Albert Einstein is often to be considerred one of the most intelligent people in history due to his contributions to theoretical physics, a field that is considered to be very nerdy and intriguing to particular people.

The trouble is with the perception itself that you have to be smart to solve a cube, this is simply not true, anyone can learn to solve a cube, all that is required is a bit of patience and perseverance to follow the instructions and solve it.

Albert Einstein died in 1955, 19 years before the 3x3 cube was invented, so he would never have seen the puzzle and probably never imagined it, however, we can theorise over whether he would be able to solve the cube if given the opportunity. When he was young, his father often brought him a compass and he became intrigued with what was going on inside the compass, this may have nurtured his fascination with electromagnetism as he eventually published papers on his theories on the topic.

The question then arises: if he had been given a cube at a young age, what would he have done with it. I think it is very likely that he would have taken an interest in a cube if he had the opportunity and would probably have had the patience to learn to solve it if he was given instructions, whether he would want to pursue speedcubing in any capacity is impossible to know.

Ultimately this question is one of those silly questions that I am hesitant to write about but the simple fact is that being able to solve a cube does not require any significant intelligence, it just requires the patience to follow a set of instructions, there may be some crossover between cubing and academia, however, the only factor involved will be the ability to quickly focus on learning a bunch of algorithms, some people will find it easier to learn 57 OLL algorithms and 21 PLLs but essentially everyone is capable of doing so.