ScienceWeek

1905: EINSTEIN'S ANNUS MIRABILIS

By the spring of 1905, the 26-year-old Einstein had decided that physicists were "out of their depth". From calculations based on Planck's radiation law, Einstein drew the astounding "general conclusion" that light can be a particle and a wave, and in fact both at once, a wave/particle duality. Therefore the electromagnetic world-picture could not succeed, because Lorentz's theory could represent radiation, or light, only as a wave, and so could never provide a way to explain how the electron's mass is generated by its own radiation.

Whereas Planck had discovered certain peculiarities about the energy of radiation, Einstein set out to explore the structure of radiation itself. Einstein's particles of light differed fundamentally from Newton's in ways that even he did not yet fully realize. Around the third week of May 1905, Einstein sent his friend Habicht what are surely some of the greatest understatements in the history of science. He wrote that he had only some "inconsequential babble" for his friend, whom he lambasted for neither writing nor visiting him during Easter:

"So what are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul... I promise you four papers."

The first paper is the light quantum paper that Einstein referred to as "very revolutionary". The second suggested a means to measure the size of atoms using diffusion and viscosity of liquids. The third paper explored Brownian motion using methods of the molecular theory of heat. Einstein wrote: "The fourth paper is only a draft at this point, and is an electrodynamics of moving bodies which employs a modification of the theory of space and time; the purely kinematic part of this paper will surely interest you."

What is so incredible about this outburst of creativity is that by late May two papers were completed and the third was in draft form." [Editor's note: The fourth paper, the so-called relativity paper, was completed a few weeks later in June 1905.]

Adapted from: Arthur I. Miller: Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc. Basic Books, New York 2001, p.189. More information at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465018602/scienceweek