Some consider anyone who question Einstein and his theories to be a crank or crackpot; Prof. Randy Wayne says, as a plant biologist challenging Einstein's theory of relativity, he is indeed a 'nutty professor.' 

Cornell scientists, past and present, are anything but ordinary. The university prides itself in hiring some of the most intelligent people in the world, but its long list of innovative, brilliant, and award-winning minds is bound to have a few misunderstood characters. 

Albert Einstein believed in a static universe. On a grand scale, the universe looked essentially the same 14 billion years ago, and would look essentially the same for the next 14 billion years. Then Einstein’s very own theory of general relativity led physicists to hypothesize a beginning — the Big Bang. The result proved the universe was not static, but very much dynamic. It was “an instance of creation in the equations of a hard-core scientist,” Prof. Sylvester James Gates, professor of physics at the University of Maryland, said.