Editing Lee Smolin (section)

==Early life and education==
Smolin was born in New York City <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/people/Lee-Smolin|title=Perimeter Institute Profile|publisher=Perimeter Institute|access-date=2015-08-17}}</ref> to Michael Smolin, an environmental and process engineer and Pauline Smolin, a playwright. Smolin said his parents were Jewish followers of the [[Fourth Way]], founded by [[George Gurdjieff]], an Armenian mystic. Smolin described himself as Jewish.<ref>{{cite AV media
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 }}</ref> His brother, [[David M. Smolin]], became a professor at the [[Cumberland School of Law]] in [[Birmingham, Alabama]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cumberland.samford.edu/faculty/david-m-smolin|title=David Smolin's Cumberland School of Law Faculty Page|publisher=Samford University|access-date=2015-08-17|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140727145400/http://cumberland.samford.edu/faculty/david-m-smolin|archive-date=2014-07-27}}</ref> 

Smolin dropped out of [[Walnut Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio)|Walnut Hills High School]] in Cincinnati, Ohio. His interest in physics began at that time when he read Einstein's reflections on the two tasks he would leave unfinished at his death: 1, to make sense of quantum mechanics, and, 2 to unify that understanding of the quanta with gravity. Smolin would take it as his "mission" to try to complete these tasks.{{R|Einstein|p=12}} Shortly afterward, he browsed the Physics Library at the [[University of Cincinnati]], where he came across [[Louis de Broglie]]'s pilot wave theory in French. "I still can close my eyes," Smolin wrote in ''Einstein's Unfinished Revolution'', "and see a page of the book, displaying the equation that relates wavelength to momentum."{{R|Einstein|p=xxviii}} Soon after that he would "talk his way into" Hampshire College, find great teachers, and get lucky in his applications to graduate school. As to his mission of solving Einstein's two big questions, by Smolin's account, he did not succeed; "Very unfortunately, neither has anyone else."{{R|Einstein|p=13}}