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1905 Einstein sent to the Annalen Special Theory of Relativity. For Any one of these papers would
der Physik the first of his five "revo- many millennia mankind believed have singled him out as a scientific
lutionary" papers demonstrating a that the Earth was the fixed centre of genius, but then a fifth paper was
new approach to solving problems the Universe. We now know that the published in November 2005. In it
-- he was 26 years old. Earth is nothing more than a tiny Einstein says that energy of whate-
itinerant dot lost in the vastness of ver sort has mass. The faster an ob-
He pointed out that theoretical space. In 1687 Newton's laws speak ject moves relative to an observer,
physicists regarded matter and ra- of objects at rest and motion taking the greater will be its mass relative
diation as fundamentally different: place in absolute time and absolute to him.
matter was made of particles and space. Einstein showed that no ex-
radiation of waves. When matter periment of any sort can detect ab- If all energy has mass, it took
and radiation were treated together, solute rest or uniform motion. His Einstein two years to realize that all
there was an inevitable conflict. He second statement is that in empty mass must have energy - they are
dared to suggest that light might space a light wave travels at one de- equivalent; they are the same thing!
consist of particles—why? finite speed independent of the mo- Every crumb of earth, every blade
tion of its source. Einstein said that of grass, every speck of dust was a
Using Wien's "black-body" formula, the wave and particle theories were prodigious reservoir of energy. In
Einstein showed that radiation took "only apparently irreconcilable". the Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität
a mathematical form typical in 1907 he formulated the
of that of a gas—and there- equivalence of mass and
fore of particles. If light did energy epitomized in that
consist of particles, this easily famous equation E = mc2.
explained Planck's quantum It took some twenty-five
jumps and some other effects years to verify his equation.
precisely. He put forward an It was impossible at this
utterly simple formula that time to foresee the profound
went beyond what was known implications for mankind.
experimentally at that time.
From being a humble clerk
This, in brief, was the content in the Swiss bureaucracy,
of Einstein's first paper of Einstein now found him-
1905. Einstein argued that self the master among the
Planck's idea applied to all elite of scientific theorists.
frequencies without excep- He was sought as a univer-
tion, and slowly other physi- sity professor first in Berne,
cists began to take the idea then in Zurich and then in
seriously. The American Robert He imagined two observers each in Prague. In those days Einstein was
Millikan spent ten years trying to a vehicle travelling vast distances not a particularly good lecturer and
disprove Einstein's theory but, to his at constant speeds through space his appearance was—and remained
surprise, his experiments showed and trying to correlate each other's —scruffy.
that Einstein was perfectly cor- measurements of space and time
rect. The quantum of light became by exchanging signals. He demons- In 1911 during the recruitment pro-
accepted and was even given its own trated that space and time are of cedure for a position at the German
name: the photon—but that was such a nature that the simultaneity University of Prague, Einstein was
some twenty years hence. of separate events is "relative". The asked to declare his religion; he
special theory of "relativity", concer- wrote "unaffiliated". However, Franz
Einstein's second paper of 1905- ned with high-speed travel, showed Josef, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian
which was also his thesis for a Ph.D. that there is now a four-dimensio- Empire (in which Prague was then
degree from Zurich University—and nal whole called space-time (don't situated) required professors to de-
his third paper concerned the deter- try to imagine it; it's impossible). clare a religion if they expected to
mination of the sizes of molecules This has important consequences be appointed. So, fatefully, Einstein
and the erratic zigzag motion of for theoretical physics. As the declared himself to be of the Jewish
particles in a liquid called Brownian mathematician Hermann Minkows- faith. It would be wrong to think of
motion. Einstein's statistical law ki stated: "Henceforth, space by it- him as an orthodox Jew. He was one
of Brownian motion coupled with self and time by itself are doomed of the world's great religious mystics
Planck's determination of molecular and only a kind of union of the two and believed in a "God who reveals
size were the first proof of the mole- will preserve an independent reali- himself in all that exists, but not in a
cular constitution of matter. ty." The same could be said of elec- God who concerns himself with the
tricity and magnetism, since Eins- fate and actions of men."
With Einstein's fourth paper "On tein's beautiful theory also hinted at
the Electrodynamics of Moving the laws that describe the behaviour After a brief return to Zurich, in
Bodies" we come at last to the of the quantum theory of matter. 1914 Einstein was wooed to the

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