The Dopey One

 Albert Einstein’s childhood nickname was ‘the dopey one’ …

Image by Stux Thanks for your Like • donations welcome from Pixabay

The family maid nicknamed Einstein “der depperte” — the dopey one — because he was slower than usual in learning how to talk and had a tendency to whisper words to himself before saying them. — Einstein: His Life and Universe.

No one would call him “Dopey” for long. The image above shows Einstein alongside two of his most brilliant conclusions:

1. The world’s most famous equation that states that energy and mass (or matter) are interchangeable — different forms of the same thing. Energy can become mass, and mass can become energy.
2. The image of a supermassive black hole defined by its shadow, a glowing orange ring of ultra-hot gas, at the center of the M87 galaxy, some 55 million light years from Earth. The image was captured for the first time (in April 2017) by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The image was released in April 2019. Over a century ago Einstein had predicted the existence of black holes. GENIUS!

Such genius inspires me to wax poetic! So I leave you with my Clerihew poem that I wrote in honor of Albert Einstein:

The Dopey One

Albert Einstein
Expanded our view beyond the skyline
Reluctant superstar and intellectual force
Relatively speaking, of course!

.   .   .

Poetry form: Clerihew

Sometimes described as the literate cousin of the Limerick, the Clerihew is composed of two rhymed couplets designed to lower the tone and cut everyone down to size, while still giving credit where credit is due. My Clerihew poems are perfectly cooked in their own juices, resulting in Clerihew Au Jus ! Bon appétit !