Albert Einstein publishes “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?” It is the last in a series known collectively as Einstein’s annus mirabilis (or “miracle year”) papers.
The papers set forth the essentials of his theory of relativity and helped form the basis of modern physics. Einstein’s final 1905 paper solidified his theory of special relativity, with its formula for mass-energy equivalence: E = mc2.
Despite early speech difficulties, young Albert was clearly more than your basic precocious kid. By the age of twelve, he had mastered calculus and Euclidean geometry and possessed a solid grasp of deductive reasoning. Einstein wrote his first scientific paper in his teens, then got cocky and decided to skip the rest of high school. He attempted to enroll in Switzerland’s Federal Polytechnic Institute, failed the entrance exam, and returned to high school.
Einstein completed the 1905 papers at age twenty-six. He hadn’t landed a teaching job and was clerking at the Swiss Patent Office. Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was also a political man. A nonpious Jew who embraced a Spinozan view of God, he became a passionate Zionist who worked for a Jewish homeland. He loathed Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, as he loathed all authority, yet he enlisted in many communist-inspired organizations, partly because of his equal disdain for capitalism. He helped develop the atomic bomb, then—after Hiroshima and Nagasaki—became an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons. Einstein denounced McCarthyism and racism with the same fervor that he condemned European transgressions.
At the close of the twentieth century, Time magazine named Einstein Person of the Century. His birthday is March 14: 3/14, which is Pi Day.—TL