Einstein's Miraculous Year

John Stachel is Professor of Physics Emeritus at Boston University, where he directs the Center for Einstein Studies. Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and holds a regular visiting appointment at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is Francis R. Penz and Helen M. Penz Distinguished Professor of Physics and Mathematics.

"In these excellent new translations of Einstein's papers, the economy and freshness of Einstein's style come through with undiminished force... To re-read these papers is to relive perhaps the most dramatic year in the history of physics."--Werner Israel, Physics World. "Read this beautifully translated and edited collection and enjoy an encounter with one of the greatest minds at work and five of the greatest physics papers of [the twentieth] century."--David C. Cassidy, American Journal of Physics "I find myself thrilled by these papers. Why? Because through the original choice of words and arguments, through the simple but profound ideas and thought processes ... I have been able to gaze into the mind of this great scientist in a way that no distillation or restatement or commentary would allow. In these papers one can see an enormously gifted human being grappling with the nature of the world."--Alan Lightman, Atlantic Monthly "Drawing heavily on his subject's autobiographical reflections about the relationship between thought and language in his struggles to understand deep physical problems, Stachel paints a not-unfamiliar picture of Einstein as a solitary genius whose driving ideas were entirely his own."--David E. Rowe, Times Higher Education Supplement "John Stachel devotes several pages to rebutting recent claims that Einstein's first wife, Mileva Maric, co-authored the 1905 papers... [R]elativity and the quantum revolution sprang from the subtle gray matter of Einstein's brain alone."--PD Smith, The Guardian "Einstein's Miraculous Year provides a well-considered look back at the seminal ideas that eventually helped make Einstein a household name... [I]t's never too late to take a closer look at the century-old work that revolutionized [physics]."--Ryan Wyatt, Planetarian

• ForewordPublisher's PrefaceIntroduction3Pt. 1Einstein's Dissertation on the Determination of Molecular Dimensions29Paper 1A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions45Pt. 2Einstein on Brownian Motion71Paper 2On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended in Liquids at Rest Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat85Pt. 3Einstein on the Theory of Relativity99Paper 3On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies123Paper 4Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content?161Pt. 4Einstein's Early Work on the Quantum Hypothesis165Paper 5On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light177