As performed by a terrific young actor, the journey of Albert Einstein in this episode takes him away from halls of academe and the scientific laboratory and eventually landing in the lackluster world of a Swiss patent office.
Einstein's genius is depicted in this episode as the maverick intellect who is frustrated by the constraints of stodgy, authoritarian university professors. In one flash of self-recognition, the young Einstein asserts that "I'm only a dreamer." Einstein's genius was clearly stunted in the conventional academic world of Europe in the early twentieth century.
A subplot of this episode is the jealousy felt by scientist Philip Lenard, an anti-Semite who is out-hustled by Roentgen to the Nobel Prize. The scenes with Lenard set the stage for the anti-Semitism to be experienced by Einstein.
Much of this episode addresses life in Serbia for Mileva, who futilely waits for Einstein, delivers and loses a baby girl. The father never sees his child. Through his financial struggles and coping with the death of his father, Einstein finally reunites with Mileva and proposes marriage.
A sidebar to this episode is Einstein's hopeless attempts at tutoring students in order to earn a living. Once again, the maverick genius fails to provide practical lessons, and one of his charges has received lower grades AFTER the tutorials of Einstein. On the other hand, Einstein links up with a wealthy dilettante named Solovine, who pays for physics lessons as a pastime. Along with another reprobate aristocrat, the little group calls itself "The Olympia Academy." The time Einstein spends with his rakish friends allows him to indulge his imagination in "radiation packets" (Quanta) and how it might be impossible to explain the way light travels.
Einstein's genius is depicted in this episode as the maverick intellect who is frustrated by the constraints of stodgy, authoritarian university professors. In one flash of self-recognition, the young Einstein asserts that "I'm only a dreamer." Einstein's genius was clearly stunted in the conventional academic world of Europe in the early twentieth century.
A subplot of this episode is the jealousy felt by scientist Philip Lenard, an anti-Semite who is out-hustled by Roentgen to the Nobel Prize. The scenes with Lenard set the stage for the anti-Semitism to be experienced by Einstein.
Much of this episode addresses life in Serbia for Mileva, who futilely waits for Einstein, delivers and loses a baby girl. The father never sees his child. Through his financial struggles and coping with the death of his father, Einstein finally reunites with Mileva and proposes marriage.
A sidebar to this episode is Einstein's hopeless attempts at tutoring students in order to earn a living. Once again, the maverick genius fails to provide practical lessons, and one of his charges has received lower grades AFTER the tutorials of Einstein. On the other hand, Einstein links up with a wealthy dilettante named Solovine, who pays for physics lessons as a pastime. Along with another reprobate aristocrat, the little group calls itself "The Olympia Academy." The time Einstein spends with his rakish friends allows him to indulge his imagination in "radiation packets" (Quanta) and how it might be impossible to explain the way light travels.
