Secrets of the Old One: Einstein, 1905

Noted science writer Jeremy Bernstein tells the remarkable story of Einstein's papers and their impact one century ago. 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. This book makes these ideas accessible to a general reader with no more mathematics than one learns in high school.

Many readers will recognize Bernstein (Cranks, Quarks & the Cosmos, LJ 1/93) as the noted science essayist for the New Yorker for the past 30 years. He has also contributed essays to Scientific American and The Atlantic Monthly. He wrote A Theory for Everything (Copernicus, 1996) which collected some of these essays as well as Hitler's Uranium Club 2e (Copernicus, 1996).