nature.net
March 2005
Einsteiniana
By Robert Anderson
THIS YEAR MARKS THE CENTENNIAL of Einstein’s annus mirabilis, a commemoration that, to my mind, is far more significant than the centennial of the great physicist’s birth. In 1905 the young Einstein published a remarkable series of four scientific papers, culminating with his special theory of relativity in June and, in September, a report on the consequences of the theory, his formulation for the equivalence of mass and energy, E=mc². In one year, Einstein produced an outpouring of insights so profound that they set the stage for all of modern physics.
You'll find a good summary of the papers on a Web page of the American Institute of Physics (AIP): click on “The Great Works—1905.” To listen to Einstein himself explaining his famous formula in English, go to another page of the AIP site.
Where did Einstein’s great burst of creativity come from? For one kind of answer, have a look at the research conducted by Sandra F. Witelson, a neuroscientist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and her colleagues. Working on sections from Einstein’s brain, the team found unusual development in areas of his “gray matter” having to do with visual imagery and mathematical thinking. The Web site includes an image of the famous brain, as part of an excerpt from Witelson’s 1999 paper in the journal The Lancet.
The citizens of the Swiss capital, Bern, are interested in preserving the apartment at number forty-nine Kramgasse, where Einstein lived between 1903 and 1905. You can find photographs and other information about his years in Bern at their Web site.
Still another source of Einsteiniana is the Einstein Papers Project. Filed away in the project’s archives are copies of more than 40,000 documents from Einstein’s estate (the originals were bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). At the site you can browse through the papers that the project has already translated by clicking on “Albert Einstein Archives Online.”
If you care less about the facts and events of the man’s life and more about his discoveries, you can access the online site of an exhibition that originated at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (a special Einstein-for-kids page. Another source of facts can be found at the Web site of the PBS NOVA TV series, on a page called Think Like Einstein. And if you’re looking for Einstein in the here-and-now, you can tune in and follow the week-by-week results of experiments devised to test two yet-unverified predictions from Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
One of the most fitting tributes to Einstein’s “miraculous year” can be found at the site of the World Year of Physics 2005: Einstein in the 21st Century. As part of the worldwide celebration, amateur enthusiasts are invited to participate in the Einstein@Home project, which aims to find evidence for another of Einstein’s predictions: gravitational waves. The idea is to sift through data from observatories for signals emitted by extremely dense, rapidly rotating stars. Physicists are hoping to enlist the help of a million or more volunteers with personal computers that are “idle” much of the time—such as yours, perhaps. Who knows? Your desktop PC might help confirm one of Einstein’s predictions.
Robert Anderson is a freelance science writer living in Los Angeles.
Copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 2005