Geniuses might be distinguished by their ability to grasp incredible complexity, but that doesn’t mean if you somehow managed to corner one the greatest minds in history for a chat you’d be perplexed by what they had to say. According to Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, the true hallmark of genius is the ability to explain things simply.
If that’s true, it’s yet another sign of Albert Einstein’s incredible gifts (as if we needed further proof).
A glimpse of Einstein as doting dad
In 1915, Einstein was living in Berlin and working on his theory of general relativity while his estranged wife tended his two sons in Vienna. In an age before email and Skype, that meant a regular exchange of letters between the great physicist and his family, one of which was recently dug up by Maria Popova of the always intriguing Brain Pickings blog.