What Does 'Genius' Mean? | Genius

What does "genius" mean, to me? I think there are many brilliant people in the world, many people who are very, very intelligent. So I think it has to do with a line of dialogue that I think we have in the first episode, which is, "A genius is not just answering questions but asking questions that nobody else thought to ask."

You don't need to raise your hand to speak here, Albert. There's a particular thing that happens to you when you watch people do something that they're really, really good at. It's a sensation. It's like a-- it can be a six-year-old kid drawing something, or it can be a painter, like, applying wall color, but they're just very, very good.

You kind of know whenever you witness somebody being really, really excellent at something. It's a profound experience to be able to be around it, you know? And I think that, to me, really is-- watching somebody doing something special. Unless we can define time-- Most people would agree that, whoever the geniuses are-- and you could say it's the people that can combine ideas that are staring everyone else in the face, but they somehow connect something that no one's even thought about. Like Mozart's metronome.

GEOFFREY RUSH: I found the quote that Schopenhauer made. He has this great quote where he says, "Talent hits a target that no one else can hit. Genius hits a target that no one else can see." Close your eyes.

GEOFFREY RUSH: And then, if you apply that to someone like Einstein, he would engage in what he called "thought experiments." He'd just let his mind wander and drift off and speculate about [inaudible]. He was always obsessed, right from his youth-- what if I could travel as fast as the speed of light? What would light look like, next to me? Now, I'm imagining that the ball is traveling in deep space.

The most elegant answer to the question of "what is a genius" was given to me by Ron Howard. Scientists, they live in the light of knowledge. They're working, and they're refining their knowledge, and they're testing things, all the time. Some scientists operate at the edge of the light, where the dark is, which-- nobody knows what's in the dark.

But a tiny number of scientists jump right into the dark and create their own light, around them. It's a combination of vision and absolute determination that you're right, that you're totally convinced that this leap into the dark that you've made is right. And Einstein definitely qualifies.

And that-- --to the sun! --to me, is genius. I have another question.