# Einstein, 5 or 9?



## cyamitide (Jul 8, 2010)

some say he was 5w4 others types him as 9w1, what say ye?


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## Entropic (Jun 15, 2012)

I think he was too rebellious in the scientific community to be a 9w1. He was too enticed with his own ideas and chose to stick with them no matter what, even when others labelled them silly e.g. his relativity theory.


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## Sonny (Oct 14, 2008)

People say he's 9? Why?


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## Shadowlight (Dec 12, 2012)

Sonny said:


> People say he's 9? Why?


The Enneagram Institute Discussion Board - Einstein, 5w4 or 9w1 ?

Google is God.


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## cyamitide (Jul 8, 2010)

Sonny said:


> People say he's 9? Why?


Aghosh posted the link, but to repost some of the quotes that do sound 9-ish:


---

Tradesmen found him lovable, polite, serene, kindly, gentle 
and detached. Colleagues at Fine Hall used exactly the same 
words to describe Einstein to friends. He was the new "saint" 
of Princeton. When he patted a little girl on the head, every- 
one in town grew shiny-eyed. 

---

Elsa's condition deteriorated through 1936. By December, 
she was dying. Einstein spent many hours at her bedside, read- 
ing and talking to her. But he had his emotions under firm 
control. Although there were tears in his eyes, his head was 
clear. "In this atmosphere of coming death," said Infeld, "Ein- 
stein remained serene and worked constantly." 

---

"Just to be with the Professor seemed to help you ease 
tension," said Fred Biallas, who had many tense moments 
with the Princeton boat crews. "In other words, I think it 
would have been impossible to have held a grudge or be riled 
while talking to him. He was so serene himself that the feeling 
seemed to pass on to you.”

---

Now, Einstein's name surged in and out of the newspapers. 
People saw him as a doughty old warrior in a do-or-die attempt 
to stop the cold war and promote his world government. Let- 
ters and statements tumbled out of his Mercer Street study. 
Einstein, the theoretical physicist, dissolved into Einstein, the 
saintly world citizen a kind old man devoting his last years 
to bringing happiness to the earth. 

---

That was the image Einstein put forward to the world. A 
few newspapers sent reporters to Princeton to help build it 
up. Friends and neighbors praised his humility and serenity, 
his many kind deeds. The sweet stories were printed around 
the world. The myth was the man.

---

Besides all this, Prague was a surly city. It was peopled 
mainly with Czechs, Germans and Jews, and each group was 
constantly insulting the other. To the irritation of the German 
professors, Einstein would not pick sides. He thought such 
bickering infantile. He stayed aloof, devoting all his time to 
his job and to his private research. Students enjoyed the ses- 
sions with Einstein in the physics laboratory. There was al- 
ways an air of uncertainty; frequently his experiments did not 
work.

---

Few in Prague had any notion of the extent of Einstein's 
obsession with physics. It even intruded into his music. He 
needed to play well-turned, complete pieces. He wanted har- 
mony in his music as well as in the universe. To him, this 
meant Mozart. He played Mozart beautifully, and he played 
Mozart often. 

---

"He sought friends with whom he could play music or dis- 
cuss ideas about the universe," said Philipp Frank, the physicist 
and Einstein biographer who was to replace Einstein in Prague. 
"Yet he did not like to become so intimate with his friends 
that they could in any way interfere with his freedom. His 
attractive, frank and witty personality easily made friends, but 
his prediliction for isolation and his concentration on his artistic 
and scientific life disappointed many people and estranged 
some who had been, or at least believed themselves to be, his 
friends."

---

Einstein fairly brimmed over with life. Like a child, he liked 
to sneak extra time in bed in the morning. Mileva would 
finally get him out. He whistled merrily while he shaved and 
dressed. He ate breakfast hungrily and walked off to the uni- 
versity, twenty minutes away, with a jaunty stride. In the 
late afternoon, before dinner, he spent time with his sons. 
He liked to play with their toys. He loved to play his violin 
while Hans Albert played a little tune on the piano, Edward 
was only three then and just starting to plunk the piano. His 
father said it would not be long before "Teddy" was playing 
too. At three, Edward was already reading. Sometimes the 
boys were naughty and Einstein spanked them. But he could 
not stay angry. He preferred to laugh. Hans Albert thought 
his father was "a riot." But not when he was working. He hated 
to be interrupted when he worked. 

---

Those were good days and everybody was content and pros- 
perous. The strife and hatred in other parts of Europe were 
far away. Mileva wanted this happy time to last forever. She 
was conscious of her brooding, but one day it would pass. The 
occasional squabbles with Albert were not all her fault. He 
had not changed basically since college. He was still infuriat- 
ingly vague about worldly matters. He could also be stubborn. 
If he reasoned something out to the last detail and made up 
his mind one way or the other, nobody could budge him. 
Take psychoanalysis, for instance. Albert had decided this 
was worth investigating. He studied it, reasoned it, and found 
it too inconclusive. After that, he refused to take it seriously.

---

European nations were picking sides in the squabble and nobody was looking ahead to the day of climax. It would be a big explosion because Germany was behind Austria and Russia backed Serbia. 

Einstein was aware of this slow-burning fuse, but he hoped 
it would be snuffed out in time. He convinced himself that his 
work would be undisturbed, even in Berlin. 

---

Einstein's joy over his new advance in Relativity lasted 
him a long time and kept him immune from worries about the 
savagery of the world.

---

Hedwig Born, the gentle wife of the brilliant physicist Max 
Born, used to talk over her troubles with Einstein. She was 
a Quaker and the war sickened her. "His serenity gave me 
peace of mind," she said. 

---

The older the physicist grew, the more he 
lived in his intellect. He was now more obstinate about his 
scientific convictions, but he was as indecisive as ever about 
everyday matters that were unimportant to him. The analysis 
also gave one explanation of why Einstein did not brood and 
did not build up resentments. He had only flashes of hate or 
other high emotion. Mostly, he was serene. He was able very 
quickly to resign himself to personal disappointments, both in 
physics and in politics.


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## Rachael (Sep 29, 2012)

He was physically competitive and mentally competitive, he thought of it as 'play'. His mind was like a sword and he augued points unmercilessly. He played tennis, raced bicycles, played chess for hours on end, played cards, was out at night in the dark studying astronomy, liked hiking/packing, made and flew kites, painted pictures, whittled wood, played violin, took apart clocks, radio's and mechanisms, classifiied things, collected things, enjoyed learning curves and actively tore into tombs of stuff that suited him, all building expertise. He was considered stoic to pain physically and mentally. wholey didn't give a rip about failing things he was enrolled in and didn't want to learn about. He liked distraction, he was known to smoke prodigious amounts of big fat stoggies, eat large amounts of good foods when able, tried lots of new foods, delighted in his favorites (that pickled herring habit), went on food jags, and battled a belly all his life, he took any tail offered, enjoyed his hobbies far more than the people around him. He read many books at once, I have always thought of that as a 'P' thing, for me it represents a dislike of closure, most of my 'p' friends do this also. He was a tease. He set traps for people and was a well known prankster. He loved to do many things at once, bathe, read, smoke, drink, think, sensory stuff that...or ride, think, enjoy the packed lunch, draw or paint something, ride home. He produced things, art, crafts, drawings, writings, collections, concepts. He was pushed to keep his mind occupied, he was 'busy' in the head. He multi tasked both projects and hobbies and universities. He was truly devoted once won, his devotion to his sister was absolute. He appears to have spent his life looking at not what is possible, but what is actual. He pondered what reality is, not what it could be. His thinking was deductive, not inductive. From observation skills he developed being a quite child, 'I' and 'p". He had tool sets, chem sets, viewer/lens sets, books, and wielded them. He used people in the same manner, he used his friends ability's to help him with his projects, his wife did his math for years, because his ran out. She was his math tool. He didn't like to part with his 'things', those things that were the product of his hands and mind, he had all his stuff displayed all over his lodgings, always, a bit '4' there. He was often so lost enough in thought that he often called his wife in his latter years and asked, 'Where am I, and where am I supposed to be?", lost on campus. He took a 'lazy' job so that he could spend more time doing what he wanted to do. Sounds Introverted, Sensory, Thinking, Perceiver. I am ISTP too, and also 5w4 just saw some similarities.


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## marckos (May 6, 2011)

Rachael said:


> He was physically competitive and mentally competitive, he thought of it as 'play'. His mind was like a sword and he augued points unmercilessly. He played tennis, raced bicycles, played chess for hours on end, played cards, was out at night in the dark studying astronomy, liked hiking/packing, made and flew kites, painted pictures, whittled wood, played violin, took apart clocks, radio's and mechanisms, classifiied things, collected things, enjoyed learning curves and actively tore into tombs of stuff that suited him, all building expertise. He was considered stoic to pain physically and mentally. wholey didn't give a rip about failing things he was enrolled in and didn't want to learn about. He liked distraction, he was known to smoke prodigious amounts of big fat stoggies, eat large amounts of good foods when able, tried lots of new foods, delighted in his favorites (that pickled herring habit), went on food jags, and battled a belly all his life, he took any tail offered, enjoyed his hobbies far more than the people around him. He read many books at once, I have always thought of that as a 'P' thing, for me it represents a dislike of closure, most of my 'p' friends do this also. He was a tease. He set traps for people and was a well known prankster. He loved to do many things at once, bathe, read, smoke, drink, think, sensory stuff that...or ride, think, enjoy the packed lunch, draw or paint something, ride home. He produced things, art, crafts, drawings, writings, collections, concepts. He was pushed to keep his mind occupied, he was 'busy' in the head. He multi tasked both projects and hobbies and universities. He was truly devoted once won, his devotion to his sister was absolute. He appears to have spent his life looking at not what is possible, but what is actual. He pondered what reality is, not what it could be. His thinking was deductive, not inductive. From observation skills he developed being a quite child, 'I' and 'p". He had tool sets, chem sets, viewer/lens sets, books, and wielded them. He used people in the same manner, he used his friends ability's to help him with his projects, his wife did his math for years, because his ran out. She was his math tool. He didn't like to part with his 'things', those things that were the product of his hands and mind, he had all his stuff displayed all over his lodgings, always, a bit '4' there. He was often so lost enough in thought that he often called his wife in his latter years and asked, 'Where am I, and where am I supposed to be?", lost on campus. He took a 'lazy' job so that he could spend more time doing what he wanted to do. Sounds Introverted, Sensory, Thinking, Perceiver. I am ISTP too, and also 5w4 just saw some similarities.


Not he was INTP, he is the stereotypical INTP 5w4 so/sp.


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## Rachael (Sep 29, 2012)

marckos said:


> Not he was INTP, he is the stereotypical INTP 5w4 so/sp.


OK. I think that his 'S' was pretty developed in spite of the 'N' development though, his painting were of things in front of him, nothing in his mind, my 'N' mother's art is all from the brain. This playing of the violin was of music already composed, nothing from his mind, my 'N' violinist daughter in law whips out pieces for fun weekly. His use of his bikes caused many injuries from daredeviling it for the actual not potential feeling his was getting from it. Even old he would splay his arms and legs from the handlebars and pedals and freely press his luck using only his ass to drive the thing. His wife used to waft food smells down the hallway to call him to dinner. Couldn't have been too detached from reality then. My youngest, INTP, doesn't know he's hungry until you put the food in front of him and his mouth waters and belly rumbles, it's like a massive disconnect. Always working on something in his room, he needs regular checking on for environmental issues from flame, chemical, biological and what not...really.


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## Zeo (Sep 14, 2019)

he was type 5


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## spidelwoman (Sep 1, 2018)

I always liked the belief that he was a 5 and an INTP because so am I, but I have always taken it lightly because he is dead. The quotes about him are interesting, but there is a reason we don't ask others to take the personality tests for us. They may see what we're like, but they ultimately may not know how we think, perceive the world, or arrive at decisions.


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## hmk (Jan 6, 2021)

Einstein is a 1w9. Noway he could be 9w1.
Why? because 9w1 fear isolation, read their description. However, 1w9 prefer loneliness, which fits perfectly Einstein's personality.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

5. He refused to wear socks which is pretty Ti'ish and Fe supressing, he refused ze nobel prize and he went through this boring phase where he actually invented the atomic bomb which seems pretty much like a thinking thing tbh


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## skyboy (Jul 6, 2021)

Einstein is a 9w1, most likely SX like all scientific geniuses. Here is a small list I've spent some time on;

Physicists:
Galileo, Newton, Carnot, Plank, Marie Curie, Dirac, Pauli, Clausius, Boltzmann, Gibbs, Maxwell, Lorentz, Bohr, Einstein, De Broglie, Fermi, Schrödinger, Von Neumann, Feynman, John Bell

Von Neumann and Feynman are quite special for their type.

Mathematicians:
Euler, Galois, Gauss, Riemann, Cantor, Bertrand Russel, Hilbert, Gödel, Poincaré, Fisher, Kolmogorov, Alexander Grothendieck, Andrew Wiles, Grigori Perelman, Turing,

Cantor and Gödel are interesting cases of a special kind of paranoïa. This kind of paranoïa is mostly unrelated to type 6.

A few others 9w1 scientists:
Carl Jung, Darwin, Keynes, Adam Smith,

Scientific geniuses who are not 9s are extremely few. I only have Pasteur in mind (7). Tesla seems to be a 7 but more an inventor than a scientist. Each of them require some time to type but photographs are sometimes strong clues:

John Bell









Niel Bohr:









Fermi:









About Einstein, you can notice the strong spiritual background (christian in conviction but slightly atheist as well), moral vision, *universalism*, involvement in peace. Universalism is a key marker of intellectual 9w1s (see Rodger Waters for a more classical universalist 9w1). Rebellion (anti-authoritarian) connects to other special 9w1s such as John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain... possibly related to what Ichazo calls "over non conformist". Einstein believer / doubter dichotomy functions at its highest level : spiritual / realist. Spinoza and Schopenhauer, Einstein's key inspirations, are also 9w1s. 9s tend to function in a closed cultural circle, yet an universal one, unaware and instinctively skeptical of "ego" other than 9 who are somehow excrescence of a dubious "me" from the selfless point (9). How much this is true or dellusional is the ultimate unsolvable question about type 9. An average 9 is far from having no ego.

Spirituality is the domain of type 9. You don't need to be a 9 to be a priest, a pope or a religious person in general, but you need it to be a christian official saint, a mystic philosopher, or a major physicist or mathematician. Acually there are very good and famous mathematicians of other types, mainly 7 (I think of John Conway, Gregory Chaitin and Benoit Mandelbrot), but not of the universal importance of the people mentionned here. Great mathematicians have very deep beliefs about perfect universal forms and ideas, similar to Kantian transcendental idealism (Kant is a 9w1), that can be related to more superficial patterns of 9s about comfort in a peaceful and perfect environment. Paradoxically, strong atheism is also a 9w1ish pattern related to the doubter side of the dichotomy.


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