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Who really said it

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater

Verified — a letter to a schoolgirl, 1943 Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · theoretical physicist
Verified Rights unconfirmed

Genuine, and unusually well documented. Einstein wrote it from Princeton on 7 January 1943 to Barbara Lee Wilson, an American schoolgirl who had written to him four days earlier saying she was ‘a little below average in mathematics’ — her letter and Einstein’s reply are both printed in Dukas & Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton, 1979). The letter is catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606. He wrote it in English, so unusually for an Einstein quotation there is no translator between you and his words.

Last verified 20 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater” —Albert Einstein, letter to Barbara Lee Wilson, 7 January 1943. Einstein Archives 42-606.

Can you use it?

Attribution is documented — Einstein Archives 42-606 — but reuse rights are unresolved in the US: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem asserts rights in Einstein’s writings and the term runs into the 2040s. Quote it with full credit; don’t treat it as free stock text.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Document
Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson
Dated
7 January 1943, Princeton, New Jersey
Archive
Einstein Archives 42-606
Language
English — no translation involved

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. Princeton, 7 January 1943

Einstein’s English, as written. Note what he does not do: he does not tell her mathematics is easy, or that she will grow into it. He tells a schoolgirl that his own difficulties are worse than hers, which is both a kindness and, at that point in his career, arguably true.

The letter, with archive citation 42-606

How we traced it

  • The exchange is dated on both sides: Barbara Wilson wrote on 3 January 1943 to say she was a little below average in mathematics, and Einstein replied on 7 January — a four-day turnaround from a man then at the height of his fame. Both letters are printed in Dukas & Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979) the 1979 edition ↗.
  • The letter carries an archive number, 42-606, in the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An archive number is the strongest kind of provenance a quotation can have: it means a physical document exists and can be requested about the archive ↗.
  • It was first published in 1979 in Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton University Press), and later reprinted in Alice Calaprice’s Dear Professor Einstein (2002) the 1979 edition ↗. One honest caveat: we have not inspected the printed page ourselves, so we give no page number; the archive number 42-606 is the citation we can point you to archive number ↗.

Rights are unresolved in the United States — treat with care. Einstein died in 1955, so the text has been public domain in the UK and EU since 1 January 2026. In the US, however, the term for a letter first published decades after it was written runs from that publication, which for this letter was 1979, when it first appeared in Dukas & Hoffmann’s Albert Einstein: The Human Side — a work first published before 2003, so protected through 2047 — and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem actively asserts rights in Einstein’s writings. Because he wrote in English there is no separate translator’s copyright, but a modern editor’s notes and apparatus are their own. Quote the sentence with attribution; do not treat it as free stock content. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What to watch for

The attribution is sound and the document is catalogued. The things that go wrong here are small — two wording variants and an assumption about rights.

Two transcriptions circulate two forms

Two forms circulate. Wikiquote pairs the two-sentence form — capital M, a full stop, no ‘that’ — with 42-606; the printed transcriptions in Dukas & Hoffmann (1979) and Calaprice read ‘…in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater’ — lower-case m, a semicolon, and ‘that.’ We have not inspected the archive document, so we do not adjudicate between them.

Not automatically free US status unresolved

People assume anything by a man who died in 1955 is public domain. In the US the clock on a letter first published in 1979 runs to 2047, and the Hebrew University asserts rights. UK and EU are clear as of 2026; the US is not.

Not about failing school context

It is often quoted as Einstein confessing he was bad at maths — a persistent myth. He was not: he was an accomplished mathematician reassuring a child, and the ‘difficulties’ he meant were those of a working physicist at the frontier of the subject.

Genuinely Einstein — a letter of 7 January 1943 to the schoolgirl Barbara Lee Wilson, catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606 and written in English the source ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the perfect thing to say to a discouraged student, because it refuses the usual comfort. He does not promise it will get easier or tell her she is cleverer than she thinks; he simply moves her from the category of people who struggle into the category that includes him.

The date gives it extra weight. January 1943 — the middle of the war, Einstein in exile at Princeton (he would take up Navy ordnance consulting later that year) — and he answered a schoolgirl’s letter about her maths grade within four days.

He does not tell her it gets easier. He tells her his own difficulties are worse.

The exchange, in order

3 January 1943: Barbara Lee Wilson writes to Einstein saying she is a little below average in mathematics.

7 January 1943: Einstein replies from Princeton, in English, in two sentences.

The reply is catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

It was first published in 1979, in Dukas & Hoffmann’s Albert Einstein: The Human Side, drawn from the Einstein archives.

He kept answering children’s letters personally for the rest of his life.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Knowledge Humility

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Einstein to Barbara Wilson, 7 January 1943libquotes.com

The verbatim text with recipient, date and the Einstein Archives number 42-606.
Einstein on mathematics — sourced quotationstodayinsci.com

A sourced Einstein quotation dictionary carrying the same letter and date.
The Albert Einstein Archivesen.wikipedia.org

Background on the Hebrew University archive whose catalogue number anchors this quotation.

The true author

About Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

1879–1955 · theoretical physicist

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is the most misquoted scientist in history, which makes the genuine items worth guarding — and he kept up a remarkable correspondence with children, answering schoolchildren’s letters personally for decades. A whole volume of those replies has been published; this is among the most quoted of them, and one of the few Einstein lines with an archive number attached.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson, 7 January 1943. Einstein Archives 42-606. First published in Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); reprinted in Alice Calaprice, Dear Professor Einstein (2002).

MLA (9th ed.)

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson. 7 Jan. 1943. Einstein Archives 42-606.

APA (7th ed.)

Einstein, A. (1943, January 7). Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson (Einstein Archives 42-606).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/do-not-worry-about-your-difficulties-in-mathematics/

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