The earliest relevant evidence located by QI appeared in a 1966 collection of articles about manufacturing. An employee of the Stainless Processing Company named William H. Markle wrote a piece titled “The Manufacturing Manager’s Skills” which included a strong match for the saying under investigation. However, the words were credited to an unnamed professor at Yale University and not to Einstein. Also, the hour was split into 40 vs. 20 minutes instead of 55 vs. 5 minutes. Boldface has been added to excerpts:2
Some years ago the head of the Industrial Engineering Department of Yale University said, “If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is.”
Albert Einstein died in 1955, and by 1973 a version of the saying had been assigned to him in an article in the journal “Invention Intelligence” based in New Delhi, India. Interestingly, the hour was split into three parts instead of two.
and then traces the rest of the meme’s evolution at length.
I like Quote Investigator for memetic quotes like this. It begins with
and then traces the rest of the meme’s evolution at length.