HIS: This Day in History: 1905 – Albert Einstein publishes the third of his Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the special theory of relativity.

 

The Annus mirabilis papers (from Latin annus mīrābilis, "miracle year") are the papers of Albert Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik scientific journal in 1905. These four articles contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, mass, and energy. The annus mirabilis is often called the "miracle year" in English or Wunderjahr in German.

The first paper elucidated the theory of the photoelectric effect; the second paper explained Brownian motion; the third paper introduced special relativity; and the fourth, mass-energy equivalence. Together, these papers substantially advanced the field of modern physics.

Background

The Einsteinhaus on the Kramgasse in Bern, Einstein's residence at the time. Most of the papers were written in his apartment on the first floor above the street level.

At the time the papers were written, Einstein did not have easy access to a complete set of scientific reference materials, although he did regularly read and contribute reviews to Annalen der Physik. Additionally, scientific colleagues available to discuss his theories were few. He worked as an examiner at the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland, and he later said of a co-worker there, Michele Besso, that he "could not have found a better sounding board for his ideas in all of Europe". In addition, co-workers and the other members of the self-styled "Olympian Academy" (Maurice Solovine and Paul Habicht) and his wife, Mileva Marić, had some influence on Einstein's work, but how much is unclear.

Through these papers, Einstein tackled some of the era's most important physics questions and problems. In 1900, Lord Kelvin, in a lecture titled "Nineteenth-Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light", suggested that physics had no satisfactory explanations for the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment and for black body radiation. As introduced, special relativity provided an account for the results of the Michelson–Morley experiments. Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect extended the quantum theory which Max Planck had developed in his successful explanation of black-body radiation.

Despite the greater fame achieved by his other works, such as that on special relativity, it was his work on the photoelectric effect that won him his Nobel Prize in 1921. The Nobel committee had waited patiently for experimental confirmation of special relativity; however, none was forthcoming until the time dilation experiments of Ives and Stilwell (1938 and 1941) and Rossi and Hall (1941).