Einstein's Big Idea
7.2
120 minutes
10/11/2005
Overview
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.
Cast List
Aidan McArdle
as Einstein
Anton Lesser
as Voltaire
Andrew Callaway
as Maupertuis
Julian Rhind-Tutt
as Antoine Lavoisier
Shirley Henderson
as Mileva Maric
Ty Glaser
as Marie Anne Lavoisier
Andy Crabbe
as Habicht
Samuel West
as Humphry Davy
Daniel D'Alessandro
as Algarotti
Brendan Fleming
as Hermann Einstein
Gregory Fox-Murphy
as Brande
Philip Herbert
as Count de Amerval
Chris Jenkinson
as Dr. Haller
Wolf Kahler
as Horlein
George Layton
as Emilie’s Father
Alex Macqueen
as Chater
Richard Mulholland
as Emilie’s Tutor
Stephen Noonan
as Marat
Christopher Eccleston
as Narrator (voice)
John Lithgow
as Narrator (voice) U.S. edition
Steven Robertson
as Michael Faraday
Christian Rubeck
as Otto Hahn
Emily Woof
as Lise Meitner
Ian Duncan
as Charles de Breteuil
James Tovell
as Manson