Einstein's War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I

History Unplugged Podcast · Jul 18, 2019 · 28m

Albert Einstein’s rise to fame was not instantaneous and easy. Rather, Einstein’s celebrity was, in large part, not his own doing. His grand ideas (ideas that would change physics forever) were formulated during a time of worldwide crises. The Great War quickly escalated into an industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918. Einstein was a victim of that war, even though, as a pacifist, he never held a rifle. Trapped behind enemy lines in Germany, Einstein suffered from wartime starvation and found himself unable to communicate with his most trusted colleagues abroad. But…