Modern
pop culture paints Einstein as a bushy-haired superthinker. His ideas, we're told, were improbably far
ahead of other scientists. He must have come from some
other planet -maybe the same one Newton grew up on.
" Einstein was no space alien, "laughs Harvard Univer-
sity physicist and science historian Peter Galison, "He was a
man of his time. " All of his 1905 papers unraveled problems
being worked on, with mixed success, by other scientists
If Einstein hadn't been born, [those papers] would have been
written in some form, eventually, by others, " Galison believes
What's remarkable about 1905 is that a single person
authored all five papers, plus the original, irreverent way
Einstein came to his conclusions
L For example: the photoelectric effect. This was a puzzle
in the early 19005. When light hits a metal, like zinc, elec
trons fly off. This can happen only if light comes in litt.
packets concentrated enough to knock an electron loose. A
spread-out wave wouldn't do the photoelectric trick
Le The solution seems simple - light is particulate
Indeed, this is the solution Einstein proposed in 1905 and
