Annus Mirabilis Papers - Background

Background

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 to co-workers and the other members of the self-styled "Olympian Academy" (Maurice Solovine and Paul Habicht), his wife, Mileva Marić, may have had some influence on Einstein's work but how much is unclear. Through these papers, Einstein tackles some of the era's most important physics questions and problems. In 1900, a lecture titled "Nineteenth-Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light", by Lord Kelvin, 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 theories for 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 which won him his Nobel Prize in 1921: "For services to theoretical physics and especially for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." 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), (1941) and Rossi and Hall (1941).