on this day: june 30th

120 years ago - 1905, Einstein's On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies

On June 30th, Albert Einstein submitted On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies to Annalen der Physik, the leading German physics journal of the time, and what would come to be known as his Special Theory of Relativity was born.

Scientists in Einstein's day searched for a unifying theory that would explain both electromagnetism and mechanics. Einstein's relativity paper showed that time and space are not a priori categories of human understanding; rather, they are relative quantities that are defined operationally.

On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies was the third of the four Annus Mirabilis or Miracle Year papers Einstein published 1905.