Newton's laws used to rule. Then, 100 years ago next week, an unassuming patent clerk named Einstein wrote a physics paper that revolutionized the way we think about the universe. Eventually, it also turned the old man with the wild hair into a superstar scientist and a living icon. EINSTEIN SAW GOD IN EVERYTHING AND GOD SHOWED HIM HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS.... Here is what humans think of Einstein: "The reason the world is the way it is today is because of Einstein. In 1905 Einstein wrote down a few equations, described a few simple phenomena that changed the world forever. The paper overthrew Newton's view of absolute space and time, replacing it with a more flexible -- and deeply counterintuitive -- framework." says astrophysicist Michael Shara of the Museum of Natural History in New York.   "He really revolutionized the way we think about the universe around us, He showed that the universe is much more complex and sophisticated than we ever thought it was. Our understanding of the cosmos, from the smallest quark to the most distant quasar, is shaped by Einstein's insights, and many of the great break-throughs of the past hundred years -- the computer revolution, nuclear power, lasers, space travel, GPS systems -- owe a debt to his creative genius." says Clifford Will, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis.   One of Einstein's great gifts was the ability to conduct "thought experiments," conjuring up simple mental pictures allowing him to visualize the problem at hand. In one such experiment, he asked what seemed like a deceptively simple question: What would happen if you could "catch up" to a beam of light? Would you see the beam of light "frozen" in time, as Maxwell's equations seemed to suggest? If not, what would happen as your speed increased?   In 1999, the editors of Time magazine chose Einstein as their person of the 20th century.   When Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921, it was for his work on the photoelectric effect. Relativity was still too controversial.     EINSTEIN'S THOUGHTS THAT CHANGED SCIENCE IN 1905 The first paper dealt with the "photoelectric effect," which describes how light interacts with matter, and was a crucial early contribution to quantum theory.   The second paper, on the dimensions of molecules, became Einstein's PhD thesis.   The third paper analyzed "Brownian motion," the random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a fluid, and proved the existence of atoms -- something that was still debated as the 19th century drew to a close.   And, of course, there was the famous paper on special relativity.   The June 30, 1905 paper was not Einstein's last word on special relativity. That fall, he wrote a short follow-up paper titled Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content? It described a link between matter and energy, and introduced the equation E = mc{+2}. (In the equation, E stands for energy, m stands for mass, and c, once again, stands for the speed of light.)   Ten years later, he developed an even broader theory that encompassed accelerated motion and gravity. The new work became known as general relativity SUMMARY OF ABOVE PAPERS: Einstein had found that Newton's laws were incomplete; they were just an approximation of the true picture. And the foundation they rested on -- absolute space and absolute time -- was mistaken. Newton's laws give the right answers as long as the velocities involved are low. But as one approaches the speed of light, they break down. One needs a new framework, one in which time and space behave in new and startling ways. With his June 30, 1905 paper, Einstein had shown how to reconcile the mechanics of Newton with the electromagnetic theory of Maxwell. He discovered that the laws of physics, including, surprisingly, the measured value for the speed of light, were the same for everyone, while time and space were relative -- an even bigger surprise. While Newton had envisioned gravity as a force, Einstein came to see it as a curving or "warping" of space itself. The theory predicted, among other things, that a massive object would bend a ray of light that passed near it. This was confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919, when the sun was seen to bend the light of more distant stars. Einstein's 1905 first paper was 30 pages long, but he overthrew the Newtonian world view in the first few pages. He showed, among other things, that there was no need for the "ether." The reason no one had detected it, he said, is because it doesn't exist. "In fact, Einstein's equations were not new -- but his interpretation of what they meant certainly was. What he did that was new was to break away from the old conception of time -- the fact that really time is relative; that there really is no absolute time; that time is just what clocks measure, and nothing more -- that's something his contemporaries . . . just couldn't do; they couldn't take that step."  says Dr. Will, of Washington University.   Please click on the next line to read details of the above knowledge from Dan Falk who is a Toronto science journalist and the author of "Universe on a T-Shirt: The Quest for the Theory of Everything"....Dan Folk's published an article on Einstein in the Canadian Globe and Mail to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publishing of Einstein's 1905 scientific papers....These Einstein papers turned the then 400 old year western science on its head and gave it a quantum leap into a new era of understanding a little bit more about the TRUTH of nature which creates us, sustains us and also keeps the creation and sustenance cylce self-recreating eternally.....

EINSTEIN CHANGED THE WORLD FOREVER..... WITH NEW UNDERSTANDING OF TIME AND SPACE.... By DAN FALK: Canadian Globe and Mail: Saturday, June 25, 2005 Page F8 'Join me in singing the praises of Newton, who opens the treasure chest of hidden truth. No closer to the gods can any mortal rise," English astronomer Edmond Halley gushed in his preface to his colleague's masterwork, The Principia, in 1687. Halley obviously idolized Isaac Newton, but the sentiment was justified: Newton's laws of motion and his law of gravity would serve as the foundation of physics for more than 200 years -- until a precocious 26-year-old patent clerk tore it away in a single swoop of the imagination. "Newton, forgive me," Albert Einstein would write many years later, acknowledging that he, too, was standing on the shoulders of giants. "You found the only way that was available at your time to a man of the highest reasoning and creative powers." That intellectual leap came 100 years ago on June 30, 1905, when Einstein wrote a paper that could be described as the most radical document of the 20th century. It overthrew Newton's view of absolute space and time, replacing it with a more flexible -- and deeply counterintuitive -- framework. The paper, innocuously titled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, gave the world the first part of his theory of relativity, now known as special relativity. It reached the editors at the Annalen der Physik journal on June 30, 1905. And so scientists and historians are once again weighing in on Einstein's legacy. "The reason the world is the way it is today is because of Einstein," says astrophysicist Michael Shara of the Museum of Natural History in New York. "He wrote down a few equations, described a few simple phenomena, in 1905, that changed the world forever." Robert Kirshner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., adds: "His imagination, I think, was a really extraordinary thing." For the average person on the street, of course, Einstein's exalted status was never in question; ask someone to name a genius, and chances are he will cite the physicist, even if (or perhaps because) he barely understands the significance of his work. It was hardly a surprise when, in 1999, the editors of Time magazine chose Einstein as their person of the 20th century; closer to home, readers of The Globe and Mail voted him the person of the millennium. Our understanding of the cosmos, from the smallest quark to the most distant quasar, is shaped by Einstein's insights, and many of the great breakthroughs of the past hundred years -- the computer revolution, nuclear power, lasers, space travel, GPS systems -- owe a debt to his creative genius. "He really revolutionized the way we think about the universe around us," says Clifford Will, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis. "He showed that the universe is much more complex and sophisticated than we ever thought it was." Even without special relativity, 1905 would have been a staggeringly good year for Einstein. Historians refer to it as his annus mirabilis, or "miracle year," in which the young scientist, born in Ulm, Germany, but living in Bern, Switzerland, and working as a patent clerk, penned four groundbreaking physics papers. The first paper dealt with the "photoelectric effect," which describes how light interacts with matter, and was a crucial early contribution to quantum theory. The second paper, on the dimensions of molecules, became Einstein's PhD thesis. The third paper analyzed "Brownian motion," the random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a fluid, and proved the existence of atoms -- something that was still debated as the 19th century drew to a close. And, of course, there was the famous paper on special relativity. When Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921, it was for his work on the photoelectric effect. Relativity was still too controversial. The significance of special relativity can only be understood in its historical context. It came at a time when physics was at a crossroads. As the 20th century began, Newton's laws seemed to explain just about everything. However, to understand light, physicists relied on another very successful description of nature -- a framework developed by 19th-century Scottish-born physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell's equations described light as an electromagnetic wave. Moreover, it was a wave that by definition travelled at a particular speed, denoted by the symbol c -- the speed of light. Even by the 18th century, this speed had been measured accurately; today, we know it's about 300,000 kilometres per second. One thing that seemed necessary in both frameworks was a peculiar substance believed to pervade all of space. It was known as the "ether." Maxwell believed the ether was necessary as a medium in which waves of light could propagate, just as sound waves, for example, require air. And Newton had embraced the ether as a medium through which forces such as gravity could exert their influence. Without the ether, for example, how could the sun's gravity keep the Earth in its grip? Unfortunately, as of 1905, no one had been able to detect this mysterious substance. The difficulty was in reconciling these two world views. Newtonian physics rests on a principle that goes back to the time of Galileo. Often called the "principle of relativity" -- this aspect of relative motion predates Einstein by about three centuries -- it states that there is no "privileged" reference frame; one observer has no better ability to measure "true" speeds or distances or times than any other. But in Maxwell's electromagnetism, there does seem to be a privileged reference frame -- the frame in which one would be "at rest" relative to the ether. Most people, even most scientists, were not losing sleep over this apparent contradiction. In the 1880s, Heinrich Hertz had used Maxwell's equations to predict the existence of radio waves, which he promptly detected; in less than a decade, Guglielmo Marconi was busy building radio transmitters and receivers. But a few physicists, including a young Einstein, were troubled by what they saw as a fundamental flaw in the underlying description of nature embodied in these two world views. French mathematician Henri Poincaré and Dutch physicist Hendrik A. Lorentz were also grappling with it. One of Einstein's great gifts was the ability to conduct "thought experiments," conjuring up simple mental pictures allowing him to visualize the problem at hand. In one such experiment, he asked what seemed like a deceptively simple question: What would happen if you could "catch up" to a beam of light? Would you see the beam of light "frozen" in time, as Maxwell's equations seemed to suggest? If not, what would happen as your speed increased? Historians debate exactly what led Einstein to his solution. In his book Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps, Harvard historian Peter Galison maintains that the job at the patent office played a pivotal role, giving Einstein the kind of "mental exercise" that would help him tackle the deepest problems in physics. The challenge of synchronizing Europe's electrical clocks was especially important, Dr. Galison argued. Many of the patents that crossed Einstein's desk involved electronic devices linked to this problem. Dr. Shara, of the Museum of Natural History, agrees that analyzing patents was not nearly as dull a job as it may sound. "I think if he learned anything at the patent office, it was: Twist your mind, twist your ideas, look at things in a completely different way." In hindsight, even Einstein's "interloper" status is sometimes seen as an advantage. By being isolated in a government office in Bern, rather than teaching at a university, he wasn't exposed to the deeply entrenched ideas of the physics establishment. In other words, he had nothing to lose, and, some historians argue, the novelty of his thinking is reflected in those strikingly original 1905 papers.   "He comes in entirely as an outsider," says Harvard historian Gerald Holton, a leading Einstein scholar. "He has no stakes at all in any of the 19th- and the early-20th-century physics. He comes there in his 20s, with a full-time job, and he lets his mind wander. He's not endangering his academic position, because he doesn't have one, and he can take those risks." Other elements in Einstein's environment may also have bolstered his creativity: Conversations with a close group of friends in Bern, nicknamed the Olympic Academy, gave him an invaluable "sounding board" for his ideas about space and time; his wife, Mileva Maric, a Serb and former classmate from his student days in Zurich, also played such a role. (Historians continue to debate just how large Maric's contribution was; these days, only a handful of Serbian websites claim that the breakthrough was primarily hers rather than Einstein's.) At the very least, the patent job left his evenings free; he would pore over the latest physics journals and peruse the philosophical works of such thinkers as David Hume and Ernst Mach. He would take the occasional break to play his violin -- no doubt with visions of speeding trains, beams of light and ticking clocks still dancing in his head. Whatever triggered it, the answer came to him in the spring of 1905. "I've completely solved the problem," he told his friend Michele Besso in May of that year. The solution, he said, "was to analyze the concept of time." That, of course, was an understatement. Einstein had found that Newton's laws were incomplete; they were just an approximation of the true picture. And the foundation they rested on -- absolute space and absolute time -- was mistaken. Newton's laws give the right answers as long as the velocities involved are low. But as one approaches the speed of light, they break down. One needs a new framework, one in which time and space behave in new and startling ways. With his June 30, 1905 paper, Einstein had shown how to reconcile the mechanics of Newton with the electromagnetic theory of Maxwell. He discovered that the laws of physics, including, surprisingly, the measured value for the speed of light, were the same for everyone, while time and space were relative -- an even bigger surprise. Einstein's paper was 30 pages long, but he overthrew the Newtonian world view in the first few pages. He showed, among other things, that there was no need for the "ether." The reason no one had detected it, he said, is because it doesn't exist. At the end of the paper, there were no references to earlier work by other scientists, though he thanked his friend Besso "for several valuable suggestions." For Dr. Galison, the absence of references is more than just a sign of youthful arrogance. It's also a sign that Einstein had been deeply influenced by his day job. No wonder the June 30 paper had such a different flavour from typical physics papers of the day. "In fact, it does look like something else," Dr. Galison remarks. "It looks a lot like a patent application." In a patent, he says, "you don't want a lot of footnotes. You're trying to establish your intellectual priority." For Dr. Holton, special relativity was more than just a new set of rules for adding velocities and calculating lengths and intervals of time. He sees it as the conclusion of a war between Newtonian and Maxwellian physics that had raged for about 30 years. "What he [Einstein] has done is essentially saying: Here is a point of view about science which shows that neither the electromagnetic world view nor the mechanistic one is correct," Dr. Holton says. "It is the fusion of the two . . . that's the way to look at physics." In fact, Einstein's equations were not new -- but his interpretation of what they meant certainly was. Dr. Will, of Washington University, says: "What he did that was new was to break away from the old conception of time -- the fact that really time is relative; that there really is no absolute time; that time is just what clocks measure, and nothing more -- that's something his contemporaries . . . just couldn't do; they couldn't take that step." The June 30 paper was not Einstein's last word on special relativity. That fall, he wrote a short follow-up paper titled Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content? It described a link between matter and energy, and introduced the equation E = mc{+2}. (In the equation, E stands for energy, m stands for mass, and c, once again, stands for the speed of light.) Ten years later, he developed an even broader theory that encompassed accelerated motion and gravity. The new work became known as general relativity Again a "thought experiment" played a crucial role: This time, he visualized a man falling from a roof, and realized that during the fall the man would not feel his own weight. (He later described it as the "happiest thought" of his life.) While Newton had envisioned gravity as a force, Einstein came to see it as a curving or "warping" of space itself. The theory predicted, among other things, that a massive object would bend a ray of light that passed near it. This was confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919, when the sun was seen to bend the light of more distant stars. The confirmation, which made newspaper headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, was the key event that brought Einstein worldwide fame. General relativity has since become the cornerstone of modern cosmology; the big bang model of cosmic evolution rests on its foundation. The theory remains, with quantum theory, one of the two great pillars of physics at the start of the 21st century. Einstein had been living in Berlin just before the Nazis took power in January, 1933, but he was, luckily, on a working holiday in the United States at the critical moment. An ardent Zionist, he never returned to the country of his birth, instead settling at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. By now, he was divorced from Maric and married to his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, though he would outlive her by nearly 20 years. (A few years before his own death, Einstein wrote: "I'm doing just fine, considering that I have triumphantly survived nazism and two wives.") During his years in Princeton, Einstein was firmly established as a superstar -- the most famous scientist of modern times, and, arguably, the biggest celebrity the world would ever know. It is this living icon -- the old man with the wild hair and deep, dark eyes -- that we now associate most often with Einstein's name. Theories about why Einstein attracted such adulation abound, though there is no truly satisfying answer -- and he certainly did not comprehend it himself. His intellect obviously played a role; so did his passion for peace and his love of knowledge for its own sake. And of course his appearance. "He came along at a time when perhaps the world was looking for heroes who weren't associated with politics, weren't associated with war, and he sort of fit the bill," Dr. Will speculates. "And he looked the part. He had this kind of benevolent look about him." In Princeton, Einstein quietly pursued his dream of a unified field theory, a framework that would combine gravity with electromagnetism. He never succeeded. Einstein died of an abdominal aneurysm on April 18, 1955, refusing any surgery that might have prolonged his life. And this month we remember a scientist with a remarkable gift for selecting just the right problems in physics and then tackling them with a combination of dogged determination and a child-like desire for simplicity. "What was remarkable about Einstein is that he had a vision of what physics should be like," Dr. Galison says. "He was always looking for simple organizing principles that helped build a world for us." And he built more than just a world; he gave us a whole new universe.   Surprising SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY explained Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity rests on two assumptions, or "postulates." The first postulate says the laws of physics must be the same for any two observers, no matter how fast they are moving relative to one another, so long as they are moving at constant speeds (that is, with no acceleration). Whether you're trying to predict the motion of a projectile, or measuring electrical or magnetic properties, or studying a beam of light, the laws must be the same for everyone. The second postulate says the speed of light is always the same, regardless of your own speed and the speed of the object that is emitting the light. In other words, you'll always measure a beam of light as travelling at a specific speed, which physicists denote by the symbol c -- about 300,000 kilometres per second. The first postulate isn't particularly startling. It merely takes an idea that had been presumed since the time of Galileo -- that there is no "privileged" reference frame -- and raises it to the status of a postulate, a basic assumption about the physical world. It's the second postulate that is shocking. In Isaac Newton's world, the speed you measure for any object depends on its motion and on your motion. A train seems to be whizzing past if you're standing on the platform; if you're on board the train, however, it doesn't appear to be moving at all (while the platform appears to be whizzing past in the opposite direction). Throw a baseball off the front of the train, and the observer on the platform sees the ball as being given a "boost": If the train is going 100 kilometres an hour, and you throw the ball at 80 km/h, an observer on the ground will see the ball moving at 180 km/h. The math couldn't be simpler: It's just v = v{-1} + v{-2}. Sounds obvious, right? In Einstein's theory, this is still true (or rather, approximately true) of trains and baseballs and other slow-moving objects -- that is, objects moving at much less than the speed of light. But his second postulate says it's not the case for light: No matter how fast you're moving, and no matter how fast a source of light is moving, you'll still measure that beam of light as travelling at 300,000 km/s. (This also has the effect of making the speed of light the ultimate "speed limit" in the universe.) It doesn't matter if I'm walking slowly with a flashlight, or if I've mounted the flashlight on some futuristic rocket ship, zooming past you at, say, 200,000 km/s (two-thirds the speed of light). It makes no difference; you will still measure that beam of light as moving at 300,000 km/s. Light can neither be given a boost nor slowed down. In fact, whenever speeds are comparable to the speed of light, they no longer add up as simply as they did in Newton's world: v is no longer equal to v{-1} + v{-2}. Einstein worked out the correct formula. It still gives Newton's result at low speeds, but at high speeds you get a lower sum than you would have expected.   The other surprise -- and it's a whopper -- is that in order for the speed of light to be constant, distance and time must be relative. In other words, if two observers are moving relative to one another, they can disagree about the time interval between two events, or the distance between two points in space. Perhaps the most counterintuitive result is that a clock on board a rocket moving at high speed will appear to "tick" more slowly than an identical clock that is "stationary" (the quotation marks are just a reminder that different observers can disagree about which of them is moving and which is not). This effect is known as time dilation. As an example, consider an imaginary high-speed train carrying a "light beam clock" -- a clock made from a pair of parallel horizontal mirrors, one above the other, with a beam of light bouncing up and down between them. When the train is stationary, a person on board and a person standing on the platform both measure the same interval of time between each "tick" of the clock. When the train moves at close to the speed of light, however, an observer on the platform sees the beam of light trace out a diagonal or "sawtooth" path. Therefore, the distance the beam of light travels during each "tick" is larger. But -- and this is the crucial part -- Einstein's second postulate requires that the speed of light is still measured as having the same value. Since speed is equal to distance multiplied by time, and the distance is larger, the time between each "tick" must increase. Therefore, an observer on the ground sees the clock on board the moving train as running slow. But the observer on board the train comes to the opposite conclusion: He would see a light beam in a similar clock on the ground as tracing out a diagonal path, and conclude that it was running slow. In keeping with Einstein's first postulate, there is no special, "preferred" reference frame -- both descriptions are equally valid. The time-dilation effects are negligible at everyday speeds, but become significant as one approaches the speed of light. But time dilation is just the beginning. One also sees the moving train as having shrunk -- that is, its length will appear to be shorter (though only along the direction of motion). And its mass will appear to increase. These seemingly bizarre results -- time dilation, length contraction and mass increase -- have all been confirmed in countless laboratory experiments. In a short follow-up paper published in the fall of 1905, Einstein discovered yet another surprising consequence of his postulates: A link between matter and energy, embodied in what is now the most famous equation in the world: E = mc{+2}. The theory Einstein outlined in his paper of June, 1905, is called special relativity because it deals only with objects moving at a constant speed. Later, he expanded his theory to include accelerated motion and gravity, an effort known as general relativity.   Why does time slow down? Case A: Train stationary ( that is, not moving relative to an observer standing on the plateform: Imagine a "light beam clock" - a clock that measures time by means of a beam of light travelling up and down between two parallel horizontal mirrors on a train. We can imagine that every cycle of the beam - up and back down again - represents one "tick" of the clock. When the train is stationary, a person on board the train and another person standing on the platform each measures the same interval of time between each "tick" of the clock.     Case B: Train moving near speed of light: As seen from the platform, the beam of light now traces out a diagonal or "sawtooth" path. Therefore, the distance the beam of light has to move between each "tick" is increased. However, according to Albert Einstein's postulates of special relativity, the speed of light is still measured as having the same value - that is, the beam is seen as travelling at the same speed in Case B as in Case A. Because speed is equal to distance divided by time, the time between each "tick" must increase. Therefore, an observer on the ground sees the clock on board the moving train as running slow.   EINSTEIN'S LIFE MILESTONES CHRONOLOGY FROM BIRTH TO DEATH 1879: Born in Ulm, Germany; the family moves to Munich the following year. 1900: Graduates from the Zurich Polytechnic Institute; publishes his first scientific paper. 1902: Begins his first full-time job, examining patents in a government office in Bern, Switzerland. 1903: Marries Mileva Maric, a physics student. 1905: Completes his "miracle year," in which he writes four groundbreaking papers, including the one that introduces his theory of relativity; this work is now known as special relativity. 1905: Discovers the formula E = mc{+2}. 1913: Moves to Berlin.   1915-16: Completes his general theory of relativity, describing gravity as a warping of space and time. 1919: General relativity is confirmed by bending of starlight during a solar eclipse; Einstein becomes a household name. Marries his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, after divorcing Mileva. 1921: First visit to the United States; with Chaim Weizmann, raises funds for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 1921: Receives the Nobel Prize in physics, primarily for his work on the photoelectric effect. 1933: Accepts position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. 1939: Signs a letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt urging the United States to develop an atomic bomb ahead of Germany. 1952: Is offered, but graciously declines, the presidency of Israel. 1955: Dies in Princeton. BERN, SWITZERLAND WHERE EINSTEIN'S GENIOUS BLOOMED It was in Bern that the physicist landed his first real job --  and had his first great insights into the nature of the universe By DAN FALK:  Special to Canadian The Globe and Mail: Saturday, June 25, 2005 Page T3 BERN, SWITZERLAND -- Albert Einstein was 22 when he arrived in Bern, Switzerland, in 1902 -- unemployed, travelling on foot, and carrying little more than the clothes on his back. Within three years, however, he would become a husband and a father, and -- oh, yes -- develop a radical new picture of space and time that would change the world forever. With 2005 marking both the 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity and the 50th anniversary of the scientist's death, Bern is experiencing an influx of Einstein-minded visitors. Einstein wasn't born here -- that honour goes to the southern German city of Ulm, about 270 kilometres away. Nor did he remain in Bern for very long -- in less than a decade, with his genius bringing increased fame, academic positions would draw him to Zurich, Prague and Berlin, before the rise of nazism forced him to leave Europe for good. But it was here in the picturesque Swiss capital that the ambitious young physicist got his first real job -- an entry-level position examining patent applications in a government office. And it was here that Einstein had his first great insights into the nature of the universe. Unlike the modern metropolises of Geneva and Zurich, Bern has kept one foot squarely in the medieval world. In the nearly thousand-year span of Bern's history, the century that has passed since Einstein's time is a mere blip. Arcades line the narrow streets of the Aldstadt, or old city, dotted every few yards with colourful fountains, many of them dating to the 16th century. Visitors who climb the Gothic spire of the city's cathedral -- at 100 metres in height, one of the tallest in Switzerland -- are rewarded with sweeping views of red-tile roofs, church spires, and the churning, blue waters of the Aare river. Walking along Bern's cobbled streets, past sculptures and façades that have changed little in the past century, it is easy to imagine Einstein's daily life. We can picture him leaving the patent office, perhaps whistling a Mozart tune, and strolling leisurely to his modest but comfortable home. That apartment, at Kramgasse 49, stands in the middle of a row of plain, low-rise residential buildings in the heart of the old city, midway between the cathedral and the magnificent 13th-century clock tower. In the autumn of 1903, the young Einstein was earning enough money to rent a suite of third-floor rooms here -- a site now designated as Einstein House. It has been a museum since 1979, and since then nearly a quarter-million visitors from more than 150 countries have toured its rooms, restored to reflect the style of the period.   The apartment, reached by a steep, narrow staircase, consisted of just two rooms, though one of them had two large windows looking out onto Kramgasse. (The museum is somewhat larger, having absorbed several adjacent rooms; it is also in the process of expanding into the floor above.) The living room has just a few touches of elegance: stucco ceilings, floral wallpaper and decorative flourishes on the trim atop each wall. The wooden floorboards are still original; Einstein's furniture is long gone, but the museum is constantly acquiring period pieces. A replica of the scientist's stand-up wooden desk from the patent office is on display, along with his doctoral thesis and even his high-school report cards (which show that he wasn't a bad student after all, contrary to popular myth). On the walls are dozens of historical photographs. There are pictures of Einstein, of course; his wife Mileva Maric, a former classmate from his university days in Zurich; and their two children, Hans Albert and Eduard. There are also photos of his patent office colleague and life-long friend Michele Besso, and the man who helped him land the job, Marcel Grossman. Another photo shows Einstein with two of his closest intellectual partners, Conrad Habicht and Maurice Solovine, with whom he formed a club nicknamed the "Olympic Academy." All of these young thinkers -- his wife and the four men -- were invaluable "sounding boards" as Einstein mulled over the physics problems of the day, his thoughts slowly evolving toward the breakthrough of relativity. The job at the patent office and the move to 49 Kramgasse marked the first real security Einstein had known. It gave him the confidence to finally ask Mileva to marry him, and it was here that their first son, Hans Albert, was born. Einstein's salary -- 3,500 francs a year -- was not much, but it was enough to cover the rent and the family's most basic needs. "Einstein was so happy and so proud that he could, for the first time in his young life, rent an apartment like that," says Ruth Aegler, a tour guide at the museum. "Only 60 square metres. That's not much, but for him it was absolutely luxury." By day, Einstein pored over the hundreds of applications that passed across his desk. But his true passion was not gadgetry but the underlying theory, the machinery of the cosmos itself. In these cramped rooms, he scribbled the formulas that would become the first part of his theory of relativity, known as special relativity. And he did it largely in a few precious hours of free time each day. "That young man worked eight hours a day, six days a week," Aegler says. "He came home in the evening about 6 o'clock; first he took his baby on his knees, then he took his violin and played for his family, for the children waiting downstairs on the street. And after dinner -- and it was always a very modest dinner, because they didn't have much money -- his friends came for long discussions, past midnight." And from those discussions -- swirling conversations about physics and philosophy, fuelled by cigarettes and Turkish coffee -- came the seeds of special relativity. In his first relativity paper Einstein recognized that the speed of light was a universal constant, while space and time were as flexible as rubber.   INFORMATION TO VISIT EINSTEIN'S HOUSE Few of today's visitors to Einstein House, however, are professional scientists. Instead, they come drawn by Einstein's universal appeal as a man of enormous compassion as well as otherworldly intellect, a kind of secular saint for the scientific age. GETTING THERE Bern's small airport has direct flights to major European cities. Trains to Geneva take two hours; to Zurich, 75 minutes. THINGS TO DO Einstein Haus: Kramgasse 49; 41 (31) 312-0091; http://www.einstein-bern.ch. Exhibits and photos dedicated to Einstein's life and work. Open daily 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Admission about $7. Kunstmuseum: Hodlerstrasse 12; 41 (31) 328-0944; http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch. Bern's art museum has the world's largest Paul Klee collection; works by Picasso, Pollock, and other 20th-century greats upstairs. Open Tuesday 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Wedneday-Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission about $8.   Cathedral of St. Vincent: Munsterplatz; 41(31)312-0462. Fifteenth-century cathedral offers spectacular views from the top of its 91-metre bell tower. Open Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission to viewing platform about $2.50. WHERE TO STAY Belle Epoque: Gerechtigkeitsgasse 18; 41 (31) 311-4336; http://www.belle-epoque.ch. Elegant historic building with recently renovated art deco-style rooms. Doubles from about $290. Hotel Glocke: Rathausgasse 75; 41 (31) 311-3771; http://www.chilisbackpackers.com/english.htm. Budget hotel with small, clean rooms, located in the heart of the Old City. Double with shared bath about $115. No breakfast. MORE INFORMATION General information on Bern and Switzerland can be found on-line at http://www.berninfo.com and http://www.myswitzerland.com.

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