Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Brief Lives

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Alistair MacFarlane considers the life and work of a profound physicist.

In 1905 our view of the world was changed dramatically and forever. Before then, all physicists thought that light was a wave-motion of some medium, which they called the ether. And they thought that if the velocity of light were to be measured independently by observers in differing relative motions, then different velocities would be observed. Some leading scientists were even unconvinced of the reality of atoms and molecules. Then, over the course of that single year, a lowly technical officer (third class) in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, submitted a series of papers to the Annalen der Physik (Journal of Physics) which altered everything.

…