A third of British kids think Einstein is a TV star

A third of primary schoolchildren in the UK believe Albert Einstein is a reality TV star and one-fourth of them think Stephen Hawking is a hairdresser, a new study has found.

However, 68 per cent were correctly able to identify Mark Zuckerberg as the founder of social networking site Facebook.

As many as 29 per cent kids think they have recently seen Einstein, who died in 1955, on reality TV shows like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. According to 22 per cent of eight year olds, physicist Stephen Hawking is a hairdresser, the Daily Mail reported.

More than a third of school kids aged 11 to 14 did not know that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, despite it featuring on their school curriculum.

Meanwhile, 6 per cent thought X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos created penicillin, while a million children believe chart-topping rapper Professor Green is a real academic.

Furthermore, a confused 35 per cent of five year olds think London Mayor Boris Johnson discovered gravity with one in five primary school children believing that England and Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney is a scientist.

Electric lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison was credited with creating Facebook by 22 per cent of seven-year-olds.

And despite spending an average of 17 hours and 34 minutes in front a TV each week, 45 per cent did not know it was invented by John Logie Baird, the poll by a home appliances firm found.

“It is eye-opening to discover children of today are more aware of Mark Zuckerberg than men and women who made iconic discoveries and inventions that revolutionised the modern world,” Jeff Moody, a company official, said.