter semester. (The academic year consisted of winter and summer semesters.) The former Polytechnic (now ETH) has released online her complete student records, which include her Matrikel, or semester course reports, and her leaving certificate (Abgangs-Zeugnis) (Marić, Student Record). Trbuhović-Gjurić published facsimiles of the first page of the Matrikel and the complete, one-page leaving certificate, listing her courses and her average grade for each (T-G 1983, 56–57; 1988, 60–61). The former page shows that Mileva submitted a “federal medical Matura certificate” (Eidg. mediz. Maturitätszeugnis) for admission. For some reason, perhaps related to her Matura exams at the medical school, the Polytechnic officials required her to take the entrance examinations in Mathematics and in Descriptive Geometry, but in none of the other eight subjects. Her grades on these exams (also listed in appendix A) ranged from 3.5 to 5 on a scale of 1 to 6 (6 being the highest), resulting in an average of 4.25 out of 6. Mileva passed the exams and immediately switched from medicine at the university to physics and mathematics at the Polytechnic. (In 1911 the Polytechnic became what it is called today, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule], or ETH.)

Mileva entered the Swiss Polytechnic in October 1896. It is not known if she intended to pursue a career as a university physics professor or as a gymnasium teacher of physics and mathematics. Whatever her goal, she was surely aware that her possible professions—medicine and university or gymnasium physics—exhibited strong gender discrimination and that few women had succeeded in these professions. Yet she was undeterred, even as she encountered hurdles in her studies, and for this, writes Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson (2007, 137), she deserves our admiration: “Nowadays, when the same issues still reverberate across a century of time, the courage that Marić displayed by entering and competing in the male-dominated world of physics and math is what should earn her an admired spot in the annals of scientific history.”

Mileva enrolled in the Zurich Polytechnic's Department VI, the School for Mathematics and Science Teachers, in Section VI A (the mathematics section, which included physics and astronomy). This section offered a four-year program toward the diploma for specialized teachers in these subjects. (Section VI B encompassed the other sciences.) There was no purely academic physics program. That year 841 students enrolled in the Zurich Polytechnic, of whom 42 were in Department VI; of these, 9 were female students, 4 of whom, including Mileva Marić, were in Section VI A. But only one, Mileva, was in the first-year class, and she remained the only woman in her class for the rest of her studies at the Polytechnic (Stachel 2002, 30). In addition, she was one of only two students majoring in physics in the first-year class. The other four students majored in mathematics. They were Marcel Grossmann, Louis Kollros, Jakob Ehrat, and Louis-Gustave du Pasquier (CPAE 1, doc. 42). Among that entering class Mileva first encountered the only other first-year physics student that year, Albert Einstein. Albert was at that time seventeen and a half years old; Mileva was now nearly twenty-one.

Enter Albert

Einstein's path to the Zurich Polytechnic was much shorter and more direct that Mileva's. He was born in Ulm in southwestern Germany on March 14, 1879, to non-observing Jewish parents, Hermann and Pauline Einstein. His sister Maria (nicknamed Maya or Maja) was born on November 18, 1881. She later attended the universities of Berlin and Bern, receiving a doctorate in Romance languages at the University of Bern in 1909 (CPAE 1, 389).

A year after Albert's birth, the Einstein family moved to Munich, the capital of Bavaria in southeastern Germany, where Hermann became a partner in the electrical engineering firm of his brother Jakob, a certified engineer. In 1885 the brothers jointly founded a new electrical engineering company in Munich, Einstein & Co., which made electric motors and dynamos. It became a source of Einstein's abiding interest, despite his theoretical research, in practical electro-technology (Pyenson 1985, 35–57).

Albert entered primary school in Munich at the statutory age of six. All public schools in Munich had a religious orientation. Since the last Jewish school had closed earlier, Albert entered the local Roman Catholic primary school in October 1885, receiving private Jewish religious instruction at home (CPAE 1, 370). Brief information about his early academic performance at the school comes from a letter that his mother wrote to her sister Fanny, dated August 1, 1886, when Albert was seven, in which she wrote: “Yesterday Albert got his grades, once again he was ranked first, he got a splendid report card” (CPAE 1, doc. 2).

Early Math and Science

In 1888, at the early age of nine and a half, Albert entered Munich's Luitpold Gymnasium, a classical gymnasium where Greek and Latin held pride of place in the school curriculum (Fölsing 1997, 19–20). It is very unfortunate that the school's records were destroyed during World War II. The only information we have about Albert's grades comes from the rector of the successor school who reported in 1929 that Albert received grades from 1 to 2 (1 being the highest, 4 the lowest) for Latin and 1 to 3 in Greek (CPAE 1, lx, n. 46), the subjects apparently of most interest to the rector. Surprisingly, Einstein eventually became acquainted with a total of six languages: German (including Bavarian dialect), Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and finally English.

According to a memoir by Einstein's sister, outside of school Albert exhibited signs of precocious talent in science and, especially, in mathematics (CPAE 1, lxi). In 1889 the Einstein family invited a local medical student, Max Talmud (later Talmey), to their home for a weekly midday meal on Thursday, a custom that continued for some five years (Isaacson 2008, 18). Talmey was twenty-one when he first accepted the Einsteins’ hospitality. He records that young Albert showed a particular inclination toward physics, so he brought him popular physics books to read. When he observed that Albert showed a great predilection for mathematics, he also brought him a textbook on geometry for self-study. Having worked through the book in a few months, the boy began studying a higher level of mathematics by himself. As Talmey (1932, 164) reported, “Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high that I could no longer follow.”

Einstein's recollection of this period, published in 1949, is consistent with Talmey's. He described his excitement when his father showed him a “wonder” at the age of four or five, a magnetic compass. “That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit into the nature of events. … This experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me” (Einstein 1979, 9). It was an impression that prefigured his interest in electromagnetic fields a decade later. At the age of twelve, Einstein continued, he experienced “a second wonder.” It was “a little book dealing with Euclidean plane geometry,” perhaps the one provided by Talmey. Einstein further recalled that between ages twelve and sixteen:

I familiarized myself with the elements of mathematics, including the principles of differential and integral calculus. … This occupation was, on the whole, truly fascinating; there were peaks whose impression could easily compete with that of elementary geometry—the basic idea of analytical geometry, the infinite series, the concepts of derivative and integral. I also had the good fortune of getting to know the essential results and methods of the entire field of the natural sciences in an excellent popular exposition, which limited itself almost throughout to qualitative aspects (Bernstein's Popular Books on Natural Science, a work of five or six volumes), a work that I read with breathless attention. I had also studied some theoretical physics when, at the age of seventeen, I entered the Polytechnic Institute of Zürich as a student of mathematics and physics. (Einstein 1979, 15)

Although Albert had “familiarized” himself with differential and integral calculus, and his own studies of physics and mathematics reportedly took him beyond the level of his schoolmates (Talmey 1932, 162–164; Fölsing 1997, 21–24), his knowledge of calculus was apparently not at a high level. His first-year grades for this subject at the Polytechnic were 4.5 and 5 out of a possible 6; and his early grades on mechanics and physics were both 5 (see appendix C).

Albert did not thrive in the uncongenial atmosphere of the Munich gymnasium. Following a brief spell of religiosity, his mounting rebellion against religion fostered an antipathy toward all forms of dogma and authority, especially the Prussian influence on his Munich school. According to Maria, “The military tone of the school, the systematic training in reverence for authority that was supposed to accustom pupils to military discipline, was particularly unpleasant. … Psychologically depressed and nervous, he sought a way out” (CPAE 1, lxiii).¹

Italy

Albert soon found an escape. In 1894, for economic reasons, the Einstein brothers moved their engineering firm, together with their families, from Munich to Pavia and then to Milan in northern Italy. But Hermann left his son in Munich with relatives in order to complete his schooling. In late December 1894, Albert, now fifteen and in his seventh gymnasium year, quit school and headed to Italy to join his family. But before he quit, he obtained from his mathematics teacher a statement reportedly “affirming that his extraordinary knowledge of mathematics qualified him for admission to an advanced institution” (Frank 1947, 16).

Albert intended to pursue higher education. Lacking the Abitur (Matura) certificate, he planned to study on his own to take the entrance examinations to the Zurich Polytechnic in October 1895. If he passed the exams, he would not need the Matura. During the next nine school-free months in Italy he not only studied for the exams but also learned Italian and wrote his first essay on physics, “On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field.” It is included in the first volume of his Collected Papers (CPAE 1, doc. 5). Still, Albert needed special permission from the Polytechnic's director to take the exams, which he obtained with the help of a family friend, since he was two years below the stipulated minimum age of eighteen for admission.

Einstein took the exams as planned. He failed. We do not have the exam grades. Recollections by Einstein and others do not attribute the failure to his performance on the math and science exams. If we can believe later reports, his physics grade was high, but he failed on the general part of the entrance exam, which tested knowledge in political history, literature, languages, and descriptive natural sciences (CPAE 1, 10–11; Einstein 1956a, 9; Fölsing 1997, 37).

The Aarau School

Following the personal advice of the Polytechnic's director, young Einstein continued his secondary school education at the Aargau Cantonal School in nearby Aarau, Switzerland, during the academic year 1895–96. (A Swiss province is called a canton.) There he stayed with the family of Jost Winteler, a teacher of Greek and history at the school. An “Entrance Report” from the school, apparently based on the school's entrance exams, coincides with recollections of Einstein's performance on the Polytechnic exams. On a grade scale that was the reverse of the Polytechnic's, Albert achieved a 2 (1 being the highest, 6 the lowest) in mathematics and physics, but 3s in Italian, Swiss natural history, and history. His performance in two other subjects was noted: “must do catch-up work” in chemistry, and “has large gaps” in French (CPAE 1, doc. 8).

Boarding in the teacher's home, Albert thrived in the free atmosphere of democratic Switzerland and in the academic challenges of the preparatory school. We have all of his grades from Aargau, but the school entrance grades and the semester grades as well have caused confusion because of the reversed grading scale during his first two semesters. The school shifted to the Polytechnic's system beginning in Albert's third, and final, semester (see appendix B). As a result, his seemingly poor grade of 1 in mathematics appeared to jump abruptly to 6 the following semester; grades of “1–2” in physics in the first semester jumped to “6–5” in the second; 1 and 2 in chemistry became 5; as did a 2 in French (CPAE 1, doc. 10).

By summer 1896 Albert had caught up sufficiently in most subjects (CPAE 1, doc. 19). For his final exam grades at the cantonal school, Albert achieved the top grade of 6 in algebra and geometry, “5–6” in physics, and 5s in chemistry, descriptive geometry, history, and Italian, but only 3 in French (CPAE 1, doc. 19; see appendix B). He then took the Matura examination which included written and oral portions on most of these same subjects. He passed with a grade average of 5 1/3 on the seven subject examinations. Overall, according to the Einstein editors (without source citation), his grades were the highest of the nine candidates who took the Matura exams at the school, this despite being only seventeen (CPAE 1, ed. note, p. 25 and docs. 21–27). At that young age Albert was now qualified to enter the Zurich Polytechnic without needing to retake the entrance examinations. Five other Aargau Cantonal School students joined him and Mileva Marić at the Polytechnic that fall.

Note

1. In contrast, Abraham Fraenkel, a famed mathematician and the first dean of mathematics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attended the Luitpold Gymnasium a short time after Einstein and later referred to the “nine happy years” that he spent there (Fraenkel 1955, 16; quoted in Fölsing 1997, 19).