
"The story behind the world's most famous equation, E = mc2"
Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation. E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905, including the completion of his special theory of relativity, his identification of proof that atoms exist, and his explanation of the nature of light, which would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among Einstein's ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous. Yet how many people know what it really means? In a thought-provoking and engrossing docudrama, NOVA illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unraveling the story of how it came to be.
Einstein

Voltaire

Maupertuis
Antoine Lavoisier

Mileva Maric

Marie Anne Lavoisier

Habicht
Humphry Davy

Algarotti
Hermann Einstein
Brande
Count de Amerval
Dr. Haller
Horlein

Emilie’s Father

Chater

Emilie’s Tutor
Marat
Narrator (voice)

Narrator (voice) U.S. edition

Michael Faraday

Otto Hahn

Lise Meitner

Charles de Breteuil
Manson