“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes defining it” is widely credited to Albert Einstein. Quote Investigator found “no known substantive support” that he said it. The first known Einstein attribution appeared in 1973, about 18 years after his death.
The earliest evidence points to Robert J. Aley, a mathematician at Indiana University. A 1945 leaflet by a University of Michigan professor says Aley would “spend the first fifty minutes reading and studying the problem.” In 1966 a book for manufacturing managers credited an unnamed Yale professor.