What did Einstein ever do for us?
Published: 03 Jun 2005 12:00 BST
It's rare that a person gets a chance to overturn humanity's conception of the universe.
But with five scientific papers submitted in 1905, Albert Einstein managed to do that three times: taking an important step towards proving the existence of atoms, uncloaking the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics and overturning views of space and time.
Einstein overhauled much of physics at age 26 during a seven-year stint as a Swiss patent clerk, newly married to his first wife and with a young son. This year, physicists, authors, cooperative computing projects and even choreographers are commemorating his achievement.
Einstein is best known to the general public for his theory of relativity, the opening salvo of which came in a paper submitted in June 1905. That theory ultimately created a new conception of space, time and gravity. But the Nobel Prize came for his first work of 1905, which helped lay the foundation for quantum physics by suggesting that light behaves both like a wave and as a particle.
"Relativity stretched our notions of space and time, but we still had space and time. Quantum physics destroys our everyday notions," said Richard Wolfson, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, in a lecture marking the 100th anniversary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.
And the shock waves spread widely: Decades later, the quantum revolution Einstein helped begin has become a fact of life in microprocessor design.
Einstein's papers that year are neatly packaged resolutions to the physics problems of the day. He launched them without the support — or hindrances — associated with being a typical young university researcher.
"It's unlikely he could have come up with relativity and quantum theory as a junior lecturer in a well-established physics department, where such ideas would probably have been suppressed as cranky coming from a man with no reputation," said Andrew Robinson, a scholar at Eton College and the author and editor of "Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity," to be published by Harry N Abrams later this year.
To a certain extent, Einstein was in the right field at the right time. Experiments to test new theories were more affordable, and the field of physics was young enough to accommodate generalists such as Einstein.
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