Bicycle stunts, rap music and modern dance -- all in the name of Einstein. Hardly E=mc2, but 100 years after Albert Einstein published three seminal research papers which changed scientific thinking about the universe forever, physicians are conscious they must rebrand their shunned science to appeal to young people. Einstein Year was launched in Britain this month at a youth driven ceremony at London's Science Museum where a BMX stunt rider performed an "Einstein flip", said to be the first bicycle stunt to be designed by a physicist.
"There tends to be a knee-jerk negative reaction about physics -- that it is boring and hard. What we are trying to do is change people's perceptions," said Caitlin Watson of the Institute of Physics (IoP) in London.
"We want to show that physics is not about the stereotype of the mad scientist. Physicists are normal people doing normal things."
Rap artist DJ Vader has also been drafted in by organisers to rebrand physics as cool. His love song "Einstein (not enough time)" has been adopted as the theme tune for the year-long celebrations across Britain.
It is unlikely he will ever replace Einstein as the face of science. Einstein's iconic image is known the world over.
"We remember (him) now mainly as an older man, the benign and unkempt sage on a poster and T-shirt," said Professor Martin Rees of Cambridge University.
"That's surprising because his great work was well over by the time he was 40. At that time (1905) ... he was a nattily dressed young professor. In a way, the icon is rather different from the man who made these great achievements."
Some people say the celebrations marking Einstein's annus mirabilis border on being irreverent.
"Of course, physics is a science used in all kinds of applications in technology, the environment etcetera, and anything we can do, even if it means dumbing down to enthuse young people about physics, is surely excellent," said Rees.
Einstein loved music and cycling. He was also a school drop-out.
He did so badly at school his teachers told his parents to take him out because he was "too stupid to learn" and it would be a waste of resources to invest time and energy in his education. The school suggested that his parents get him an easy, manual labour job as soon as they could.
He did finally graduate from the Polytechnic School in Zurich, but could not find a job in a university so he worked for the Swiss Patent Office and spent his spare time working on theoretical physics problems.
In 1905 while still at the patent office and at just 26 years of age, he published three papers in the leading German physics journal, Annalen der Physik.
The papers on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and special relativity contained explanations and ideas that changed the way we view the world. His work on photoelectric effect earned him a Nobel Prize in 1921.
Many of the great breakthroughs of the past century -- quantum theory, the computer revolution, nuclear power, lasers, space travel, Global Positioning Systems -- can in some way be put down to Einstein's genius.
In Britain, physics is declining in popularity. In the past decade, several of the country's university physics departments have closed.
It is in this light that physics is changing its lure. Vader's rap number is a prime example of the new marketing strategy.
He was inspired to "mix" the tune after spotting a quote from Einstein on a greeting card in a record shop. The quote reads: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."
"I thought yeah I like that and I jumped on the idea -- my song is about a boy who wants more time with his girl. The boy wants to travel at the speed of light -- 'cause that's when time freezes -- so he can spend more time with his girl," Vader said.
The relaunch of physics is as varied as Einstein's theories.
A modern dance production inspired by his theory of relativity will premiere in London later this year. The show, called "Constant Speed", has also been commissioned by the IoP.
"In Einstein Year we are trying to use activities which already interest young people and then use that as the hook to show them that physics is all around us," said Watson.
In 1933, Einstein escaped the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany by accepting a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in the United States where he spent the rest of his life. He was a pacifist and although he initially supported the use of atomic weapons as a deterrent in World War Two he later campaigned for nuclear disarmament and world peace. He died in 1955 of heart failure.
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