Physics professor Bernstein, known for his books on science for the lay audience, here explains the relevant physics history up to 1905, before leading readers through the papers Einstein published in that "miracle year" and discussing their reception. Interweaving anecdotal and technical narrative, he covers the theory of relativity, Brownian movement and its role in convincing skeptics of the physical existence of atoms, and the quantum. In his introduction Bernstein recounts his first encounter with Einstein's ideas via a course in 1947 at Harvard from esteemed professor Philipp Frank, who explained many topics in a manner that required no more than high school math, which is, in turn, the author's goal for this book. Some line drawings support the text. Copernicus Books is an imprint of Springer. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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.
