| − | Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a physicist famous for popularizing the theory of relativity. He won a well-deserved Nobel Prize for proposing that light is quantized in his 1905 paper, "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light". | + | Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German born Nobel Prize winning physicist famous for several great works of theoretical physics. He is perhaps best known for his theories of [[Special Relativity]] and [[General Relativity]], but his accomplishments include many other important works, such as the [[Photoelectric Effect]], [[Brownian Motion]], [[Bose-Einstein Statistics]], his critiques of quantum mechanics via the [[EPR-Paradox]], and later in life, his work in search of a [[Unified Field Theory]]. |
| − | The special theory of relativity was first published by H. Lorentz and H. Poincare. Einstein's 1905 derivation of the theory rests on two postulates that are difficult to test, and then derives mathematically what the physical consequences should be. Those two postulates are that the speed of light never changes, and that all laws of physics are the same in every (inertial) frame of reference no matter where it is or how fast it is traveling. M. Grossman, D. Hilbert, and Einstein later extended the theory to include gravity. This theory rejects Newton's view of gravitation and replaces it with a concept that there is a continuum of space and time, and that large masses (like the sun) bend space in a manner similar to a finger depressing an area of a balloon. From this proposed bending of space the expression arose that "space is curved."
| + | ==Biography== |