In the mid to late 1800s, the idea prevailed that science was finished. All the major discoveries had already been made. Now all that was left to do was experiments to polish up the existing theories or to make more precise measurements of the world, of the universe. This is what most scientists believed in the late 1800s. Students might be advised not to enter the field, for although they might be able to make a living as a physics professor and gain respect, they would never make a name for themselves; there were no groundbreaking discoveries left to discover.
For beneath the seemingly solid exterior of physics there were faults: dismissed experiments that didn’t fit the current theories’ predictions, theories that predicted results that weren’t seen. Not everyone buried these faults away. A few men challenged them, poured all their efforts into uncovering them, and broke new ground with their results. What luck brought to them, their "prepared minds" were able to decipher.
Today there is little doubt that these were great men. But what is it that made them so great? Max Planck spent years on his research, only to prove his own hypothesis wrong. Becquerel believed X-rays were caused by fluorescent material when in fact it was the uranium in the material causing them. Einstein was a man who’d had trouble with school and spent seven years of his life working in a patent office. Do these cases show the mark of genius? Yes. While luck can happen to any man, it takes a prepared mind to turn a faulty experiment into a new discovery. Anyone could misuse a calculation technique as Planck had while trying to solve the "ultraviolet catastrophe" of black body radiation. But many would have thrown out their results because it didn’t agree with classical physics’ assumption that energy is continuous. It was genius of Planck not to give up on his findings, to turn his mistake into the brilliant equation he put forth, E=hf.
Einstein too had his share of brilliant equations, including one related to Planck’s energy equation: E=mc2. Even as a boy, while Einstein may have struggled more with his other courses, he had a particular brilliance for mathematics. Having had a difficult time getting into the university system, and bored with the lectures presented there, Einstein barely made it through school, yet the whole time he busied himself with his own learning. Einstein, working at his patent office position, made time to work with his equations. And when he published these in his papers, the attention of the scientific community focused on this genius that almost none of them had ever heard of.
Einstein and all of the men who helped to found a new physics were geniuses in their own rights. One might even believe that there were more geniuses alive at the turn of the century. While this is possible, it is more likely that conditions were just ripe for new discoveries. The forefront of science had slowed its movement new great discoveries had stopped happening. It would seem that nothing more could be found. And it is at exactly those times that something unexpected tends to pop up. And with the geniuses of the scientists around to notice these happenings, the discoveries didn’t go unnoticed. These men deserve the recognition as geniuses they have received, for they have helped to advance all of humankind.