I've been busy grading papers lately, but I just wanted to make a brief posting to note that today is the 50th anniversary of Einstein's death. The following biographical sketch of him gives the span of his life:
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955)
Those of you who surf around physics blogs have almost certainly seen the logo (or other reference) for the World Year of Physics. This celebration is marking the 100th anniversary of Einstein's publishing four major ideas in 1905 (on Brownian motion, special relativity, photoelectric effect/quantum theory, and E = mc-squared).
Last night, the Discovery Science cable channel featured two one-hour documentaries on Einstein, one on his career (which really dwelled on his failures of the last 30-35 years of his career) and the other on how his discoveries helped lead to the atomic bomb and his reaction to that. I saw the first one, but only a tiny part of the second one.
In the weeks and months ahead, I will be writing about many of the aforementioned (and other) physics concepts associated with Einstein.