Comment by kahnclusions

Yeah I don't think it's fair to compare him that way. Einstein on the other hand benefited a lot from the timing of when he was born and started working in physics. His work was very much built upon that of others... Maxwell discovered the relationship between electromagnetism and light, Michelson inadvertently proved 'c' was a constant, Lorentz described the transformations between frames of reference and effects like time dilation and length contraction. It sounded like Lorentz was on the verge of special relativity but just couldn't accept the universe being that weird. I think what it took was not a super-genius, but someone smart who was willing to embrace the weirdness and take these ideas together to their logical conclusion.