Albert Einstein
Physicist · 1879-1955 · Physics, stage 3: Meet the physicists
Rebuilt space, time, and gravity, and helped start quantum theory while doubting it.
Overview
Albert Einstein was working as a patent examiner in Bern in 1905 when he published four papers in a single year: on the photoelectric effect, treating light as discrete quanta; on Brownian motion, which settled the reality of atoms; on special relativity; and on the equivalence of mass and energy. Over the following decade he generalised relativity to include gravity, arriving in 1915 at the field equations describing spacetime curved by mass and energy. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, cited for the photoelectric effect rather than relativity. He never accepted that quantum mechanics is a complete theory, and the arguments he raised against it, particularly the 1935 paper written with Podolsky and Rosen, turned out to identify entanglement as a real and testable feature. Start with Relativity: The Special and General Theory, which he wrote for readers without technical training.
Where to start reading
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies 1905
The founding paper of special relativity, deriving time dilation, length contraction, and the relativity of simultaneity from two stated postulates.
Relativity: The Special and General Theory 1916
His own introduction to both relativity theories, written for general readers and using thought experiments with trains and lifts rather than mathematics.
The Principle of Relativity 1923
An English-language collection of the original relativity papers by Einstein, Minkowski, Lorentz, and Weyl, useful for reading the arguments in their first form.
Part of
Sources
- Albert Einstein Nobel Prize
- Einstein's Philosophy of Science Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Albert Einstein Britannica
