Einstein's Big Idea

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.

Billed Cast

Aidan McArdle

Einstein

Anton Lesser

Voltaire

A

Andrew Callaway

Maupertuis

Julian Rhind-Tutt

Antoine Lavoisier

Shirley Henderson

Mileva Maric

Ty Glaser

Marie Anne Lavoisier

A

Andy Crabbe

Habicht

Samuel West

Humphry Davy

D

Daniel D'Alessandro

Algarotti

B

Brendan Fleming

Hermann Einstein

G

Gregory Fox-Murphy

Brande

P

Philip Herbert

Count de Amerval