Einstein's Legacy Alive at Livermore

摘要

In March 1905, a little-known patent examiner in the Swiss patent office published a paper about the properties of light in the German physics journal, Annalen der Physik. The examiner was 26-year-old Albert Einstein, and his paper, "Concerning an Heuristic Point of View toward the Emission and Transmission of Light," marked the beginning of a surge of human creativity nearly unprecedented in science. In seven months, Einstein published four papers and a thesis that together had far-reaching effects on physics, technology, and our understanding of the universe. In celebration of Einstein's extraordinary accomplishments, the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and various governments and nongovernmental bodies have declared 2005 the World Year of Physics. As part of Lawrence Livermore's participation in this yearlong celebration, Science and Technology Review (S&TR) is publishing a four-part series, examining how Einstein's discoveries form the basis for much of the Laboratory's physics research.