Annus Mirabilis 1905

Abstract

1905 is one of the foremost, remarkable years though few in the history of Physics. In the course of the year 1905, a series of papers were published by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), a 26-year old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office doing physics parttime, and they changed our view of the world completely No other comparably fertile period of indiuidual scientific accomplishmerM can be found except during 1665 and J 666, the original annus mirabilis, when Isaac Newton started to lay the basis for the calculus his law of gravitation, and his theory of colours. The international physics community has set aside the year 2005 as the World Year of Physics as a tribute to Einstein's centennial (1). After Einstein's discoveries, space and time acquired a new meaning. Separation of space and time was not possible in'an absolute sense. They depended on the choice of coordinate system. We had to get used to the concept of spacetime (first introduced by H. Minkowski). The mass of a body was a measure of its energy content, the velocity of light could not be exceeded anywhere and it was the same for all observers. The Special theory of Relativity came to occupy an unshakeable position in the field of physics. Absolute space, absolute time, a luminiferous ether were all discarded.