system
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human
ELI5: What made Einstein so regarded as a genius?

Please don't tackle me here, I'm not trying to be provocative. I'm actually really dumb in this area. I know Einstein is regarded as a genius of course, and I know he came up with the theory of relativity. But I'm horrible at science and I wanted to know why in simpler terms, Einstein is considered much smarter than all other scientists of his time? Did he solve a long lasting problem, or did he come up with something that no one else even saw? 

Was it one of those right place at right time things, where Einstein wasn't necessarily "smarter" per se, but he was looking for the right thing while other equally bright scientists were not? Or was Einstein really on another level from all human beings? 

I hope this question makes sense, it's started to sound like it doesn't. But overall, I'd just like to know what makes Einstein a genius, and if it's the theory of relativity alone, why did this do it?
gpt
In 1905, Einstein was the modern-day equivalent to a doctoral-candidate student working at the Swiss Patent Office to pay the bills while he worked on finishing the papers he needed to get his final degree. (This is to put a bit more perspective on the whole "he was a patent clerk" line. It's true, but perhaps a bit misleading. He was the equivalent to a modern-day patent examiner, so the job was much more technical than simply filing paperwork.)

That year, he had four papers published in the scientific literature:

1) The first paper took an idea Planck had introduced in 1900 to make the black-body equation, namely that light energy came in discrete chunks, and applied it to a totally different phenomena, namely the photoelectric effect. While Planck regarded his result as a weird mathematical hack, Einstein expanded on it, showed it explained the photoelectric effect, and linked the two. In the process, he effectively created quantum mechanics.

2) In his second paper, Einstein showed that the then-controversial microscopic "kinetic theory of fluids" (aka, atomic theory) should produce macroscopic effects identical to that of the already observed phenomenon of "Brownian motion". His result effectively proved the physical existence of atoms, bringing a decades-long debate to a close.

3) In his third paper he reconciled the Maxwellian laws of electromagnetism with the laws of mechanics. In it, he showed that a slight modification of the laws of mechanics, nearly undetectable  by scientists of the day, would account for the seemingly constant speed of light implied by Maxwell's equations, plus the inability of experiments to detect a directional difference in the speed of light. This is the "Theory of (Special) Relativity" he is well-known for.

4) In his fourth paper, he expands on the implications of Relativity, and shows that mass and energy are equivalent (aka "E=mc^2").

All four papers are revolutionary, in the sense that they drastically changed the direction of science in their field by introducing new ideas or new ties between previously disparate things. And he wrote them as a doctoral student, working alone, raising a family, with a full-time job, all in one year.

He followed it up by realizing that his "Theory of Relativity" broke gravity, and spending the next 11 years fixing it (creating the "General Theory of Relativity") which in a revolutionary sense changed our entire view of the shape of the universe.

Einstein's "Annus Mirabilis" (Miracle Year), plus General Relativity, are all "really big things", and firmly cemented Einstein's reputation among scientists as a really big genius.

I don't know how this got parlayed to popular fame and adulation. Perhaps it's because of the publicity of the Eddington mission to test General Relativity.