Albert Einstein: A Patent Clerk's Miracle Year Changed Physics Forever

No university offered him a job.

So he checked other people's inventions in an office, and in his spare time, he changed physics.

This is the story of Albert Einstein's miracle year.

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Patent office. A patent office decides whether new inventions can be protected by law.

In 1902, he started work at the patent office in Bern.

Spare time. Your spare time is the time when you are not working.

He did physics in his spare time.

Breakthrough. A breakthrough is an important new discovery, often after a long time of trying.

In 1905, he made four breakthroughs.

Relativity. Relativity is Einstein's theory about time, distance and movement.

His theory of relativity showed that time is not the same for everyone.

Transform. To transform something is to change it completely.

Overnight, the news transformed his life.

Now, one pattern: a reduced relative clause.

We can leave out which and the verb be before a past participle.

Work which was done in his spare time changed physics.

Work done in his spare time changed physics.

Ready? Let's begin.

Albert Einstein finished his studies in Zurich in 1900.

He wrote to many professors, but nobody offered him a university job.

For two years, he gave private lessons and taught at schools for short periods.

In 1902, he started work at the patent office in Bern.

Every day, he studied applications sent by inventors, and he decided whether their ideas really worked.

In 1903, he married Mileva, and their first son was born the next year.

He worked 8 hours a day.

But he did physics in his spare time, and sometimes quietly at his desk.

With two friends, he talked about science and books over cheap dinners.

They called themselves the "Olympia Academy".

In 1905, he made four breakthroughs.

In one article, he explained that the energy of sunlight travels in tiny packets.

In another, he helped to show that atoms are real.

In a third article, he wrote about relativity.

His theory of relativity showed that time is not the same for everyone.

For something that moves very fast, time goes more slowly.

Then came the fourth, a short article written in just three pages.

It held the world's most famous equation: E = mc².

Energy and mass are two forms of the same thing.

Work done in his spare time changed physics.

But at first, few people noticed.

He stayed at the patent office until 1909.

Later, he called the office the place where he had his most beautiful ideas.

In 1915, he went further, with a new theory of gravity.

It predicted something surprising: the Sun bends the path of starlight.

Was he right?

On 29 May 1919, there was a total eclipse of the Sun.

British scientists photographed the sky in Brazil and on the island of Príncipe.

The photographs taken during the eclipse agreed with Einstein's prediction.

In November, the results were announced in London.

Newspapers all over the world wrote about him.

"The Times" in London called it a revolution in science.

Overnight, the news transformed his life.

He became world-famous.

In 1922, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

But it was not for relativity.

It was for his work on those tiny packets of energy.

Let's review. In 1902, he started work at the patent office in Bern.

He did physics in his spare time.

In 1905, he made four breakthroughs.

His theory of relativity showed that time is not the same for everyone.

Overnight, the news transformed his life.

And remember: work done in his spare time changed physics.

Albert Einstein's story teaches us: great ideas can grow anywhere, even at an office desk.

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