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Monday, December 27, 1999
Person of the century
Einstein changed way society thought of absolutes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Albert Einstein, whose theories on space, time and
matter helped unravel the secrets of the atom and of the universe, was
chosen as Person of the Century by Time magazine yesterday. 

A man whose name is synonymous with scientific genius, Einstein has come
to represent more than any other person the flowering of 20th century
scientific thought that set the stage for the age of technology.

"The world has changed far more in the past hundred years than in any
other century in history," wrote theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in
a Time essay explaining Einstein's significance.

"The reason is not social or economic, but technological - technologies
that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist
better represents those advances than Albert Einstein." 
       

Runners-up

Time also chose as runners-up former U.S. president Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, to represent the triumph of freedom and democracy over fascism
and communism, and Mahatma Gandhi, as an icon for a century when civil and
human rights became a crucial factor in global politics. 

Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879. "My life is a simple thing
that would interest no one," Einstein once said. "It is a known fact that
I was born and that is all that is necessary." 

In his early years, Einstein did not show the promise of what he was to
become. He was slow to learn to speak and did not do well in elementary
school. He could not stomach organized learning and loathed taking exams. 
After he graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1900
with a teaching degree in mathematics and physics, he was unable to find
work until landing a job in 1902 at the Swiss patent office in Bern. Three
years later, however, he was to publish a theory that stands as one of the
most intricate examples of human imagination in history. 

In his special theory of relativity, Einstein described how the only
constant in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else - mass,
weight, space, even time itself - is compressed as it approaches the speed
of light, because energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, or
E=mc2. 

The idea stood the ancient Newtonian and Galilean concept of the universe
on its head, and it had a profound and startling influence on society and
culture. "Indirectly, relativity paved the way for a new relativism in
morality, arts and politics," Time managing editor Walter Isaacson writes
in an essay explaining Time's choices. "There was less faith in absolutes,
not only of time and space but also of truth and morality." Einstein's
famous theorem E=mc2 was also the seed that led to the development of
atomic energy and weapons. To solve some of the problems with his special
theory of relativity, Einstein in 1916 published his other great work, the
general theory of relativity, which states that to account for gravity,
time and space must be curved around massive objects such as stars,
planets or black holes. 

Einstein earned the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 for his earlier work. 

Urged development of bomb

In 1939, six years after he fled European fascism and settled at Princeton
University, Einstein, an avowed pacifist, signed a letter to Roosevelt
urging the United States to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany. 

Roosevelt heeded the advice and formed the Manhattan Project, which
secretly developed the first atomic weapon. 

Einstein did not work on the project. 

"Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a
long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace," he once
said. "Perhaps it is well that it should be. It may intimidate the human
race into bringing order into its international affairs, which without the
pressure of fear, it would not do." 

Einstein died in Princeton, N.J., in 1955. 

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