How would the world be different if Einstein had never lived?

The Globe asked four top scientists about their views of Einstein's importance.

Scientifically, as physicists, we of course do think that physics would end up in the same place. . . .

I think the idea that the idea of him as the iconic figure -- he was the man of the century -- so I think the way we think about science would be different. . . . Maybe people would be less interested in science, and what would have happened with the (atomic) bomb? Probably World War II would have ended pretty soon anyway, but when would the Soviet Union have fallen apart?

LISA RANDALL, Harvard physicist

We'd be missing some great [scientific] papers. . . . I would say his early papers are really like Mozart, they seem so simple. The ideas just come naturally. Usually when you read physics papers, they're kind of raw -- discovery papers don't really have everything right, they have loose ends, people are groping toward an understanding. But Einstein's papers at their best are just like extracts from a textbook, they're already fully formed. . . . Mozart because of his training in his youth and his talent just understood music so deeply that he could write perfect music seemingly without effort. It's because all the effort was subconscious, all hidden. There's something like that at work in Einstein.

FRANK WILCZEK MIT physicist, 2004 Nobel Laureate in Physics

I don't think there's any other giant of science in the 20th century who has captured the public imagination like Einstein. . . . I think that there would not be a single person who would symbolize science and the intellectual mind of science [in the same way as] Einstein. I think that oddly enough, that if Einstein were erased, that the effect on popular culture would be greater than the effect on the culture of physics.

ALAN LIGHTMAN Physicist and adjunct professor of writing and humanities at MIT

I get quite tired of Einstein. He was a great scientist, but the runaway emphasis on his achievements is not really fair. One of the effects of Einstein is to erase attention to other great scientists. . . . Einstein is not physics. Physics is a construct made by many, many people and I just think the extreme attention to Einstein -- I find it a little distressing.

I think another thing about Einstein is that if Einstein were alive today, he probably wouldn't be able to get a job, and that's because science has really changed, and I think that people with that kind of imagination might not get hired. At the same time we celebrate him, we might not hire him.

MARGARET GELLER Senior scientist at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics