Not putting down Einstein by any means, but many of the ideas he is famous for existed before him. His immense skill was to come up with a better way to arrange those ideas.
that's often pointed out regarding his Special theory of relativity, and in fact it seems like it's used as "proof" that original ideas can't exist. but while it may be true in the case of the Special theory, people conveniently stop short of the General, for which it isn't
e=mc^2 came out of special relativity; while Lorentz etc. essentially had most of the pieces, Einstein was the first to derive that beautiful little bit.
