Secrets of the Old One

Beginning on the 18th of March, 1905, at approximately eight week intervals, the noted German physics journal Annalen der Physik received three hand-written manuscripts from a relatively unknown patent examiner in Bern. The patent examiner was the twenty-six year old Albert Einstein and the three papers would set the agenda for twentieth century physics. A fourth short paper was received by the journal on the 27th of September. It contained Einstein' s derivation of the formula E=mc
²
. These papers with their many technological ramifications changed our lives in the twentieth century and beyond. While to a professional physicist the mathematics in these papers is quite straight forward, the ideas behind the mathematics are not. In fact, none of Einstein' s contemporaries fully understood what he had done. The goal of this book is to make these ideas accessible to a general reader with no more mathematics than one learns in high school.

PRAISE FOR BOOK:

" With wonderfully chosen digressions and some sophisticated physics plus the minimum amount of math to support it, Jeremy Bernstein has produced a charming account of Einstein s epoch-making papers of 1905. Here is surely the thinking person s guide to Einstein s `Miracle Year. "

Owen Gingerich, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Author, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus

" Why are physicists celebrating the centenary of Einstein s miracle year? In this gem of a book and in simple words Bernstein explains how young Albert, in that one year, set the foundation to a century of progress in physics. "

Sheldon L. Glashow, Winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize inPhysics, Professor, Boston University

Introduction: Einstein s Miracle Year. - The Prehistory. - Einstein s Theory of Relativity. - Do Atoms Exist? . - The Quantum. - Epilogue: Afterword.