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Einstein's calculations filled the void, and stretched it far into the cosmos with a brief, daring equation that tripped off the tongue with the doomful simplicity of the first few notes of Beethoven's Fifth: E=mc².This meant that a mass (m) of one gram of matter contains within itself energy (E) which is the equivalent in ergs to the square of the velocity of light (c²) in centimeters per second. Einstein went on to demonstrate mathematically that there can be no absolute measure of time or space because all spatial bodies are in perpetual motion, relative to one another. He showed that the increased speed of mass, whether a railroad train or a whole whirling galaxy, not only changes the mass, but alters the very yardsticks by which men seek to measure it. Einstein's conclusion: "Mass is merely another form of energy."
Sum-Up of 2,000 Years. Almost overnight, the Swiss patent clerk became the world's most famous scientist. Universities competed for him, and in 1912 he became a professor at the famed Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. In 1915 Einstein expanded his theory into the General Theory of Relativity.
The first practical proof of Einstein's new cosmic concepts came in 1919, when measurements of the sun's eclipse proved that light rays bend around solid objects, as Einstein's theory postulated. He won the Nobel Prize in 1921. Bertrand Russell wrote: "The theory of relativity is probably the greatest synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time. It sums up the mathematical and physical labors of more than 2,000 years. Pure geometry, from Pythagoras to Riemann, the dynamics and astronomy of Galileo and Newton, the theory of electro-magnetism as it resulted from the researches of Faraday, Maxwell and their successors — all are absorbed, with the necessary modifications, in the theories of Einstein."
Only a handful of scientists understood what it was all about. The nonscientist simply took the handful's word on faith. It took him 40 years to see the proof that E = mc2 means that an ounce of matter — sand, oxygen, uranium — holds within itself as much energy as that given off by the explosion of 875,000 tons of TNT. But in the flash of Hiroshima, he saw.
Orchids for Dinner. Einstein was happy in Germany under the Weimar Republic. He supported 100 poor families in Berlin, sailed his boat and played the violin. But when Hitler came, Einstein the Jew was badgered by the Brownshirts and finally driven into exile. He was offered a lifetime post in the cloistered School for Advanced Studies, and in 1933 he took up residence in Princeton. Quickly and unwillingly, he became a living legend.
"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one," he told the first drove of reporters. But to Einstein's lasting astonishment, Americans were ready to idolize the shy professor with the eccentric look and demeanor that connoted "Genius." They read with fascination that money bored him (once he used a $1,500 check as a bookmark, then lost the book), that he was absent-minded (he once walked into the salon of a transatlantic liner wearing his pajamas), that his second wife, Elsa, once ate the orchids on her plate at a formal banquet, mistaking them for the salad.