gedymin

Einstein understood the centralized mass media, and he was good at manipulating it, and at becoming a star. Uncharacteristically for a scientist, and despite his social isolation, he had very strong political skills. In the 1910s, he was famous among Berlin University students for his outspoken pacifism, more than for his science. He was offered the presidency of Israel. He made a much better media figure than other physics stars, like Dirac, who didn't talk, or Schrodinger, who openly had two wives, or Heisenberg, who was a geek's geek, or Bohr, who mumbled unclearly, or Pauli, who was an asshole. Einstein always had a pithy quote, and always exuded good humor.

If Einstein were a one legged foul-mouthed sex-offender, we would probably be celebrating 100 years of Poincare's special relativity, Planck's E=mc^2, Hilbert's revolutionary theory of gravity, the Smoulochowski fluctuation/dissipation relation, Compton and Millikan's bold photon hypothesis of 1919, Leo Szillard's letter to Roosevelt. This kind of crap happened in Germany when Einstein was politically out.