Weird problems with physics were everywhere before Einstein. Maxwell comes painfully close to discovering GR in some of his musings on black body radiation. No

Weird problems with physics were everywhere before Einstein. Maxwell comes painfully close to discovering GR in some of his musings on black body radiation. Noticing that there was a problem was not the breakthrough: trying something bizarre and counter-cultural - like assuming light speed is invariant over the observer - just to see if anything interesting drops out was the breakthrough.