American Masters

American Masters is a great show, playing various episodes on WGBH & other PBS stations recently. I had seen a little bit of the show on James Dean last weekend...but today saw the entire hour of Albert Einstein: How I See the World .

More about the show at the link above, but here is a preview: Expelled from high school, unable to find a teaching job, and stuck working at a government patent office, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) went on to become one of the greatest scientific thinkers of all time. He used his free time at the Swiss Patent Office to develop his groundbreaking theories on the nature of time and space. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 for his theory that light is made of waves as well as particles. Although his early theories paved the way for the atomic bomb, Einstein later became a peace activist, saying, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." By the time he died, Einstein was considered not only the most important scientist but the smartest man of his time.