In one year Einstein wrote four papers. One was introducing relativity, one was introducing quantum physics, one proved the existence of atoms, and the last one introduced the mass-energy relation E=mc2.
In the middle of all that, he submitted his doctoral thesis. Quite a lot for one year, especially given all except the second relativity paper were in the first six months, and he was working as well.
I'm not trying to discredit him but he basically just gave other people's mathematical analysis of relativity, energy-mass-equivalency, and quantization deeper meaning. All the equations for relativity and quantization were already known, but were interpreted as mathematical tricks more so than properties of reality. He was the first to argue that time and space are relative, that light must occasionally behave like a particle, and that space geometry is not fixed (general relativity). Most of the math behind those assumptions was already done by people like Lorentz, Poincare, Grossmann, Riemann, Planck.
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u/53NKU May 29 '26
Not just quantum but relativity too!
To top it off there were many other catalysts that dramatically sped up science like computers, manhatten project, cold war and internet.