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What to do when your student is convinced that he will be the next Einstein?
As an adviser, I have found it to be a detrimental motive for a student to focus solely on surpassing Einstein in achievement, for many reasons. One student in particular has busied himself with the deconstruction of relativity and strives to break it down and replace it with a much better system. Not only that, he's attempting to construct a theory of quantum gravity and the refutation of string theory, among many other ridiculous sounding tasks.
The student told me earlier that "Einstein's physics will soon come to an end." when I asked him about his work on his thesis.  Then when I saw his thesis, it was complete gibberish, wrong in many aspects. I tried to tell him this but he simply wouldn't listen and told me "You do not understand anything."
He then went to looking for a different adviser but failed, since nobody wanted to work with a man who wants to "surpass" Einstein. When he was rejected by everybody, he came back to me and we were on equal terms again. But now, he's trying to write another thesis. And he told me AGAIN that "It'll be something that will break string theory."
Every student that does physics today at least has a feeling, however slight it may be, to be the next Einstein, to have a revolutionary impact on science, but it's quite saddening that only 1 out of 900,000 people would actually do so. And for this student of mine, I know for sure that he'll soon fall into a well and never get out of it again.
This situation can be likened to a very similar situation in mathematics, as if your proof of a famous conjecture turns out to be wrong, say good-bye to your reputation forever.
I must mention that I do not want to drive him away completely from this. If the student indeed finds a "real" problem in fundamental physics, then let him work further on it. But this must not be the only thing that he should work on, which he is doing with the most robust motivation.
A big problem is that the student has a highly peculiar personality and is introverted; if you tell him something, he has a distaste for authority and considers himself to be the "smartest" and superior than all of everybody he knows, including me. He says that "People in physics today lack imagination" and things of this sort.
I am rather confused. What should I do? Should I try to leave him, or should I tell him in some way to quit doing this and focus on something more plausible and if he doesn't do this then I should do something else?

You've shown more patience than I find reasonable with a megalomaniac. Leave gracefully, if this is possible.

This person does not seem to have the maturity and self awareness required for serious research. Is that your impression as well?

Refer the student to counseling?  If the student is delusional they might need psychiatric treatment.

I agree with @AnonymousPhysicist - this sounds less like a question of education and more like a question of psychological or psychiatric treatment. I feel you as a teacher have done everything you could.

@ChrisWhite there's a difference between "unable to do science" and "mentally ill." -- yes, but "convinced that not only he can do science, but is absolutely brilliant in it (despite plenty of  evidence to the contrary)" is at least a good indication of a distorted view on reality, enough that I think it is reasonable to suggest that the student should consult an expert.

this sounds like someone destined for blogs and amazon self-published books.

Kurt Cobain:  "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."

I'm a bit confused - what level is this student at? Is he an undergraduate, or a PhD student? For an undergrad this sounds like an unproductive hubris that is best curbed until he gets a bit of more serious work under  his belt, but you speak of multiple theses and make it sound like he's finished, or almost finished, a doctorate. In that case, those three letters technically make him an expert in his domain of work - I wouldn't be so sure to judge his goals "ridiculous". After all, in great discoveries there does come a point when what established experts think is irrelevant.

Also, as an experimentalist, I am used to area of work being constrained heavily by the PI's decisions, because not every lab has the resources and expertise to do every experiment. You don't go to a fly lab and decide to do mouse brain surgery. In your case, it sounds like he is your student, but has free reign to pursue whatever topic he likes. Which is nice and good, but surely you are not able to supervise research in any area - how would he react to "that sounds interesting but I'm afraid I lack the experience to supervise you on this project".

@xLeitix not entirely sure I agree with you on there being plenty of evidence that the student is wrong. From his perspective, he may be experiencing similar issues to what Galileo and many others had to go through in their time. That said, as an advisor I think you should realistically stop investing time and effort into this person as it seems to be a waste of time. The only thing to try is to prepare the student for disillusion. You can bring a cow to the pond, but you can't make it drink.

Your student's grandiose ambitions are certainly a problem, but I see a bigger problem in the fact that "...when I saw his thesis, it was complete gibberish ...." Someone who writes gibberish and thinks it's science is not only incapable of surpassing Einstein but incapable of doing any science at all until he learns how to make sense.

To quote: "What we got here...is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."

If he can't explain his "groundbreaking" theories to an undergrad in simple language that both informs and surprises the undergrad, then he'll never surpass Einstein.

I once knew somebody who acted like it. The disconnection between reality (gibberish) and self image (Einstein++) is clearly delusional. Do not shy away from that statement. The reason for a delusion is generally that reality appears unbearable. Get him into counseling. The person I knew killed himself.

I think that the following is an interesting read: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/dont-prematurely-obsess-on-a-single-big-problem-or-big-theory/

This is actually one of the best question of this site. This site has too many students complaining about incompetent advisors that cannot understand the "magnitude" of their students' ideas. It is nice to hear something from the other side for once.

Please ask them to not spam entire physics departments with their "ground-breaking" results.  We have enough of those already...

did you read up Einstein and his relationship with his first wife - and why they split?   Megalomania.   She is a physics graduate, and always wanted to do something great in Physics.   But somehow is not able to connect with the realities.   Lots of great ideas will somehow connect with one another.   But is it so?   Continue your pursuit, one small step at a time.   Perhaps you can become the "Einstein of human psychology" by working with him as a close friend.

There are many different motivators for working hard in this world. Some motivators work for me, some work for you and some other work for this guy. At least he still got some drive to work hard. The real trouble is when young people lose their drives and thus their will to even try getting good and contributing.
However, he should probably get some training in pretending to be humble or he will likely sooner or later ruin his social chances with those rants. Maybe you have some psychiatrist or behavioural science people around to help him with that?

Everyone must recognize that who knows, maybe your advisee has something worth pursuing. Just because he/she is going against common theory does not necessarily mean that the student is wrong. It must be remembered that maybe your advisee will discover some truth. Maybe this student is the next Einstein.  Therefore, the student cannot be fully rejected even though his/her unwavering, excessively-strong self-confidence should be slightly mitigated. Maybe try to pursue constructive criticism that can help the student's theory, or show him/her their theory's weaknesses?

Regarding his thesis containing gibberish: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Guess who said that.

His name isn't Sheldon Copper is it?

Instead of confronting him on the big picture (telling him he won't prove Einstein wrong, his ambitions are bs, etc.), did you try letting that go and work with him on concrete things (results that don't match observations, etc.)? If he is stupid, it won't help. But if he's smart, it could be much more productive. Basically, don't start by attacking his dream (or his person) if you want him to listen to you.

unfortunately this is a common phenomenon across many scientific fields eg in math, ppl claiming Riemann problem proofs or in CS, the P vs NP problem ... on one hand we need to motivate students with stories about the real heroes of a field, but we also need to communicate some realism that these heroes are in some ways unrepeatable historical anomalies, and some big problems are nearly insurmountable. some more thoughts on how to handle this wrt CS angle in leading authorities weigh in on P vs NP proofs

As a PhD aspirant myself, I totally respect the patience with which you're handling your student. I would totally want a guide like you in future. It seems to me that you've a soft corner for your student and even after so many things that he's been telling about you, you have been compassionate enough not to drive him away letting him maintain his fiction. I suggest you call his parents and see if they can make him understand. He may very well be delusional. Other than that, if he's good with completing assigned tasks within deadlines, appreciate him and don't engage him in "useless" things.

"it was complete gibberish, wrong in many aspects. I tried to tell him this but he simply wouldn't listen and told me "You do not understand anything.""
This is the real problem. Ambition, even extravagant ambition doomed to failure isn't a bad thing. Making a good effort and failing isn't terrible but refusing to make your ideas clear and refusing to accept criticism is a huge problem.

It would be interesting to hear the end of the story.

Let the standard processes of education and research take their course. This student will probably not survive them to receive the degree, and that is as it should be. Tough love: warn, then let the system do its thing.
The central issue I see is that this student is clinging tenaciously to a goal of disruptive fame rather than a goal of advancing research. This happens; it's a difficult thing to screen out at the application stage (where unreasonable ambition is not entirely uncommon, and not usually a dealbreaker). You can suggest that this is an inappropriate goal, and it sounds as though you have -- but you can't force the student to hear, much less change.
I would be inclined to keep my interactions with this student as concrete and immediate-goal-oriented as possible. Have an agenda for every meeting, and pull the student back to it when a megalomanic rant is imminent. Deflect, e.g. "Yes, but when will you have {thing with imminent due date} done?" or "Interesting. Write that up into a conference abstract and submit it to {conference}."
You are well within your rights to "fire" the student as your advisee, I would think. I don't know how that works where you are (or whether it's even possible), but to some extent your students become part of your professional reputation, and this one will not reflect well on you.

I agree with this answer in its entirety, but I think the final paragraph is most important. It's fine to let the student run into a wall with his/her crackpottery, but don't let him/her take the advisor's reputation down with it.

This is a good answer, but I wonder if it's such a given that disruptive fame is bad. One could argue that science has only advanced meaningfully when it was disrupted, and/or that without disruption, it is doomed to stagnate, and/or [insert a host of Kuhnian arguments here].

I disagree with the conclusion of your last paragraph. Everyone makes mistakes and people will, I think, most likely understand that Advisor6 wouldn't have taken on the student if they had a crystal ball and knew it would turn out this way. People's reaction is muc more likely to be, "Poor Advisor6, getting lumbered with that one" rather than, "Wow, Advisor6 must be a real moron for accepting that student!"

@Superbest: I don't think any meanigful "disruption" in science ocurred where the subject's work was considered "gibberish" by the experts. Overlooked, yes; misunderstood, yes; "gibberish", no. Newton, Einstein, Planck, De Broglie, Heisemberg, etc., where regular citizens in the physics community of their time.

@MartinArgerami but that doesn't mean disruption is a bad thing - it's just unlikely in this case (and perhaps an unhealthy goal).

@JacobRaihle:     Of course it is not a bad thing. My point is that disruption was always achieved by someone accepted by the system, and not by a crackpot.

@MartinArgerami: Unfortunatly, it is not so simple. By today's standards Kepler was arguably unsane. From Klin, 1982, p38].  [A]nother major problem remained. What law described the distances
of the planets from the sun? The problem was now complicated by the
fact that a planet's distance from the sun was not constant. Hence
Kepler searched for a new principle which would take this fact into account. He believed that nature was not only mathematically but harmoniously designed and he took this word "harmony" very literally....

...Thus
he believed that there was a music of the spheres, which produced a
harmonious tonal effect, not in actual sound but discernible by some
translation of the facts about planetary motions into musical notes. He
followed this lead and after an amazing combination of mathematical
and musical arguments arrived at the law that, if T is the period of ·rev-
olution of any planet and D is its mean distance from the sun, then
$T^2=kD^3$, where k is a constant which is the same for all the planets...

....This is Kepler's third law of planetary motion and the one he triumphantly
announced in his book The Harmony of the World (1619). [Klin, 1982, p38].

@user189035: "By today's standards". Not a good measure to check whether he was accepted by the scientific system of the time.

@MartinArgerami: oh but he was! (Check wikipedia: [E]pitome of Copernican Astronomy was read by astronomers throughout Europe, and following Kepler's death it was the main vehicle for spreading Kepler's ideas. Between 1630 and 1650, it was the most widely used astronomy textbook, winning many converts to ellipse-based astronomy.). I should have written even by today's standard (in the sense that "even thou we now know he was right").

I'm not an academic, but I wonder about that last paragraph. I thought all students were supposed to have an advisor. It stands to reason that SOMEBODY has to take the difficult cases. Is it really held against you if some percentage of your advisees are failures (in whatever sense of the word)?

@Jay: unfortunately, the system is very unfair in that respect. Here's an example of my own: I had an M.Sc. student; over more than two years I supervised and funded him. We were at the stage of proof-reading chapters of his thesis when he vanished completely, never to answer an email again. I will never be able to claim any credit for the two-year supervision to almost completion, nor for the funding. In fact, it will be held against me that "I didn't have a student" during part of that time, because only completions count.

@Jay I thought all students were supposed to have an advisor. It stands to reason that SOMEBODY has to take the difficult cases. — No, you've missed the obvious corollary of the first sentence: Someone who cannot find an advisor is not supposed to be a student. In truly difficult cases, it is far better for both the student and the department to admit that the admission decision was a mistake and let the student go.  Admission does not guarantee graduation.

I would be cautious about generalizations in the analysis of goals. In most cases there is also an honest component of advancing research; the student believes that such or such point has been overlooked, and it could be good to hear him about that concrete points and try to explain why they have been disregarded in mainstream.

So you are saying it is better that he is put down and his skills are wasted than he learns how to alter his behaviour to more socially acceptable standards?  That drive he's got is likely a very powerful drive to work hard. In my opinion would be a shame to waste it by making sure he fails

What is "disruptive fame" supposed to mean? Are you trying to imply that disproving existing theories is disruptive and bad for physics? The entire premise of this answer is ridiculous, finding a previously unknown flaw in relativity would be a hugely help to advance science. The problem with the student is clearly spelled out that he is trying for too high a goal, and quite possibly just bad at science. But if he succeeded in finding previously unknown flaws in string theory or relativity, these would be a great advancements, not a disruption.

@JonathonWisnoski - any overturning of a previously accepted fact or detail would be considered "disruptive" and, in that sense, disruptive is not a bad thing. The point of this answer is that this student seems less interested in seeking knowledge and more interested in fame and sees a disruptive discovery as their path to that fame. To that end, they don't legitimately see a flaw that they are pursuing, they are looking for a flaw that they may not be capable of finding, whether it's there or not - they have shown no particular ability to evaluate appropriately.

@mathreader I am assuming that everyone is acting in good faith.  That means giving struggling students ample feedback, guidance, and opportunities to change their behavior.  But at some point, yes, it's better to let the student pursue other opportunities; willingness to work hard is not enough. (Also: your "put down" metaphor is seriously out of line. Refusing to give someone a PhD is not going to kill them, unless they're seriously mentlaly ill.)

@Jason Which is knowledge. There are no big discoveries left that are not overwriting previous theories. Most research physicists are out trying to either find flaws in relativity/quantum/string or out finding more evidence for these theories. Finding problems in theoretical models is a HUGE industry. Not everyone has the creativity to just make up a new theory of everything, but if you are a PHD holder, or are trying for one, hopefully you have the skill to double check someone else's work.

@JonathonWisnoski searching to disrupt existing theories is not a good idea just because it's interesting science - you have to have a strong enough basis in existing science to understand where and how to attack those theories - you have to be able to know what you accept to be true before you can find what might not be. Based on what little we know about this student, he's starting from a basis of rejecting everything, as can be seen from his shifting, high level target - he wants to bring down a major foundational theory and he doesn't care which one, or how he does it.

"Tough love: warn, then let the system do it's thing" - Ultimately, the student needs to understand that if he cannot convince his advisor and his dissertation committee of the value/correctness of his work ("You do not understand anything"), then he is not going to get a Ph.D.

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

@JeffE Working hard is not always enough, I agree with you on that one. Maybe I meant pushed down. English is not my native language. Not getting a PhD is not going to kill him but that is not even what I meant. I meant that if he is sent to some psychiatry and gets his delusions "fixed" by therapy or medicine he may become improductive, no matter if his further studies are accepted by any commite or not. You seem to focus on him learning his place, not on functioning and making use of his potential.

You seem to focus on him learning his place — No, not at all.  I am focusing on the appropriate use of time and resources.  I'm not trying to punish the student; I'm trying to save the student and the faculty from frustration and abuse.  The price of using the student's potential is sometimes too high to be worthwhile.

"This student will probably not survive them to receive the degree, and that is as it should be." Of course, the meltdown may be... spectacular. I had one student in a class I was taking as an undergrad like this who... uh... decided to issue threats to the instructor over email because his word salad essay got a failing mark. (I only know because I was present when the instructor said some things he was taking out of context to (poorly) blackmail her and I had to vouch that he was lying)

A major part of good science, is not only performing good research, but also convincing others that your science is worthwhile. A common belief of researchers is that their job is done after they have proved their idea – now it is the community's turn to see how awesome their science is.1,2
Maybe a first step is to make your student see this.
The next step would be that he works only on hypothesis/direction on which  both of you agree: "if you cannot convince me that this hypothesis is correct, how can you convince the entire community"? To take off the personal issue (i.e., the feeling of your student that maybe he is smarter than you, and it is just you that don't understand), you can use his PhD committee, if you have such in your institution. If a committee of 3-4 established researchers don't understand "how brilliant his results are", this is a good indication that the rest of the community will not be able to understand it, and therefore, even if it is great science, it is futile.
The main thing in the above approach, is that it doesn't confront his ambitions, and doesn't (directly) say that his work is meaningless. Instead, it states that great work by itself is meaningless unless accepted by others. It would be great to channel his enthusiasm to the correct direction – but this direction must be provided, or at least guided by you (his advisor), this is what advisors are for.

References:
1 Why is my theory not (yet) celebrated by scientific community?
2 I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?

This is a very good answer. To try and teach him to adapt his behaviours to not unnecessarily anger and put people off, especially those who may be important to his future. The drive he's got with that obsession could be used to build great stuff, if he could just put up a filter to not unnecessarily ruin his own social chances.

Note: I'm a PhD student so the following is based off of very limited experience.
You're in a very tough situation. It is likely that the student will end up spending a lot of time obsessing over their work and get brainwashed by their own ego and denial. On the other hand, Einstein himself was indeed regarded as a bit of a crackpot for a while (I believe his three famous 1905 papers were based on projects that he had proposed and were turned down - whether or not this is internet garbage is unbeknownst to me).
However, it certainly isn't a healthy mindset. I would not recommend counseling per se, purely because your student might see it as a soft form of rejection - and that will only make matters worse. They may feel pushed out, or told they have to conform to something they don't agree with. In extreme circumstances though, it may be necessary.
What I would then suggest is the following. I believe it is up to you to steer the project somewhat and to keep track of your student's progress. For the time being, it is probably wise to suggest an overall topic that they can (and must) work on. Strike a deal - they must progress in this project sufficiently within a certain time frame, then they can spend a week on forming the rigourous basis of their own theory, from the bottom up. After that week, you review their work and advise them on any pitfalls, and offer them another week on correcting them and extending it. If, after that brief time, they have not convinced you that it is an avenue worth exploring, they must repeat this process.
By the end, there's a good chance that they will have done sufficient work in your suggested topic to have something worthwhile, and you can get them out of your hair. There is a chance that they actually enjoy that topic enough to shift their perceptions. On the flipside, there is a small chance that they stumble across something interesting, and you'll both be on the cover of Time magazine. I did say small.

Were you able to find a citation for the Einstein crackpot claim? I was unable to find any evidence that his Annus mirabilis papers were rejeted by the community.

Unfortunately I have not. I recall reading an article online which had a large list of projects that Einstein had applied for which where rejected, with many of which later becoming relevant. Unfortunately, as is the way with online articles (and I can't even find it now!), especially about Einstein, it is most likely made up.

Regardless whether Einstein's papers were rejected, it is almost certain that many of his ideas were initially rejected. Novel ideas (and the people who produce them) are rarely embraced on the day of their publication. There is a long list of folks who have done stellar work in relative isolation or were rejected so soundly they quit their field (e.g. Hugh Everett) -- only to have their work rediscovered as brilliant. But I can think of none whose goal was to disrupt. They were obsessed with their ideas, not the idea of themselves. This guy sounds like he is focused on the wrong thing.

Adding to @zxq9 's point, Einstein had put forth STR in 1905, GTR in 1916, and the merits of the approach notwithstanding, validation for any revolutionary idea relies strongly on experimental evidence. It is not malicious on the part of the scientific community, that's how science works - you are skeptical about new ideas until there is concrete evidence in favor of them. That validation part came around 1919 IIRC, and that's when he became larger than life.

I think you mean Spacetime Magazine? :P

@Mehrdad I have no idea. Whatever it was, it mentioned the supervisors' names, the projects, reasons for them being declined, and some ironic message about how said supervisors' careers would have been better off if they had accepted it. It was more of a "oh, that's funny" kind of deal, maybe something that I came across on twitter or something, so I took it at face value.

@The Dark Side: I believe the media coverage of the search for evidence that played a role - science transcended politics during a terrible time. There are very few modern theories in that area which can be validated experimentally (either any time soon, or assumed to be impossible), and so the approach is usually more axiomatic. Whether the universe agrees with the set of axioms is irrelevant to many if mathematical beauty follows; IMO, OP's student needs to learn that many such theories do not necessarily claim to be truth, but simply aim describe a system based on axioms.

@JArkinstall: I was making a joke :P

Ah, I couldn't tell. I have actually never heard of spacetime magazine - now googling it, I see :P

One of my favorite quotes is

Einstein’s PhD thesis was a sensible contribution to Brownian motion
  theory

Tell him that even if he wants to surpass Einstein, he needs to start from a sensible contribution to current research for PHD. This means that finding a gap in the current science and filling it with sensible contribution. Even if he has revolutionary ideas, nobody will accept them without good credentials. This means a lot of contributions (read journal articles) to current science.

perhaps even more to the point, the student needs to develop enough conventional background knowledge in the field to be able to communicate his brilliant insights to everyone else.  the communication part is what he seems to be be struggling with.  no one else is able to understand him.

Einstein was once asked why he persisted in searching for a unified field theory unproductively during his later years at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. He replied (quoting from Isaacson's biography of Einstein, p. 514) "... even if the chance of finding a unified theory was small, the attempt was worthy. He had already made his name, he noted. His position was secure, and he could afford to take the risk and expend the time. A younger theoretician, however, could not take such a risk, for he might thus sacrifice a promising career. So, Einstein said, it was his duty to do it."

The take home message here is: If you insist on pursuing crackpot theories, wait until you 1) have tenure at a respectable institution, and 2) colleagues will respect your ideas.

Doesn't this put the student in a compromising position? In essence, contribute to a set of theories (the student) believes is flawed, and later on, reject the work his previous in favor of the work he wanted to do all along? Assuming the student is successful of course.

@BigHomie You mean student's study does not depend on anything? What about foundations for his study? He can contribute to them.

Yes I can see contributing to any existing ideas/theories that support his work while he is still a student and early in his career, but if those ideas are already seldom accepted, how is he to build a positive reputation without contributing to mainstream? Perhaps this should he a separate SE question, I just thought I'd pose it here since it was related, and in case there was something I was missing.

I am rather confused.

What are you confused about? It is crystal clear from your description that this student is going nowhere fast. Working with him is, to put it semi-diplomatically, not an optimal allocation of your time, energy and other resources. If you are confused, it's because you are letting your emotions get in the way of acknowledging that unfortunate fact.

What should I do? Should I try to leave him ... ?

As with your remark about being confused, I find it telling that you talk of "trying" to leave him. It sounds like you are a kind-hearted soul who has a hard time dealing with the fact that being a professor occasionally entails making some tough decisions and having awkward conversations about those decisions with students whose lives can be negatively impacted.
My advice is to put emotions aside and act rationally. More precisely, I suggest a two step approach:

Decide what your goal is. What are you hoping to achieve by working with this student? Are you doing it out of pity? To meet your department's expectations that you work with graduate students? To learn about delusional people? Is there some concrete scientific goal that you think he alone can help you achieve? Or maybe you are thinking of doing it just because; that is, because you think you should, even though you cannot clearly articulate any good reason for it.
If you don't know what your goal is, you cannot hope to make a good decision. So take a blank sheet of paper, and fill in the blank: "My goal is _______." If working with the student will help you achieve your goal, do it; if it doesn't, don't.
Execute. Once you know your goal, figure out what needs to be done to achieve it. If that includes working with the student, that's great, but it is still best to formulate conditions under which your work with him is likely to get you where you want. As others have suggested, given his rambling and probably delusional tendencies, you may want to give him very precisely defined goals with a precisely defined timeline for achieving them, and be firm that he must follow this style of work if he wants to work with you; do not be distracted by his manipulations. Also, I suggest deciding in advance how much of your time you'd be willing to devote to your work with him, and making a firm decision that you will not exceed that limit. You do not want your work with him to become a sinkhole that will ruin your productivity and impede you from reaching other important goals that you have.
Now, if on the other hand reaching the goal you formulated in step 1 requires that you sever your work with the student, don't "try" to leave him. Do it: execute on your decision. Get a colleague to help you have The Talk with the student if necessary. You have gotten yourself in a very awkward situation, one that I feel you may be temperamentally ill-prepared to face. Nonetheless, you must carry out your decision. Sorry if this sounds cold or callous. There are definitely many occasions in life when it's good to act out of emotion, but this isn't one of them. Good luck!

do advisors only work with students to accomplish their own goals? i'm no longer in academia, but i suspect that is not the case .... this entire answer seems framed around what the advisor wants to do and what would be best for the advisor, rather than helping the student (note that "firing" them might still be helping them, in this case).

@sgroves I think you're interpreting "their own goals" in a too narrow, selfish sense. Advisors work with students for many reasons, some selfish and some altruistic (e.g., "to feel good about myself", "to help others", "to increase my number of publications", "to get a promotion"). The point is there has to be a reason, or purpose, or goal that one is aiming for, and that one should not enter such a major commitment without serious reflection on what that purpose is and how to best achieve it. IMHO even a saint who just wants to help people is well-served by asking themselves such questions.

I would separate non-mainstream work from thesis work; make clear the thesis is not going to be about the subjects he wants, but that you are going to provide him with work that will train him in the skills he will need in the future to defend his innovations. Explain to him that students' work is expected to be of immediate use to other researchers, and that long term work can be done over the long term.
When I approached a teacher during undergraduate studies, telling him about ideas on miscellaneous topics, he told me, "Keep a notebook. Keep a notebook because now you have ideas but not the proper training, and when you reach the proper training you could find yourself without ideas and get something from the notebooks."  Honestly it did not work this way; when I reviewed the notebooks years later, most things were unuseful, if not all. But at least it helped me to keep focus.
You could still allow here for some dedicated time to speculative ideas, but asking him to explain in each case not only what he thinks the mainstream has disregarded, but also to bring up some explanation, based on history of the field, about why such things have been disregarded, and then after he gives his version of the history you can give your version. At least in this way he will learn interesting things about the development of science, and perhaps bring out some insights forgotten in the sands of time. But keep always the line clear between this work and the real thesis goal.

"when I reviewed the notebooks years later, most things were unuseful, if not all" - that may have been exactly what your teacher knew would happen but did not point out, since your "younger you" likely would not have listened.

@StephanKolassa Indeed :-) plus with some percentage of caution/reservation: the main topic was about CA and by that time Wolfram had really published a couple of articles on it in Phys Rev D, so it was still unclear if it was to be an useful development for particle physics in the lattice or not. The "not-mainstream part" was about if CA had some species allowing for scale invariance or generically if they have some more fundamental meaning.

@StephanKolassa but anyway the point of the notebooks is to ask if you are at least able to convince to your "future self". This is different that trying to convince to other physicists.

If you still want to help the student, I would suggest that you make a strict agreement on his duties. Specify a project, and specify dead-lines that must be met. This way, the student has the opportunity to continue, and you can ensure that at least the majority of time is spent on tackling real problems.
It could also be helpful to show him data on real famous scientists, who first worked on "lesser" problems.

If the student is as delusional as the OP states then I think it is unlikely that either of this will help. Deadlines will be brushed aside as they have merely been construed by the lesser minds to inhibit his superior intellect. Facts about real famous scientists will either be simply ignored or redefined to fit his world view.

I agree that I don't think he is very "duty driven". He is obviously not motivated by doing duties or other social drives for that matter, he is motivated by the adventures in his mind, where he is a "hero" fighting the monsters which are physics concepts or whatever. Translate the duties into exciting "adventures" or mind games for him and maybe he would take them on.

Ground him.
Give him a project which is not only hard, but where the end result and
its implications is unknown and can be experimentally checked. It does not matter if he is writing his own undecipherable lingo (you do not want to discuss this), the end result is something which gives you and him a clue where he really stands.
Simply take him by his word. If he has such a talent, a good hard problem
where other people are struggling is good training, right ? It gives insight which is nice to attack later problems, right? I think he
will have problems denying that.
If he tries to get out by claiming that the problem is still too simple for him: wonderful! Restrict the time for the solution to more and more ridiculous timeframes: a month/day/hour/minute. If he is that good, nice, you need the result desperately.
If he really is that good, fine. Both the student and science have a benefit.
If he really suffers a delusion, you will see that he will attack the problem with ardent zeal only to become more and more agitated and frustrated. If that is obviously the case, prepare to consult medical help because the breakdown between an inflated self and hard reality can be quite severe.
Everything in between is also possible. He could be sobering and take that as a life lesson. He could be leaving science unexpectedly. Who knows.
ADDITION:
Wrzlprmft rightly said that the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity is a hard experimental problem. But Einstein in his wonder year explored Brownian Motion and the Photoelectrical effect which are solid state physics. This is a very fertile ground with many unsolved problems, so I do not accept the premise that we cannot provide a test case. Naturally if he insists on doing only unification (perhaps exactly because it is so hard to disprove him), well, at least we have offered him the opportunity to prove himself.

There is one big problem: We are talking about a field where experimentally checking things is a huge undertaking. The established basic theories of physics (including in particular general relativity and quantum dynamics) are extremely good at describing reality on scales that are easily accessible in experiment. The experiment in your suggestion would have to happen at very small scales (particle accelerators and similar), very big scales (cosmology) or very high precision – all of this is not easy. In fact, the lack of experimental accessibility is one of the major issues of string theory.

Quoting xLeitix in a comment above, [the project] "will be brushed aside as they have merely been construed by the lesser minds to inhibit his superior intellect. Facts about real famous scientists will either be simply ignored or redefined to fit his world view." Experiments that don't agree with the theory are obviously sloppy work by the minions experimentalists (that everybody knows are the physicists that weren't intelligent enough to become theoreticians).

@Davidmh As the range of answers shows (from "giving him the chance of doubt" to "clearly a nutcase") we really know the student only from the description of xLeitix. So we should be very careful to judge him on the description or draw conclusions from that; we all fall prey to our prejudices too easy ("that everybody knows are the physicists that weren't intelligent enough to become theoreticians"->Fermi). I simply suggested a way to find out what the real deal is.

I'm reminded of the Sylvia Plath quote...

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

Your student's larger than life aspirations, to me, indicates that they're in the muck of desperation. Certainly some your student's issues are bigger than the classroom - they're unfocused and not grounded, they have difficulty developing relationships with their peers and advisors. I wouldn't be surprised if, like many of us, they're struggling with issues to do with family, finances or loneliness.
So, you could either try to address these larger issues, or you could leave it alone and let them sink or swim. The risk with the first approach, is that you could put in time and energy to help them resolve these issues, and they turn out to be a bad physicist anyway. The risk with the second, is that they could've been a good physicist if someone had helped them resolve these issues - but, at least you didn't expend any time or energy on it.
For their sake, I hope you direct them towards counseling. One reason is that they'd be a better physicist for it. There's a reason the Erdős number is a thing - getting along with others is part of being a great scientist (or great anything, really). In any case, I think your patience and sympathy is commendable.

"The risk with the first approach, is that you could put in time and energy to help them resolve these issues, and they turn out to be a bad physicist anyway."  This is not the only risk.  Here are two may be more serious: (i) The student views your actions as meddling in their life and this damages the working relationship.  (ii)  The student welcomes the help, places a lot of stock in it, and it turns out that the advice given by a professor of physics on family, finances or loneliness was not very good -- either not as good as someone's else's advice or actually damaging to the situation.

My first thought is: I wonder if Einstein's teachers thought, "Ha ha, this loser thinks he's going to be the next Newton!" Maybe this student really IS a genius who will shake the world of physics to its core. Maybe his papers just seem like gibberish to you because you're not smart enough to understand them.
But okay, probably not. Which leads to my second thought: It's very common for young people to have grandiose ambitions. To an extent this is a good thing. If every young person said, "Oh well, I suppose I'll never do anything important. I have to be content to spend my life making fries at the fast food place", how would we ever progress? Of course its a bad thing if the young person expects to get rich and famous without having to do any actual work. And of course there's a difference between healthy self-confidence (or even unhealthy self-confidence) and disdaining others.
But besides that, there's a fine line between healthy ambition and enthusiasm versus fantasy and delusion. I think the proper goal of anyone acting as a mentor is to encourage enthusiasm while keeping the student grounded in reality.
All we here know about the situation is the poster's description. I see a few comments to the effect that this student sounds like he has delusions on the level of mental illness. Maybe. It's hard to say without having actually met the student.
If I was in the position of the advisor, I would look for specific advice to give the student.
If he thinks he's going to revolutionize the world of physics but he doesn't understand Newton's laws of motion, I'd be telling him that he needs to get the background first and encouraging him to spend some time studying the ideas that he thinks he's going to replace before he makes bold declarations about how wrong they are.
Perhaps he needs to understand that no matter how great his ideas are, if he's going to survive in the real world he's going to have to be able to hold down a real job somewhere to pay the bills while he works on this and to establish his credibility for when he's ready to reveal his great discoveries. When Einstein was just starting out no one was going to fund his research based on the pronouncements of a 20-something that he was going to revolutionize physics. He had to work as a patent clerk. Sure, after he was famous, then he could get support for his research.
If he is really off into fantasy land, you may need to gently tell him that this is really great if he can make these bold new discoveries, but to be prepared for failure and to have a plan B.
If the student won't listen to any of this and insists that he knows it all, etc -- which is not an unlikely scenario, I've met plenty of people like that -- I don't know what you can do besides keep trying, and to be available if he hits a brick wall on "your watch" to encourage him not to despair but to start again with more realistic goals.

he's going to have to be able to hold down a real job somewhere —The patent office, perhaps?

The problem here isn't that the student is trying to revolutionize physics -- that's a reasonable (if overly-ambitious) goal.  The problem is that the student is focusing on surpassing Einstein by tearing down Einstein, which is a classic sign of crackpottery.  Einstein did not surpass Newton by tearing down Newton.  He surpassed Newton by finding a place where Newtonian gravitation didn't work, and developing a theory of gravity that did work there.

I read somewhere that a professor once told Einstein that all of physics was complete, nothing more to do but more and more precise measurements. Maybe he just said so because he knew that will give some kinds of people a big drive to prove them wrong ;) This question is about management, finding out how to make people perform well and (want) to give their everything. Any "system" not taking that into consideration is flawed.

@mathreadler, you're referring to Albert Michelson's 1894 dedication of Ryerson Physical Laboratory, which has been mis-quoted and mis-attributed ever since.

I'm not sure what I'm referring to, maybe you are right. I only remember having heard the story once when I was a kid.

@mark (A year later ...) Hmm, that depends how you interpret the OP's description of what the student said, i.e. your interpretation of the OP's interpretation of the student. Did the student mean that he would tear down Einstein because he personally hates Einstein and thinks he's over-rated and wants to humiliate him? Or did he mean something more like he wants to tear down Einstein in the same way that Einstein tore down Newton, i.e. to show that his theory was not the final word.

To reassure you, yes, you should not make your own "success" depend upon this probably-over-confident-and-possibly-delusional student's success. On one hand it is "good" to try to address difficult problems. The wise gambler does not bet that youngish and ill-informed people will succeed where vastly-more-experienced and equally able people have so-far-failed. This point itself should be made clear to novices.
But, yes, at the same time, the negativist description of progress-to-date would seem to suggest that no one can make further progress, ... because lotta smart people already failed. And, I note, it is invidious to think in terms of whether one is "the chosen one", and can, maybe, do some magical thing that serious, able, people could not.
The operational point, perhaps, is that your student's energy is the thing that is exceptional, that can make them do something worth doing. That is, many people do seem to not care too much. So "caring", that is, "engagement", is an advantage, in itself.
And, then, yes, "bottom line" is always a good diagnostic. But, yes, for young people, this transition, from ego to world, is complicated and typically ugly/disorienting...

What if his delusions make him work harder and better? Then forcing him into the "world" would not only be painful for him but also improductive. That being said, he obviously needs help learning to filter some of what comes out of his mouth to not ruin his own social chances.

@mathreadler, I am not necessarily advocating "forcing him/her into the world", at all. Rather, thinking of the student's energy as their advantage, and trying to see how to channel it optimally.

Ask the student why he is here.  ("Here" meaning: in school.)
He'll probably have an answer.  And it will probably be wrong.  And this is where, as an adviser, you have a chance to provide some advice to correct his misunderstanding.
The answer you need to teach him is the very simple, "big picture" thing that many successful professionals simply take for granted, but which he may not have figured out yet.  Yes, you can let him fail out of the program, and let the system work, and let life teach him this valuable lesson the hard way.  Or, as an adviser, you can give him this advice that he needs which will help him realize that he must abandon his quest of proving he's better than everyone else.
Here is the correct answer: Schools are not just for learning.  Once, schools were a rare source of some knowledge, and they gained a reputation in society for being good to learn.  However, now we have the Internet, and schools have lost some of the importance, that they used to have, in the role of being able to teach.  This loss happened because there are now many other options that people have on how they can learn things.  However, schools remain valued by many people in society, because they fulfill another important role.
Schools are a test.  They are a lengthy experience where you are likely to be given multiple requirements.  Some people pass those requirements, and some do not.  The people who pass those requirements tend to have developed a common set of abilities, such as being where they need to be, when they need to be there.  They also have proven an ability to do the work that they are required to do.  Some people don't like the requirements of an instructor, and disagree with the ideas of an instructor.  Some of those people just do what the instructor wants, anyway, and they produce satisfactory results.  Those people graduate.  Other people insist on doing things their own way, and end up not producing the results required to graduate.  The end result is that schools produce graduates who are people who have learned to fulfill requirements.  So, the other big role that schools have is to serve as testing grounds that weed out graduates from people who are not able to graduate.  Many employers, and project funders, appreciate this task that schools perform, as they provide opportunities to graduates.
If a person finds school dissatisfying, sometimes the best thing to do is to just be dissatisfied, but fulfill the requirements and get through the program and become a graduate.  Whether a student is smarter than the instructor, or not, is not the point that this educational system is out to prove.  In some cases, students may actually be smarter about some topic.  In rare cases, that might even be the subject that the instructor is teaching.  Still, the system has the instructor put in the place of authority, and so the student's role is to fulfill requirements.
After you've had that conversation, any submitted "gibberish" can be marked as not fulfilling standards, and he'll be able to understand his weakness, even if his only weakness is that he's not fulfilling standards.  Perhaps the part of this conversation that is nicest for you is that you'll also be in a position of being able to quickly address the issue effectively, simply by saying that he needs to pass this test of society.  Then, whether he approves of society's test or not, he'll be in a position of easily being able to understand what must be done.  The requirements will also make more sense to him, because the requirements being asked of him will match what he feels like he needs to do in order to fulfill the goal of being able to graduate, instead of feeling like a mismatch from his current goal (which might be to learn and become more skilled).  As is, it seems this student has some pride, and he might even genuinely feel that he is morally obligated to win the contest, because it would be immoral (dishonest) to stoop to the level of treating the instructor as a superior when the instructor is clearly not smarter than he is.  The point, though, is that the instructor is in a position of being treated as the superior.
Point out to him that as he moves through is career, he may continually find that he must report to inferior minds.  He must get used to being able to satisfyingly produce fulfillment, despite that.  It is, after all, what Einstein did.  Einstein had to convince people to proceed with a project.  Right now, this student doesn't have an employer paying him to learn the lesson of needing to fulfill requirements.  Instead the school is performing this role in society.
When he understands that this is society's test at work, he'll learn to comply.  Or maybe he'll choose to fight all of society, but at least then he'll be making that decision from an informed point of view, rather than being misguided from his own dreams of grandeur.  He'll understand that he didn't make it through the system, and it's not because the system was failing to give him the opportunities that he should have had; it's because he didn't complete the requirements.

So any academic institution represents "all of society"... umm, okay..
If any "system" fails to put resources to good use then it clearly has a design flaw. You don't blame the resource for not fitting the tools to make use of it. Instead you choose a better tool or build a new one which can handle it.

@mathreadler Wow, had to read that 4-5 times to follow each analogy.  An academic institution prepares students (which you call "resources") for professional work.  Students who drop out can use a "tool"/"system" other than getting the college degree.  Certainly that can happen: Living without a college degree is not a death sentence.  Others adapt and get recognized by a degree. I'm hardly saying this system is perfect.  When it was explained to me this way, I recognized that is the reality (as imperfect as it may be).  This explanation helped make the currently existing setup understandable.

It is entirely possible that your student is suffering from mental illness. Some of the answers here are loaded with moral judgement but, if it is illness, it is not a moral failure or character flaw in your student, nor is it likely to be within your ability to help. If you care about this student, you should seek advice from whatever mental health services are available on your campus.

It's entirely possible that anyone is suffering from mental illness.  I wonder what in the description of this student makes you think that is especially likely here.  I'm trying to imagine what I might say if I had such a student and wanted to contact campus health services on their behalf.  "My student thinks that he will do work that better than that anyone in our a field has done in a hundred years.  He has turned in work which seems to me to be nonsense, but he says I am not qualified to understand it."  Would mental health people really be able to do something with that?....

....I'd be a bit surprised, but I don't really know.  Having unrealistic ideas about one's own knowledge, skills and future does not seem to be a mental illness: on the one hand it's so common that we'd be saying that a substantial percentage of all university students are mentally ill and on the other hand it is often functional rather than dys-: having a completely rational opinion of one's own worth and value could be crippling.  I guess the real question is what other thoughts and behavior accompany these (likely) delusions of grandeur.

@PeteL.Clark the answer to the question at the end of your first comment is yes. A competent psychologist or psychiatrist may well be able to do something with that delusional state. Not always, but sometimes.

@EnergyNumbers: If they can work with the student, sure, but part of the point of my comment is that I don't know how a mental health professional would know whether this is a delusional state just by having a conversation with me.  As at the end of my second comment, I guess what they could do is mention some other, less academically-related behaviors to look for.

The answers here already cover the issue quite well. Still, perhaps I can offer something of value here because I too believe that I will one day be "another Einstein". I don't normally go around publicising it, because that won't help me achieve my goal*. But perhaps the student will be willing to listen to my perspective for this reason.
*my goal is not to become another Einstein, but simply to make the greatest contribution to the world that I can.
I'm going to assume that this student really is gifted, and that his confidence is based on his careful assessment of his theories, rather than some innate belief of superiority. (The fact you are willing to persist with this student suggests you see a lot of value in him.)
I have a lot of respect for you for asking this question and giving this tricky student this level of consideration. It sounds like you are going beyond the call of duty, and I applaud that.
Think about how frustrating it would be if one had a brilliant, sophisticated idea that nobody else appreciates. Groundbreaking ideas, like Darwin's Theory of Evolution and Einstein's Theory of Relativity tend to be difficult to explain succinctly and tend to be easily shot down (until they are widely accepted).
It is a natural response to become frustrated when you are in this position. Why doesn't anyone listen? Why doesn't anyone get it? One reaction is to begin to question oneself. Another reaction is to lose faith in everyone else. That is probably what has happened to the student.
The hard truth he needs to accept is that the world is an unfair place. If only it were enough to just work out a brilliant theory! It isn't enough. He must also change people's minds, which is a very tough thing to do. He must become an excellent communicator; he must learn how to explain ideas in a way that is accessible to others (that involves exploring hundreds of different ways to express something); he must learn how to make people feel curious, even excited, instead of threatened or rejected; he must learn to participate in dialogue, to listen to people's concerns, criticisms and questions and be open to the possibility of learning something, as well as be willing to guide his listener to a better understanding. He must learn to manage his own feelings, learn to be patient instead of frustrated, enthusiastic instead of superior. And he must accept that he is human too, that he is not right about everything, and that that's OK.
Einstein was famous for his humility. That was certainly one of the keys to his success in gaining acceptance for his ideas.
These things are all difficult to change, however it is possible (I have taken this journey myself). If your student sees the value in this and wants to improve himself, do not force it upon him all at once, but gradually get him more comfortable with questions and critique, and be understanding when he slips into his old patterns of superiority and impatience.
Aside from helping him reach his goals, I can say (from experience) that it will help him be a better person.

One thing that is absent from all of the answers provided so far is the question of funding / financial support, and your fiduciary duty to the funding source, and possibly your department / institution.
How is this student's work being funded? The student's own funds/loans?  Scholarships/fellowships? External grants?  Whatever the source(s), what are your fiduciary responsibilities in your role as the primary point of oversight of this student's work?  If the funds are provided without specification of the research area/topic, then the question is moot.  Otherwise, if the student refuses to focus a lion's share of effort on the topic for which the money was allocated, there is an ethical problem, if not a legal one.
I would never directly raise the topic with the student, as likely it would raise an angry response in the vein of "The system just doesn't understand what I'm doing, it's threatened by me, and it's trying to shut me down!"  While the financial question pales to some extent when compared to questions of properly guiding this student toward a research career and of the possibility of mental illness, I believe it ought play some sort of role in your deliberations on the matter.

Your student should read Thomas Kuhn's essay "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," given that he's convinced such a revolution is about to shake the discipline of physics.  Kuhn makes a strong argument that these revolutions are collective, not individual, efforts.
Maybe the anomalous results in your field are accumulating so fast that a so-called "paradigm shift" (Kuhn's term) is coming. Maybe not. Maybe this guy will be a big thinker in that shift. Maybe not.
Once he's read (or at least skimmed through) Kuhn, you can ask him to make the case based on empirical evidence that a shift is coming in your field.
At any rate he will have to write, and then defend, his thesis. It sounds like you believe his thesis is indefensible.  It sounds like you've tried to rein him in a few times, with little success. You've met your teaching obligation. Move on.

At last someone interested in these things :) I had to sneak into some philosophy exchange to try and find any but they seemed more interested in juggling with semantics and emotions than philosophy of science. I interpret Kuhns position more of a sociological one. A paradigm shift would need a critical mass of supporters to occur as it by definition is very much a social event.

A paradigm shift, like the plate-tectonics shift in the last third of the 20th century, does have social elements. But that was driven by an accumulation of evidence for which the dominant-paradigm explanations somehow got crosswise with Ockham's Razor.  Ditto for the epicycles in Ptolemaic cosmology: overwrought (and underdetermined) theoretical gymnastics that simply vanished when the cosmological paradigm shifted to heliocentrism.  If General Relativity is to be superseded soon as this nutballxxx student claims, there's probably an accumulation of observations with overwrought explanations.

Perhaps something you could do is redirect his zeal/ambition into asking questions about material he reads and forming a research direction in that way. If he is wacky he can probably come up with some good ideas, instead of the unlikely scenario that he will crush a major open problem while a PhD student. Also this open-ended approach might help him reconnect with the reason he liked school in the first place (speculation), and de-escalate the situation (his work can't be "wrong", and if it is "special" it may not be found out for years).

There is little one can do to turn a self-convinced student around, and, beyond a certain limit, this is not your responsibility anymore; after all, they might be right (even if that is highly unlikely). The best chance I found one has - in my experience with related cases - is to try to discuss with them approximately along the following line:
"If you are trying something that so many have tried and failed: what are exactly the reasons why you believe you should succeed where all these others are failed? This is not to mean that you can't succeed, but you'd better have very strong reasons.
What is it that makes makes the Big Ones, Newton, Gauss, Maxwell, Hilbert, Einstein, so particularly brilliant? Were there no other, equally brilliant minds around? That's not quite the case, in fact. However, what clearly set these Big Ones apart was that they knew to choose the right, big, questions at the right time rather than wasting their time on - at that period - unachievable problems. Gauss, as far as we know, did not seem to work on Fermat's Last Theorem. Hilbert is reported to have explicitly refused to do so. He, especially, understood Fermat's last theorem was out of his reach; he understood that the techniques were not ready for it at that time.
In general, their scientific success endured as long as they chose topics which were challenging, but in their reach; in fact, with general relativity, Einstein was lucky that he had Marcel Grossmann to help him with differential geometry of which he himself originally knew nothing; what topic you believe is in your reach and why, and who is going to help you achieve it?"
The key in the argument is indicating that these larger-than-life scientists forwent topics under the conscious knowledge of their own limitations or that they needed external help and that success was not a foregone conclusion, even for the best of them. That argument has sometimes worked for me.
Especially Einstein needs to be brought back to scale as (without his fault) he sets a particularly notorious bad example for self-convinced students, as it supports their image of the "rebel" scientist. But let's not forget, the concept of the misunderstood genius scientist is older than Einstein, as at least Victorian novels attest.

You are in a difficult position; however, I think the best thing to do would be to let the student attempt (and likely fail) on whatever topic he chooses. Simply tell him outright: "If this is what you want to pursue, here are the resources available, make the best of it," and just sit back and watch. Either he is serious enough to sit down and do the leg work to understand the background necessary or he will remain unproductive. If he is unproductive after a year (so long as he is paying the bill for his education), approach him with another broad problem that you have some experience with and offer yourself as a resource. If he is productive, great, take a look at his work and see if you can help him in his communication skills.
I would strongly discourage, however, giving him his thesis topic and insisting he work solely on it, as that does not breed a future independent investigator, as you are just taking away his responsibility to actively, and intelligently, contribute to the community.

There are indeed some red flags here for possible mental illness.
It is possible to have some challenging mental health stuff going on, AND produce brilliant scientific results.
It's time to ask your student to get a mental health screening.  You can ask this of him because you care.
As a matter of fact, it is part of your ethical responsibility as his advisor.
If you're in any doubt about how to request the screening -- that's where you can reach out to your department or university administration.
That can be a short conversation.  Example:  I see some mental health red flags in a PhD student of mine.  He has grandiose scientific ambitions that are disconnected from scientific reality.  He feels superior and alienated from peers and mentors.  He has great potential, but I am worried about him, both for his academics and his well being.  I would like him to get a good mental health screening.  How can we go about this?
Make sure the person doing the screening is good.  A conversation with a bad therapist can be worse than doing nothing.  Have a conversation with the therapist yourself first.  You will be able to tell if the person is smart, can listen deeply, has an intuitive understanding of how alienating it can be to work in cutting edge science.  Make sure the screening includes bipolar (to give you an idea, you can look at this questionnaire.)
Much can be done to treat and manage mental illness.  Step one is to screen and, if necessary, diagnose.

to think that an academic adviser should vet a set of possible therapists for a student, select a therapist for the student, consult with this therapist, and (presumably) bring the student to the therapist is pretty far off the mark of what is generally considered appropriate.

@dbliss - The advisor doesn't take the student to the therapist.  Once the advisor has received a recommendation of a therapist that s/he feels confident about, or who has had a conversation with a therapist and has satisfied him or herself that the therapist has the sensitivity to academics that is needed, the advisor can then make a specific recommendation when asking the student to get screened.  Because this is a student who would not do well with a garden variety therapist.  It needs to be a therapist the student can respect intellectually, given his degree of alienation.

@dbliss The word should varies by one's moral tastes. In particular, some moralities are strictly more burdensome.

madness is a whole subject on itself, and it could be a separate question how the academy approaches to it.

I don't see an ethical obligation to be solving student's health problems. I see it ethically fine to step in or make a move (if done reasonably), but it's not a duty.

@djechlin - In this day and age in many places in the U.S., psychiatrists are few and far between.  Having that M.D. doesn't necessarily mean having a knack to work well with an academic who feels alienated the way the OP's student does.  The only general statement that can be made is that having the M.D. allows you to write prescriptions.

By "garden-variety therapist" I mean one of those people who feel intimidated and uncomfortable around those who work in the hard sciences.  I mean shallow people.  I mean the sort of therapist who, after your conversation with them, you feel more alienated than before, less understood, less connected to people.  //  I forgot to say in the previous comment, psychiatrists aren't the only people who can screen and diagnose for a variety of conditions.

@yo' - I can see why you might believe what you wrote.  But for most people, if your PhD student committed suicide, for example, you would probably discover that there is more to it than you thought.  I'm not saying the OP's student is or might become suicidal.  I'm just offering a simple counter-example, to show that things can be complicated.

@djechlin - If you've never had a problem feeling understood, i.e. feeling on the same wavelength with a particular therapist that was covered by your insurance ... lucky you!

@djechlin - Other than my comment having been a gross simplification (in a small amount of space), what else bothered you about it?  //  Congrats on getting the dx -- better late than never, I hope.  Are you in the U.S.?  Major metropolitan center?  Do what do you attribute  the inability of the first 7 to figure it out?

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
Saying "good question" during a seminar talk
During seminars and talks, some presenters hear a question and compliment it by saying "Good question." Could this possibly offend the asker? Could this be viewed as a tactic to pretend being unfazed by a difficult question?
Or is it really a good psychological ploy to mollify the interrogator so that he/she is more accepting to the answer?

When a presenter responds this way to a question, I usually take it to mean that s/he does not know the answer, and/or needs time to think (The answer may be politically charged, so care is needed with the exact phrases used).

Hmm... good question!

@Bitwise "Thanks, but you merely dodged it, please reply"

I will admit that when someone says "good question" to me, I feel unreasonably pleased, even though I am aware of this effect.

"One question is better than no question, hence, every question is a good question."

Probably what they've trained themselves to say instead of "um"

I like to interpret it as an implication that all prior questions were bad questions.

As an economist I can rant for hours about people's ulterior motives... as a speaker I can tell you that this reaction springs in me spontaneously, when the question has good timing with what I am presenting, meaning that it is a good opening for the next issue (or next aspect of the current issue) I was about to start speaking on. It makes a presentation rolling with the audience, and you cannot ask much more than that.

+1 I consider a talk well prepared if such a "good question" can be answered by using the very next slide

@Tobias Kienzler This is exactly what I meant!

Although there may be the occasion Yoav Kallus mentioned where the question is about details you actually would have loved to include but couldn't for the sake of talk duration...

@ Tobias Kienzler ...in which case enhance my answer by "...or it is a good opening for the next issue I had regrettably decided not to talk about for the sake of talk duration..."

Indeed - and it's one thing you can discuss at a later occasion, e.g. conference dinner

I actually tend to do this more with a younger, less experienced audience. I remember being terrified to ask questions during talks, and how much it helped to have a speaker with this attitude. So, in part, when I say it, it means: 'It's good that you asked a question'. Of course I only do it if the question is reasonable. I was recently at a summer school for PhD students and postdocs where the speaker started his response with: 'That's a very basic question, of course'. I think it was a language issue and that he actually meant it's fundamental, but nobody wanted to ask any questions afterwards.
In contrast, in an audience of peers, I usually take 'good question' to mean that it's something that the speaker has found intriguing at some point, because that's usually when I would say it.

There are several reason why a presenter (of any kind) will comment "Good question."

The question is good and the speaker wants to provide positive reinforcement for other participants to ask questions (feeding each person's need for praise)
To give themselves time to think of an answer
They don't know why, they just do it.

In the case of (3), it is usually taught for the reason (1). That is, speakers are taught to play to the ego or rather give positive reinforcement to the audience which will in turn lead the audience to think more highly of the speaker ("Wow! That speaker really sees how amazingly clever I am."). There is a very real psychological issue going on here and one which is properly used all the time (in and out of the classroom). It is not to patronize, it is to give credit where credit is due. Those who do not know why they do it, can end up patronizing but that is just from a lack of understanding and experience.
The reason is psychological but only partially to make the person asking more receptive to the answer. It is also to encourage others to ask more questions.
Point (2) does happen and it perfectly acceptable. It is not the comment that is the concern. The concern is whether the speaker should know the answer and does not. When I am asked questions for which I need to think for a moment, I will openly say so: "Hmmm, I've never heard that question before, let me think for a moment." If the needed thinking time is too long I will refer the asker to follow up 'offline' so it does not interrupt the overall flow.
In any case, if a presenter is dancing around an issue to avoid showing ignorance shows a lack of confidence which is usually also shown other ways leading to a weaker overall presentation.

I sometimes find myself using it when (4) the asker brings up a point I intentionally glided over in my talk, usually for lack of the time needed to adequately address it in the body of the talk.

I would usually respond 'Good question' to

A question asking something that I have thought about before, but which is not obvious. This could be something I forgot to include in my talk, something I am about to get to, or something which I decided to skip over.
A question asking something that I haven't thought about before, but immediately see that maybe I should have.

After the first question, a speaker once explained that there are three types of question: great questions, good questions, and interesting questions.

Great questions are answered on the very next slide!
Good questions are answered in an upcoming slide
Interesting questions need some research before they can be answered

Made sense to me, and no-one need be offended by the category assigned to their question :)

The problem with saying good question is that when you have said it once, you have to say it every time - otherwise it implies that you're saying that the next question is not a good question.  So I don't say it unless the person looked nervous or appeared to need encouragement.

I doubt it's a tactic or a ploy, except maybe to reassure the ones who asked the question that they have not asked a stupid question. How many questions never get asked because members of the audience are afraid they will look like fools if they raise their hands and ask a "silly" question?
Your question almost makes it sound like the speaker is trying to cover up a weakness. Ironically, I think it conveys a strength, because, by saying "good question," the lecturer may be inviting more questions.
Others have listed several spontenous reasons why a question might be considered good –  its timeliness, its relevance, its insight. I'll add one more:

When the question reminds me to cover something I had been intending to cover, but almost forgot.

I'd call that a "good question" – perhaps aloud, even.

An amusing issue! This sort of response can be done in a good way, or in a not-so-good way. It is rhetorically constructive to not be combative, and also to deflect potential combativeness, but/and not good to be sycophantic (which will offend some people). It is also not so bad to give oneself time to think while being polite and positive to one's audience.

I think it also depends on the culture of the speaker. I spent some time in the US and France, and I keep hearing "[great|good|excellent|etc.] questions" in the former while it was quite rare in the latter.

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Paper submission related query
What does " securing reviewers" means when you submit a paper? Does that mean that the AE thinks that the paper is within the scope of the journal but he or she has not been able to find reviewers to take a look at the paper?

"phd" does not seem like an appropriate tag for this.  Perhaps peer-review or something more on topic.

"paper-submission" I would suggest as a tag.

Every system is different and I haven't seen that status, but I certainly infer it means the AE is lining up reviewers.  That means the AE (and EIC) has not rejected it out of hand, but it doesn't guarantee that it will not eventually be rejected as out of scope.  That could happen if the reviewers note the issue, or if the AE has trouble finding reviewers and eventually gives up.

Thank you for your reply, well it's been 7 days since I submitted the paper, in  an AIP journal. They are showing "securing reviewers" in the check status option.

It can take many weeks to line up reviewers.

Thank you sir, for your prompt reply. You had given me an advice a few days back on a paper pending revision. I was getting nervous and anxious. Two days back I got an acceptance .

Congratulations :)

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May I use my graduate school's letterhead right after graduating, when applying to jobs?
I just completed my MFA in Film this August, 2017. Now I am freelancing and not associated with an academic institution. May I still use my graduate university's letterhead when applying to faculty positions? I don't have any other nice looking letterhead with a logo, unless I make it up.

"I don't have any other nice looking letterhead with a logo, unless I make it up." - why do you need a logo to represent yourself?

No you may not. The use of an official letterhead implies not only a current affiliation with the university, but it some countries and contexts also implies that the correspondence is for official purposes. Each university has it's own rules and policies, but I would be shocked if your university would consider this acceptable, and both universities that I have attended have specific guidance to not do this. In general, you do not have the right to use that letterhead simply because you attended the university, and using it in that fashion is inappropriate because you are representing yourself as having a professional position that you don't have.

I agree that if you are no longer affiliated with an institution, it is inappropriate to use its letterhead. But a current grad student applying for jobs is using the letterhead for "official purposes."  https://chroniclevitae.com/news/50-the-professor-is-in-why-letterhead-matters

@ElizabethHenning There seemed to be a consensus at the linked question that this is inappropriate, though some people voiced the opposite opinion. However I want to strongly push back against the sentiment in the article you linked to. Telling someone to "use whatever means necessary to acquire a sheet of letterhead, and Photoshop it into a replicable file for the purposes of your job applications," in response to being told that the university specifically disallows you to use its letterhead worries me.

I would characterize the top-voted answer to the linked question as constituting a majority, but not a consensus. Furthermore, I suspect this is country-specific, field-specific, or generation-specific.

@ElizabethHenning I have reworded my answer taking your responses into account.

I'd encourage OP to contact his/her school, especially the career service if there is one. When reviewing job application letters during hiring, I often see some institute-issued alumni letterheads. Maybe your institute have something similar. It's their interest to see you getting employed. The worst you can get is a "no."

@Penguin_Knight I would vote for this if you made it an answer!

Comment posted as answer: I'd encourage you to contact your school, especially the career services office if there is one. When reviewing job application letters during hiring, I often see some institute-issued alumni letterheads. Maybe your university/institute has something similar. It's in their interest to see you become employed, so ask them how they can help you to best showcase your academic background. The worst you can get is a "no."

In short, you are using a letterhead if you are "speaking for" the institution whose name is on the letter head. This would, for example, be the case if you're an administrator writing to one of the suppliers of the school cafeteria, or if you're a professor writing a letter of recommendation for a former student.
In your case, you are writing for yourself. You do not have an official role in the university, nor are you speaking on its behalf. Don't use the university's letterhead.

My recommendation would be to create your own letterhead. As a freelancer, you need your own brand identity anyway. And, working in a creative field, I imagine that anyone you contact would expect you to have the skills to make a letterhead.
The letterhead of the university will be copyrighted and will not have your contact information in. It's very unlikely that you will permission to use it, or that this will be granted even if you ask for it.
As a further example, in universities where I have worked, letterheads have been carefully protected even for staff. Only a small group of staff would have access to them and the would record how they were used. For instance, if I needed to write a reference letter for a student, I would not be able to directly print it onto headed paper. This would need to go through an assigned administrator.
Now, in practice, of course I could very easily have scanned in the end result and created my own letterhead, but that just wouldn't have been acceptable. If a student were to have done this, the matter would not have been taken lightly.
The closest suggestion I can make, if you do want to include a visual representation of the university on your letter, would be to see if you can get permission to include their logo. This will be less controversial than the full letterhead, but it might also be protected.


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Getting back to academics / independent research
As a full time professional without prior publications, I am seriously considering a move to academics as a PhD student. My field of interest is mostly Data Analytics and I am keen to explore the possibilities where I can associate Data Analytics with AI and Deep Learning.
Unfortunately, I have no degrees or certificates to show my credentials here but I have prepared myself in the tools I may need to tackle a research question in such a discipline.(Yes, I agree that it isn't enough)
I want to know if there is any possibility of collaborating with academic professionals and publish independent papers?
My academic qualifications:
Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering
MBA in International Management

Do you have a university degree (in any field)? Otherwise it will be very hard to get a job at an academic institution.

Academics with many publications cannot get a stable job, how would you expect to get a position with one or two publications?

Your follow up question is off-topic because it is "shopping" question, which is off topic. Please edit your question to remove it.

By position, I intended to mean admission to a program and not an employment. My apologies for the confusion. I have a Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering and I also have an MBA.

Please update the question on your degrees, this is important. You might want to start a PhD, maybe even as a side-track to your current job. However, a PhD guarantees nothing in terms of employment safety.

Yes, the idea is to get into a PhD program. I am not really focusing on employment guarantees after one right now.

There are two ways in which you can be involved in research, coming out of industry.
It is possible to enroll in a PhD program.  There are normally no age requirements, and it is not unheard of for people to start a PhD later in their career.  Depending on where you are, this may require a Master degree first.  I suspect many PIs are happy to enroll someone with substantial industry experience.
It is also possible to find employment at a company that cooperates with university research.  It's quite common for small and medium enterprises to cooperate with universities in projects (for some funding agencies such as the European Commission, this is in fact a requirement), so with the right skills, expertise, and contacts, that should be possible.  For example, within the EU, Horizon 2020 projects always must involve such enterprises.
Gaining full employment (not counting RA/TA/PhD studies) at a university without already having a PhD degree and recent publications is not feasible.

No, I do not intend to do this as part of my job. I want to move to academic employment. But before I apply anywhere, I want to have one or two academic publications. If that takes a year or more, I'm okay with it.
I will check the Horizon 2020 projects though. Thanks!

"I want to move to academic employment" I don't understand how this could be possible with no degrees. At least in the U.S., even teaching at a community college requires at least a Masters degree.

@DaveLRenfro Maybe with an honorary degree?

Perhaps, but I wouldn't hold my breath for this avenue. Also, many of the degree restrictions I've seen say "earned".

My apologies for the confusion. By 'academic employment' I meant admission to a PhD program with a RA/TA. In terms of degrees, I hold a Bachelors in Computer Sc and an MBA

@PrithwishSarkar Wait, you want to enter a PhD program as a student? That's really important info that you should include in your question. It might be obvious to you that that's what you mean by "a move to academics" but that's not clear to the rest of us.


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Can you get into a top grad school coming from UT Knox?
I went to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where I got a BA in Philosophy and graduated with a 3.4 GPA. During my senior year, I discovered an incessant love of physics. However, I’ve had to start over practically from the beginning, such as learning pre-calc.
I am now attending UT Knox for an undergrad physics degree. UT Knox is a public school ranked #83 in physics. My question is, how well do I need to do to come from a school like UT Knox, at my age, to be accepted into a top 10 graduate school? I know the odds are stacked against me, but I plan on overcoming them.

School rankings are really not that important. Go Vols!

I’ve substantially rewritten the question because I had a really hard time understanding it. Please check that there isn’t anything particularly important I left out / anything I misrepresented.

For comparison: I finished undergrad at TAMU San Antonio, a newer campus. I'm now doing a master's in math at TAMU in College Station, our flagship, and we're pretty well-ranked in math. Try to get into the schools you want!

In case anyone else is wondering, Texas A&M College Station is ranked 39th in math and 19th in analysis by USNWR and San Antonio is unranked. Obvious disclaimers apply, but it’s vaguely useful to me as someone who knew zero about the university.

Possible duplicate of How handicapped am I in graduate admissions if I graduated from a lower tier university?

Also closely related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/44061/19607

I've lived in Houston for most of my life, and TIL there is a TAMU-SA. Its website says it was founded in 2008; for comparison, the flagship TAMU campus in College Station was founded in the 1870s.

@shoover You're not the first to just realize this.

I think you are asking the wrong question. For the specific question, your chances of acceptance at a top ten graduate school are near zero. That has nothing to do with you or where you go to school. It is just numbers. The fraction of accepted candidates at such a small set of schools is minuscule.
A better question, that I think will leave you more satisfied, is what you need to do to get into a really good school that will help you meet your overall life goals. It would be sad if at the end of your life the only thing one could say about you is "he went to a top ten grad school."
The way to success to to work hard, learn a lot, read, write, emulate those you want to be like, be bold when necessary, ask for help, learn to work cooperatively, don't burn out, be flexible, practice, ....
You can do all of that anywhere. You can even do it while being a bit of a goofball.
For the record, lots of people are late starters. I never had a positive educational experience until the second or third year of HS. My HS doesn't even exist anymore. But I learned how to be better and wound up with a doctorate and a successful academic career.
But when it does come time to apply for grad school, apply to one or two top schools along with some others. There are a lot of good schools that will help you build a great career and life.

"It would be sad if at the end of your life the only thing one could say about you is "he went to a top ten grad school.""  That is one of the most bracingly correct things I have ever read on this site.  Big ups, Buffy.

Agree with Pete, this is an excellent answer. The point you made in the first paragraph is also very pertinent.

" For the specific question, your chances of acceptance at a top ten graduate school are near zero". Not really. Grad schools are not like undergrad institutions. The raw acceptance rate is more like 10%: check MIT's admission statistics from last year (https://www.gradschoolshopper.com/gradschool/sclisting.jsp?rec=122), for example.

@IamAStudent, don't neglect the self selection effect. If you aren't pretty sure you would be accepted, you probably don't apply. And yet 90% of those who go to the time and expense of applying still don't make the cut. The numbers are very small. Too small to "count on it" in any way. They are even smaller if you consider only a single field.

I went to a small southern university for my Bachelors in physics, and a different, medium sized southern university for my Masters in physics (both in the United States). And although I didn't, a few of my fellow classmates did end up at highly ranked physics programs such as Berkley, Chicago, and Cornell. These programs don't discriminate against applicants from 'low ranked' universities. It is just a fact that the criteria for acceptance into is much harder to acquire from a mid-tier program. Those requirements are:

A 3.8-4.0 GPA in your physics courses
A physics GRE score greater than 800
Research with an accompanying publication in a peer-reviewed journal

It is typically item-3 that is the largest handicap to students from smaller schools; the opportunities for undergraduates to assist in real research goes down dramatically with the size of the program. The best option for most physics undergraduates to get tangible research experience is to apply to an REU (Research for Undergraduates). These are high speed research sessions that are conducted over the summer semesters. If there was one thing I could go back and tell myself, it is to never, ever pass up a research opportunity, paid or unpaid. Doing research is by definition the thing most physicists (and all graduates) do, but is the last thing students think about for admission to graduate programs.
Lastly, as others have noted, going to a high-ranked school isn't necessary to have a successful career in physics; many university physics departments specialize in the research they publish. It is more important to have a field of physics (optics, plasma, solid state, etc) picked out and then apply to those programs that specialize in those areas of physics. Overall rankings may have nothing to do with that.

Top schools do not just look at the schools you graduated from and your GPA. They pride themselves in finding the diamond in the rough. They look for true ingenuity.
Suggestion:
If you do outstanding things outside of school that relate to physics, these can carry a lot of weight. Example - if you demonstrate ingenuity by setting up a DIY atom smasher in your garage and sharing it on youtube and get lots of views then you can graduate from knox, get a 2.0 GPA, but probably still get into MIT. Demonstrate your passion with real world activities. Don't depend on an institution to lend you credibility, stand on your own two feet and just do it - then regardless of whether you get into a top school you will have the skills to make it in the real world.

Look at where your professors went to graduate school.  They’re qualified to compare their students to their grad school peers.  So an absolute best case scenario is that some of them are impressed enough to compare you to their grad school peers, which (if it’s backed up with the grades and GRE scores you’d expect with that comparison) has a good shot at getting someone into that caliber of school (or perhaps a little lower).  It’s not going to happen often, but it can happen.  Getting into anywhere better than where your profs went is implausible since they can’t credibly say whether you’d be successful there.

This doesn't make any sense at all. One of my profs went to Novosibirsk State Technical University - does that mean me not going to a Soviet-era technical university is implausible?

+1 GRE ... If you are going to a lesser school, then getting top GRE scores is what you need to aim for.

I don’t understand, Soviet era Novosibirsk was a very strong university!  My point wasn’t a negative one, it was a positive one: you’re likely to have faculty who went to strong schools and so if you do well enough they can credibly write you letters that can get you into a much stronger school than your current one.

I like the attempt at a mechanistic explanation, but the logic doesn't quite make sense to me.  For example, say that a student's undergrad-advisor attended school that's #15 in some ranking system; what would prevent them from plausibly arguing that the student's performance significantly exceeds what they'd have expected of their graduate peers at the Rank-15 school, such that they're likely qualified to attend a Rank-5 school?

@NoahSnyder The point was to illustrate that, even if it's a good school, how would that professor "Compare me to their grad school peers"? Their peers were, literally, soviet-era rocket scientists. I'm an epidemiologist.

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text:
Phd in the computer science - mathematics interface
Currently I am Bachelor student in Psychology. My plan is to do a Master in Artificial-intelligence. And then I wish to do research on the interface in Computer Science/Artificial-intelligence and Mathematics. Is is possible to do a Phd in the Computer Science/Artificial-intelligence - Mathematics interface?

By “interface,” do you mean the interaction between math and CS? Or do you mean the waythe user interacts with the computer?

I mean mathematical solutions for AI/Computer Science problems

Can you rephrase that in different words? I don’t feel like I understand what you’re after

So I want to do mathematical research which js applied to Computer Science/Artificial intelligence

Ah I understand now! I also edited the last bit of your question out, as we strictly disallow questions about recommendations for programs or universities on this site.

You can certainly do a PhD in mathematics and apply it to AI. You should also look at CS PhDs in addition to mathematics ones, as the boundary between the fields is pretty nebulous and which department will have the faculty you wish to work with will vary by the university. You should in particular look for university with a strong program in Combinatorics, Algorithms, and Topology (especially if you want to go into object recognition/computer vision).

With a degree in Psychology? I think you're giving OP false hopes.

@FelipeVoloch Psychology can be a very computationally heavy field, and I know several people with psych backgrounds who have moved into AI. In any event, the question is if there are math PhDs that can be applied to AI, not if the OP is likely to be good at it.