Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation. E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905, including the completion of his special theory of relativity, his identification of proof that atoms exist, and his explanation of the nature of light, which would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among Einstein's ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous. Yet how many people know what it really means? In a thought-provoking and engrossing docudrama, NOVA illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unraveling the story of how it came to be.
as Einstein
as Voltaire
as Maupertuis
as Antoine Lavoisier
as Mileva Maric
as Marie Anne Lavoisier
as Habicht
as Humphry Davy
as Algarotti
as Hermann Einstein
as Brande
as Count de Amerval
as Dr. Haller
as Horlein
as Emilie’s Father
as Chater
as Emilie’s Tutor
as Marat
as Narrator (voice)
as Narrator (voice) U.S. edition
as Michael Faraday
as Otto Hahn
as Lise Meitner
as Charles de Breteuil