Einstein

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How do I get started?

In this picture we see Albert Einstein with a background of stars and a laser beam. There can be no more famous scientist than Albert Einstein. From relativity to quantum mechanics, his work revolutionized physics in the first half of the twentieth century.

Einstein is most famous for E = mc2, but this was only one of his many contributions to physics. His work in quantum physics was equally important, although he never embraced quantum physics as a fundamental description of nature. It was Albert Einstein that first used the word “Photon” when describing the quantization of light.

How do I get started?

As a physics student at Victoria University you will run into Einstein’s ideas and equations in the first year. You’ll study relativity a bit in Phys 114, for example. In stage two and stage three you will again study Einstein’s ideas, and those ideas will lurk behind many of the other things you study.

You can learn a bit more about Einstein’s contribution to our understanding of light by reading about the photoelectric effect.