Earlier quoted context omitted.
Einstein, in particular, is an interesting case. He was 26 when he had his annus mirabilis (1905) in which he published 5 ground-breaking papers in physics, including the Special Theory of Relativity. However it took another 11 years until he was able to grasp enough of the mathematics to finally formulate the General Theory of Relativity in 1916, at age 37. Of course, if you're going to use statistics from Nobel Pri…
Could you elaborate a little on why is (or might be in the future) the EPR paradox as important as Relativity?
So Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen were sitting around (presumably) looking over the mathematical foundations of Quantum Mechanics, when they noticed something. In certain situations, you could end up with one wave function describing two physically separated particles in a mutual superposition of states. The consequence is that altering the state of one particle would instantaneously cause the state of the other to become resolved. Effectively they "discovered" quantum entanglement (which has since been verified as a real phenomenon, not just a mathematical curiosity).
What really makes the EPR paradox important, though, is what it implies about reality. Einstein, et al. realized that there were only two ways to explain quantum entanglement. One possibility is that the entangled particles contain extra information, inaccessible to normal observation, about their respective states and which way the superposition will resolve. This is the so-called "hidden variables" solution. The other possibility is that an action on one particle is, in fact, instantaneously causing an effect on the other particle. While this is not, strictly speaking, a violation of General Relativity as no information is exchanged, Einstein found this possibility so unsettling that he famously coined it "spooky action at a distance". The conclusion from the EPR paper was that the "hidden variables" solution was more likely, implying that Quantum Mechanics was an as-yet incomplete theory.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and we're just beginning to appreciate that "spooky action at a distance" is actually more likely to be the correct explanation. As I mentioned before, what this implies about reality itself is pretty mind blowing. To go even further, we've since learned that entanglement can not only occur between particles separated in space, but also between particles separated in time. Quite literally, the future and the past may be linked by this "spooky action at a distance".
We still don't fully grasp what, exactly, this means. One possible implication of this is that our existence as sentient beings may simultaneously be a consequence and the cause of a universe that can give rise to sentient beings. Needless to say, even though it's likely that Einstein was wrong about "hidden variables", the course of investigation that the EPR paper set the physics community down is at least as important as Relativity.