Perhaps the most illustrious Nobel Prize winner, Albert Einstein, was once a mediocre student at Zurich Polytechnic School, now ETH Zurich. Einstein went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. Frances Arnold, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, also cut classes after a turbulent start to her education in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. David Card, the 2021 Nobel economics laureate, also had unconventional educational beginnings. Despite their unconventional paths, both ultimately found their way to brilliance.