Even Albert Einstein needed more than curiosity to become a great physicist

Albert Einstein ‘was recognised as a physicist of the first rank very early in his career’. Photograph: Arthur Sasse/Bettmann/Corbis

While I agree with Maulfry Worthington (Letters, 19 June) that our schools should encourage more curiosity, it is unfortunate that she repeats the near-calumny that Einstein was a “patent clerk” who would “become” a great physicist. In fact Einstein worked as a technical examiner at the Eidgenössisches Institut für Geistiges Eigentum (the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office) in 1902-09 to support himself while he completed his PhD thesis in physics and did his early work on quantum mechanics and special relativity. He was already published inAnnalen der Physik before joining the patent office. Einstein did not have good academic connections, which made it hard to secure a teaching post, but was recognised as a physicist of the first rank very early in his career.

While curiosity is absolutely a necessary trait for success in science, the hard work has also to be done, and the exams passed, even by Einstein.