But the landmark event—the dawn of a new age—came in 1905, when there appeared in the German physics journal Annalen der Physik a series of papers by a young Swiss bureaucrat who had no university affiliation, no access to a laboratory, and the regular use of no library greater than that of the national patent office in Bern, where he was employed as a technical examiner third class. (An application to be promoted to technical examiner second class had recently been rejected.)
但是，劃時代意義的事件——一個新時代的黎明——要到1905年才發(fā)生。當(dāng)時，德國的物理學(xué)雜志《物理學(xué)年鑒》發(fā)表了一系列論文，作者是一位年輕的瑞士職員。他沒有上過大學(xué)，沒有用過實驗室，通常跑的也只是伯爾尼國家專利局的小小圖書館。他是專利局的三級技術(shù)審查員。（他申請?zhí)嵘秊槎墝彶閱T，但遭到了拒絕。）
His name was Albert Einstein, and in that one eventful year he submitted to Annalen der Physik five papers, of which three, according to C. P. Snow, “were among the greatest in the history of physics”—one examining the photoelectric effect by means of Planck’s new quantum theory, one on the behavior of small particles in suspension (what is known as Brownian motion), and one outlining a special theory of relativity.
他的名字叫阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦。在那個重要的一年，他向《物理學(xué)年鑒》遞交了五篇論文，用C.P.斯諾的話來說，其中三篇“稱得上是物理學(xué)史上最偉大的作品”——一篇使用普朗克剛剛提出的量子理論審視光電效應(yīng)，一篇論述懸浮小粒子的狀況（即現(xiàn)在所謂的布朗運動），一篇概述了狹義相對論。
The first won its author a Nobel Prize and explained the nature of light (and also helped to make television possible, among other things). 3 The second provided proof that atoms do indeed exist—a fact that had, surprisingly, been in some dispute. The third merely changed the world.
第一篇解釋了光的性質(zhì)（還促使許多事情成為可能，其中包括電視），為作者贏得了一個諾貝爾獎。第二篇提供了證據(jù)，證明原子確實存在——令人吃驚的是，這個事實過去一直存在一些爭議。第三篇完全改變了世界。
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