Among the many monuments in the city of Washington, there is one only a block from the National Mall which offers a more human scale than the better-known commemorations of the sacrifices of war and the drive and inspiration of presidents, while giving the imagination wings to span the Universe. In front of the National Academy of Sciences, amid a grove of elm and holly trees that has made it a pleasant diversion for countless groups of schoolchildren during sultry Washington summers, is a statue of Albert Einstein. Sculptor Robert Berks has depicted him seated in thought, holding a tablet as if to echo traditional depictions of Moses bearing the tablets of the Law. Einstein's single tablet also depicts law three equations characteristic of Einsteins's major contributions to physics. Two of them date from his "miracle year" of a century ago. That year, 1905, saw his publication first of his explanation of the emission of electric current from certain metals (the photoelectric effect) in terms of the particle-like behavior of light work which was the primary driver for his Nobel Prize in 1921 followed quickly by the first revolution of relativity. This paper, "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Kiirper" or "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", hid within a dry and pedestrian title a content which was explosive in both literal and metaphorical senses for physics, astrophysics, philosophy, and even the world balance of power. The tablet (Fig. 1.1) recognizes this with the most familiar equation in all of physics: E = mc2. The middle line of the tablet shows the relation between the energy of incoming radiation and electrons liberated by the photoelectric effect. The uppermost equation comes from the second of Einstein's revolutions, the formulation of general relativity. This work appeared only in 1916, after a digression as Einstein mastered the new mathematical tools it required. The bottom equation on the tablet relates the curvature of space to the density of mass and energy a discovery which superseded the physics of Newton, after two centuries, with an understanding which is at once more accurate and vastly stranger in concept.