Albert Einstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, in 1905, produced several papers that were to change the world of physics and whose name went on to become a byword for genius. This was Albert Einstein, then still a technical expert at a Swiss patent office, and that year of 1905 became known as his annus mirabilis (‘miraculous year’). While Einstein came from outside the academic world, some such as Max Planck championed his theory of special relativity, his principle of mass-energy equivalence that followed, and his explanations of Brownian Motion and the photoelectric effect. Yet it was not until 1919, when a solar eclipse proved his theory that gravity would bend light, that Einstein became an international celebrity and developed into an almost mythical figure.
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Guests
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Richard Staley No other episodes
Professor in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Professor in History of Science at the University of Copenhagen -
Diana Kormos Buchwald No other episodes
Robert M. Abbey Professor of History and Director and General Editor of The Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology - John Heilbron
2 episodes
Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley
Reading list
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Einstein: The Life and Times
Ronald W. Clark (HarperPaperbacks, 2011) -
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory - 100th Anniversary Edition
Albert Einstein (eds. Jurgen Renn and Hanoch Gutfreund) (Princeton University Press, 2019) -
Out of My Later Years
Albert Einstein (Citadel Press, 1974) -
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist: The Library of Living Philosophers Volume VII
Albert Einstein (ed. Paul A. Schilpp) (Open Court, 1970) -
Einstein on Peace
Albert Einstein (eds. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden) (Literary Licensing, 2011) -
Albert Einstein: A Biography
Albrecht Folsing (Viking, 1997) -
Niels Bohr: A Very Short Introduction
J. L. Heilbron (Oxford University Press, 2020) -
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2008) -
Einstein and Religion
Max Jammer (Princeton University Press, 2002) -
The Cambridge Companion to Einstein
Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2014) -
Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance
Dennis Overbye (Viking, 2000) -
Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein
Abraham Pais (Oxford University Press, 1982) -
Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb
David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann (eds.) (Princeton University Press, 2007) -
Einstein's War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I
Matthew Stanley (Dutton, 2019) -
Einstein's German World
Fritz Stern (Princeton University Press, 1999) -
Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian
A. Douglas Stone (Princeton University Press, 2013) -
Einstein's Opponents: The Public Controversy About the Theory of Relativity in the 1920s
Milena Wazeck (trans. Geoffrey S. Koby) (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
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Programme ID: m001qdx1
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qdx1
Auto-category: 500 (Natural Sciences and Mathematics)
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