Einstein's century

WASHINGTON

ACCORDING to the documentary record, what was arguably the hottest hot streak in the history of the human mind was beginning just about now 100 years ago.

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A nobody in a Swiss patent office, awaiting his doctorate and working essentially in isolation, was preparing to submit nearly two-dozen reviews of technical papers for a scientific journal. That was Albert Einstein's batting practice, just two weeks shy of his 26th birthday.

What followed was an ''annus mirabilis" -- roughly a miracle year, the coming together of more than one seminal, ground-shattering event. Usually the term applies to the output of more than one person -- as in the annus mirabilis of 1922, when both T.S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land" and James Joyce's ''Ulysses" were published and modern 20th century literature arrived with a bang.

But 1905 belonged to one man. Between March and late September, Einstein churned out five papers setting the elemental science of physics as it had existed until then on its ear. He submitted a sixth paper expanding on one of his earlier breakthroughs in December.

The giant forward strides taken inside his head set the stage for a revolution in human understanding of light, the atom, time, space, motion, and matter. His output that year included a certain equation about energy and matter that is known around the world by people who have no idea what it means. Taken together, these strides have had impacts far beyond physics into philosophy, politics, religion, even art and music.

This year the United Nations is recognizing the centennial with an International Year of Physics. Symposiums at universities all over the world are being held as well.

The Bush administration, however, has chosen to dishonor the triumph of America's best known immigrant. Instead, it is starving the research activities of people working on potential breakthroughs across the board, especially those attempting pure research and thought of the kind that Einstein devoted his life to. It is also erecting political roadblocks to other forms of research on the basis of religion-based absolutes. It is scorning science in its policies on the environment, needle exchange and sex education to curb the spread of HIV-AIDS, and climate change. The Bush idea of faith in science's potential is best expressed in the billions being flushed down the toilet for missile defense and work on a new generation of nuclear weapons.

In lieu of a science-friendly government to celebrate Einstein, we nonexperts at least have a marvelous book to turn to, hot off the Harvard University Press. In ''Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness," John Rigden not only summarizes accessibly the great man's accomplishments of that year; he analyses the nature of scientific research.

A physics professor at the Washington University in St. Louis, Rigden says scientists and their research breakthroughs differ from great accomplishments by artists and composers. If Claude Monet had never lived or if Mozart had not written his mold-breaking opera ''The Magic Flute," their works would not exist. To that extent, the activity inside their heads is central.

Scientists, according to Rigden, are much more driven by events outside their creative heads. It is certain, he says, that particle theory, quantum physics, even relativity would have emerged out of the then-existing state of knowledge and inquiry. Where the scientist is unique is in his expression of what he discovers. Einstein famously said ''a storm broke loose in my mind" that unprecedented year, and for all his genius he just as famously said that in pure research, ''imagination is more important than knowledge."

The only burst of work on this scale in science was Isaac Newton's work in 1665 to 1666 when he produced findings on the makeup of light, the nature of gravity, and a method of mathematic calculation called calculus.

That is ironic, because Einstein's breakthroughs challenged Newtonian concepts of fixed relationships and immutable laws. They came less than a decade before World War I shattered a long, ordered European peace, just as Picasso was getting established in art and classical music was about to meet Igor Stravinsky. Time and space were not so fixed. Absolutes and rules turned out to be worth challenging. How delightful that communists and fundamentalists alike denounced the implications of relativity.

Einstein's papers are not accessible to a nonexpert by and large. But for those who feel the urge to at least try to go where they're not technically qualified with the accurate suspicion that it matters, this is the year for some physics, and John Rigden's provocative work is a place to start.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.