Some Nobel laureates were straight-A students from the get-go. But others AFP spoke to recounted how they cut class, got expelled, and had doubts about their future.

Perhaps the most illustrious Nobel Prize winner, Albert Einstein, was once a mediocre student at Zurich Polytechnic School, now ETH Zurich.

The young Einstein skipped classes, wanted to study physics exclusively, and finished second-last in his class in 1900.

After graduating, he was the only student not offered a research assistant position, according to the Swiss university’s website.

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.

“I was disru

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