Einstein’s Driver

There is a very silly story about Einstein which one would like to hope is true.

Einstein had a driver who used to sit at the back of the room when he gave his public lectures.

One day when they were  in the car the driver said to Einstein that the theory of relativity was so simple that even he could lecture on it.


Einstein told him that the driver could give the next lecture and he would sit at the back.


That is what happened and the lecture went down fine. No one suspected anything amiss. Because photographs were not as widely available as they are now, not many people knew what Einstein looked like while the driver,  apparently, had some resemblance to him.

There were questions at the end but they were the same ones as had been asked many times before, so the driver knew the answers.

However, there was one question which the driver hadn’t heard before and he didn’t have a clue what the answer was.

With great presence of mind, he declared that the question was so simple that even his driver sitting at the back could answer it.


Comments

2 comments

  1. Similarly my college course in modern physics covered relativity the first two weeks. Then it got hard.

  2. SecretEuroPatentAgentMan

    There are many stories along such lines. One involving a alleged driver happened when Enrico Fermi was called in for a meeting with Mussolini. The scientist drove to the presidential palace in his old banged up car and was stopped by the guards. Realising he couldn’t say he was the famous scientist, he instead told the guards that he was Fermi’s driver. They let him through.

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