Einstein's Miraculous Year

by John J. Stachel (Editor), Roger Penrose (Foreword), Albert Einstein

After 1905, Einstein's miraculous year, physics would never be the same again. In those twelve months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five extraordinary papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. This book brings those papers together in an accessible format. The best-known papers are the two that founded special relativity: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? In the former, Einstein showed that absolute time had to be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light. In the second, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which would lead to the famous formula E = mc2
.


The book also includes On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, in which Einstein challenged the wave theory of light, suggesting that light could also be regarded as a collection of particles. This helped to open the door to a whole new world--that of quantum physics. For ideas in this paper, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.


The fourth paper also led to a Nobel Prize, although for another scientist, Jean Perrin. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat concerns the Brownian motion of such particles. With profound insight, Einstein blended ideas from kinetic theory and classical hydrodynamics to derive an equation for the mean free path of such particles as a function of the time, which Perrin confirmed experimentally. The fifth paper, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, was Einstein's doctoral dissertation, and remains among his most cited articles. It shows how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of molecules.


These papers, presented in a modern English translation, are essential reading for any physicist, mathematician, or astrophysicist. Far more than just a collection of scientific articles, this book presents work that is among the high points of human achievement and marks a watershed in the history of science.


Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the miraculous year, this new paperback edition includes an introduction by John Stachel, which focuses on the personal aspects of Einstein's youth that facilitated and led up to the miraculous year.

Genres: Science, Physics, History, Biography, Nonfiction, Reference, History Of Science

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

John Stachel was an American physicist and philosopher of science.

Reviews

[Michael Newsom · Rating 5 out of 5]

For someone who has read extensively in mathematics and physics the Miraculous Year was nonetheless a difficult read. John Stachel's historical and editorial reviews of the five papers are very helpful, and it is clear from his reviews that to understand fully the train of Einstein's thought and the intelligence of his physical insights one must go back prior to 1900 to read previously published papers by Einstein and others that he referenced because Einstein, despite his usual emphasis on clarity of presentation, assumes the reader has knowledge of hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and electricity and magnetism, particularly Maxwell's equations. It is therefore humorous if not ironic that Einstein apologizes for his lack of mathematical ingenuity and rigor (believe me, there is plenty of mathematics in these five papers) because he saw that "mathematics was split up into numerous specialties, each of which could easily absorb the short lifetime granted to us" which could easily be said of the aforementioned fields in physics which Einstein mastered sufficiently for the Miraculous Year papers. In biographies of Einstein I have learned that he actually submitted several dissertation thesis papers but subsequently withdrew them before completing the final thesis in 1905. Biographers suggest that the final dissertation evolved from the earlier attempts. I do not have enough years to backtrack to those pre-1900 papers. Nonetheless without going back to pre-1900 papers I like most people with a knowledge of calculus and a moderate amount of concentrated study can understand the Miraculous Year papers enough to appreciate fully Einstein's brilliant mind. The reader may have a harder time following some of Stachel's historical notes which refer sometimes obliquely to other works in order to put Einstein's papers both in historical context and critical scrutiny. Understanding Stachel would require another lifetime.

[Alfredo Acosta · Rating 5 out of 5]

... radiação do corpo negro, fotoluminiscência, produção de raios catodicos por luz ultravioleta e outros fenômenos associados a emissão ou transformação da luz podem ser mais facilmente entendidas se admitimos que a energia da luz é distribuída de forma descontínua no espaço. De acordo com a hipótese aqui considerada, na propagação de um raio de luz emitido por uma fonte puntiforme, a energia não é continuamente distribuída sobre volumes cada vez maiores de espaço, mas consiste em um número finito de quanta de energia, localizados em pontos do espaço que se movem sem se dividir e que podem ser absorvidos ou gerados somente como unidades integrais.

[Marco Ceran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone that works or studies in science fields knows and acknowledges the fundamental importance of the 1905 Einstein's "Annus Mirabilis Papers" and the impulse they gave to the later developement of 20th century modern physics. They are all shown in this book, in high fidelity to the original paper written by Einstein's himself, and the author brings some explaination and historical context to all of them. They're still quite hard concepts, but if you want to start digging deeper into this field you have to expect some difficulties, and if you're willing to do so this book is one of the best way to introduce you to the topic.

[Vittoria]

Letto i primi due articoli, poi sospeso

[Diego · Rating 5 out of 5]

Los 5 artículos producidos por Einstein en 1905 revolucionaron la física y cambiaron el paradigma científico de su tiempo, desde los estudios en brownian motion hasta la relatividad general y la especial, el trabajo en su Annus Mirabilis sigue siendo de las teorías más corroboradas en la historia ( junto con la mecánica cuántica )

La claridad con la que escribe y la elegancia matemática y las técnicas que desarrolla sean relativas a física estadística o atractores de Lorentz es asombrosa.

Es un Libro extraordinario y muy recomendando naturalmente para todo estudiante de física y en general para todo amante de la ciencia, de la filosofía de la ciencia.

Las palabras de Penrose al principio del libro describen con claridad el impacto del "año maravilloso"

[Ssvenkat · Rating 2 out of 5]

;)