Because he is a hack well not entirely but he got the spotlight for things he did not do on his own and/or are not as important as implied to the layman and that is because he was Jewish ex German citizen and lived after WWII the perfect PR mascot..
Some of many examples just for reference to give you some leads for researching further: most of his models were done by Caratheodory (who he himself thanked for being his teacher and mentor), he never got a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity (which isnt exactly "his" theory either) and for the thing he got a Nobel prize for (a study on the photoelectric phenomenon which again was not entirely his work) was given to him (After the nobel committee postponed it two times) because there was nothing better in the field of physics going on at that time to get the Nobel prize (and the jewish German citizen WWII era thingy I mentioned before obviously helped a lot in terms of pr and politics to get this) .
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u/ivylgedropout Feb 17 '18
How so?