Annus Mirabilis

The year the future was born. At the dawn of the twentieth century, young physicist Albert Einstein had quit university life, proved a failure as a teacher, and, in desperate need of means to support his wife and newborn child, had taken a job as a patent office expert. It was during this time, in the year 1905, that Einstein truly established his presence as one of the greatest minds in the history of humankind. In this period of self-imposed isolation from colleagues and academia-which has since been dubbed by the scientific community annus mirabilis (the miracle year)-Einstein, at twenty-six years of age, wrote a series of three papers whose subject eventually became known as the Theory of Relativity. Now, bestselling authors John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin present, for the 100th anniversary of that astounding year, the fascinating story of how one man's genius helped shape our world.