CREDIT: Associated Press Einstein writes out an equation for the density of the Milky Way on the blackboard at the Carnegie Institute, Mt. Wilson Observatory headquarters, in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 14, 1931.

Shortly after Albert Einstein's arrival at Princeton, where he settled after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, a telephone call was taken in the dean's office. "May I speak with Dean Eisenhart, please?" the speaker asked. On being told that the dean was out, the caller asked, "Perhaps you can tell me where Dr. Einstein lives." Since it had been agreed that everything should be done to protect Einstein from inquisitive callers, the request was politely refused. Whereupon "the voice on the telephone dropped to a near whisper," wrote Eisenhart, "and continued. 'Please do not tell anybody, but I am Dr. Einstein. I am on my way home and have forgotten where my house is.' "

As recounted in The Life and Times -- Einstein by Ronald W. Clark.

VICTORIA - As the United Nations designated 2005 International Year of Physics gathers steam with specialist conferences and public outreach programs happening globally, Albert Einstein, -- Time magazine's "Person of the 20th Century," physics' favourite son and the world's synonym for genius -- is front and centre.

This is, after all, is the man who, 100 years ago, at the tender age of 26, in a seven-month period wrote four major papers (followed by another in 1907), upending Sir Isaac Newton's absolute laws of physics, which had been the accepted wisdom for more than 240 years. The man who proved that space and time were not, as everybody had thought, three dimensional, but actually that the universe has four dimensions, and yet a man who remained, until his death 50 years ago, humbled and challenged by "the deep underlying sense of the mystery of things."

A man who sometimes couldn't find his way home.

"Einstein changed the world of physics by changing our concept of space and time and also changed the way we looked at gravity," says Professor Fred Cooperstock of the University of Victoria, whose professional career has been bound up with the general relativity speciality. In Cooperstock's campus office, pictures of the great man beam down from the office wall, while the professor discusses the Einstein phenomenon.

"While doing postdoctoral work at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, I had the great good fortune to sublet the apartment of Professor Cornelius Lanczos, a Hungarian physicist who knew Einstein well and worshipped every bit of his being. Books, pictures of and letters from Einstein lay around everywhere. I would quiver holding those letters in my hands."

Later, Cooperstock worked with Professor Nathan Rosen at the Technion (MIT equivalent) in Haifa, Israel. Considered the most important contributor on Einstein's collaborative papers, Rosen, an almost-octogerian when Cooperstock worked with him, still put in a six-day working week.

"Rosen would arrive early in the morning, we would talk, and then think. Rosen would then re-appear at 1:30 every day and ask me, 'What's new?' I have never worked so hard in my life. One time we were discussing an idea, when Rosen reminisced, 'At this stage, Einstein would say, "I wonder which path God would take at this point?' "

After walking me through a layperson's explanation of Einstein's famous 1905 papers, Cooperstock, 64, also explains the concept of general relativity, which Einstein began in 1907, took only six to eight weeks to put together, but -- due to the complicated math -- took another eight years to prove.

"General Relativity," Cooperstock says, "is, in a nutshell, Einstein's theory of gravity. Einstein said that Newton's gravity implies this: If I wave my hands, changing the distribution of matter in the universe, the gravity (as per Newton) changes all over the universe at once.

"Now, with special relativity under your belt," [see accompanying story], "this could not happen, so Einstein knew the Newtonian theory could not incorporate gravity properly. So now we have a new theory of gravity and the new theory of gravity is one in which you look upon gravity as just the twisting of space and time (the hardest things to get one's mind around). Think of the flatness of space and a ball -- which is curved -- and this is the nature of gravity, which is to make the flatness of space curve like a ball, curving (or warping) space. You need huge masses like the sun to show differences between Newton's gravity and Einstein's gravity, one proof of which was during a 1919 total eclipse of the sun."

Cooperstock goes on to point out some of the current scientific frontiers enabled by Einstein's physics. He talks of gravity waves (whose source some scientists say may be colliding galaxies) and of the possible existence of neutron stars, made up of material so dense that a tiny amount could weigh tons. Detecting these, Cooperstock explains, would provide a window into "dramatic events" and lead to new technology.

Over in Vancouver, astrophysics is also the passion of 18-year old UBC physics undergrad Reka Moldovan, the first summer 2004 winner of the TRIUMF/Science Council of B.C. high school fellowship. During her fellowship, Moldovan had been assigned to work in the field of superconductors, but found that attending a week-long cosmo-astrophysics conference on "Nuclei in the Cosmos" was a lot more fun. She subsequently gave a much-lauded presentation on the conference to the director and other students at TRIUMF.

Like UVic's Cooperstock, Moldovan exudes a scientist's enthusiasm for Einstein. "For sure he's a total role model," she says. "I consider his genius is that he discovered his theories by himself. Today, groups work together on coming up with solutions. Now it is impossible, like Einstein did, to come up with a theory all on your own."

Her current leisure reading reflects Einstein's legacy -- Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything, by Hungarian scientist Ervin Laszlo, which explores the concept of a unified theory of the universe, the solution to which eluded Einstein to his grave.

While tipping her cap to Einstein, Moldovan also reveres scientist Stephen Hawking -- a "scientific hero because of his accomplishments, a genius despite his disabilities" -- succinctly explaining the concept of Hawking's black holes as "big blobs of mass so dense that even light can't escape them, because it is drawn in by their gravitational pull."

Immigrating with her family to Canada from Transylvania at the age of 13, speaking no English, Moldovan went to Kelowna high school and now attends UBC on a full scholarship. She credits her Romanian father with stoking her passion for physics and Einstein's laws, by introducing her at the age of 12 to the sci-fi novels of Isaac Asimov.

Speaking fluent, flawless English and seamlessly explaining complicated concepts, adding that her goal would be to discover how the universe evolved, "more where we came from and where we are going, what's governing the physics laws," Moldovan reveals that trait common to many scientists, the trait for which Einstein is best remembered: immense powers of concentration.

True, Einstein could not speak his native German fluently until the age of nine and subsequently appeared vague about world matters, but when his mind was on physics, Einstein thought with a laser-like intensity.

Beguiling images abound. There is Einstein standing under a lamp in a snowstorm in the winter of 1912, handing his umbrella to a companion and jotting down formulas for 10 minutes while snowflakes fell on his notebook. There is Einstein covering a much-prized fancy party tablecloth with equations while simultaneously talking to his stunned host. And there is Einstein, indifferent to danger and death, even when the Nazis put a price on his head. The keen sailor who never learned to swim. The avid traveller who never learned to drive a car.

Yet all these practicalities pall in the face of Einstein the scientist, his legacy to subsequent scientists and the technology that has evolved from his findings.

At UBC's TRIUMF facility, Dr. Marcellos Pavan discusses some of these technologies. Were it not for designers factoring in relativity to Global Positioning Systems (GPS), the whole system would go wrong in 20 minutes. GPS depends on corrections to the timing signal from the effects of both special relativity (the satellite is moving very fast) and general relativity (the satellite is in a weaker gravitational field).

Without these corrections, GPS would be useless. GPS, Pavan adds, is used in all sorts of research efforts as well, including measuring the amount of moisture in the atmosphere and watching ground levels rise and fall.

Explaining the photolectric effect as "when light knocks electrons off a material," Pavan adds that "this is how digital cameras work: light knocks electrons off the CCD silicon chips, which are then collected and stored."

Brownian motion, which is the effect of small particles being buffeted around by atoms, is used by atmospheric scientists to study the transport of atmospheric pollutants and blowing snow. Biophysicists used these techniques to study how proteins fold and how DNA interacts. Engineers, Pavan adds, "are studying things called Brownian sieves, which use the effect to separate small particles in a fluid, according to their size. These could be as large as water pollutants, or as small as viruses in a blood sample."

"In 1917," he says, "decades before the first laser was made, Einstein also wrote the first paper on the theory of stimulated emission. He didn't predict lasers, but he did write down the theory that predicted how they work once somebody made one. Lasers are now used everywhere in such places as CD players."

Though Einstein was ultimately unsuccessful in formulating a single ultimate theory that would explain the existence of all matter, all energy and all forces in the universe (the unified field theory), at age 16, in sloping and spidery Gothic spript on five pages of lined paper, he had already written Uber die Untersuchung des Aetherzustandes im magnetischen Felde (Concerning the Investigation State of Ether in Magnetic Fields).

Though as an adult he subsequently demolished Newton's universe of absolute space and absolute time, Einstein never took full credit, saying "the four men who laid the foundations of physics on which I have been able to construct my theory are Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Lorentz."

"Science," said the great French mathematician Jules Henry Poincare, "is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house."

Most eminent scientists are fulfilled when they build a shelter. Einstein constructed a universe. q

Vancouver-based author Isabel Nanton has written for The Vancouver Sun about the fast-melting snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

- TRIUMF is holding three free public lectures on Einstein's science from 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 26, March 19 and April 16 at the TRIUMF auditorium at the University of B.C. Seating is limited to 85 people. Register online at www.triumf.ca

Profile of Albert Einstein.