But he didn't have one :) I guess unless you use the raw images, I think the cameras fix a lot of the noise caused by the Poisson distribution. I imagine a movie where Einstein get bored in the patent office and decide to open a photography shop, perhaps with very grainy underexposed photography is possible to notice the quantization of photons, and then he gets a Nobel prize.
Another bad idea for a movie is a watermillpunk universe, where during a practice on a hot day the best ever curling player discover inercia.
There were already prior reported cases of the phenomenon. Einstein provided the mathematical foundation explaining it, in particular that the discharge is quantized, indicating that it came from an electron. Millikan proved it a couple of years later with his oil drop experiment and by measuring the elementary charge of an electron, garnered his own Nobel:
I agree, I agree, but I think the guy only read about it and if lucky measured it once in a lab class. I'm trying to imagine a fake world were he could get enough experience in real life to justify the article claim "grounded in his physical intuition".
Another bad idea for a movie is a watermillpunk universe, where during a practice on a hot day the best ever curling player discover inercia.