"The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious."

In 1905, an unknown assistant clerk in the Swiss Patent Office named Albert Einstein published four scientific papers that revolutionized physics and forever changed our notions of time and space.

In March, he proved that light behaved as particles, not waves, and in May, that atoms exist not as abstract concepts but as actual units. In June, he showed that the mechanical laws of relativity applied to light. And in September, he published his famous formula, E=mc2, proving energy becomes matter, and matter, energy. The whirlwind pace of these breakthroughs was remarkable. In a letter to his son, he said of that period: ìa storm broke loose in my brain.î Over night, Einstein became one of the most important scientific minds in history, winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

When Hitler came to power, Einstein saw the trouble ahead, and joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ. He worked at the Institute until his death, walking to the office from his home at 112 Mercer Street. Einstein fought against fascism in Germany in the thirties, and from his new home in Princeton, used his celebrity status to become a voice for peace, tolerance, civil rights and the Jewish homeland in Palestine.