Explore Movies TV Shows Live TV

Einstein's Big Idea

The story behind the world's most famous equation, E = mc2

7.2

2005•2h

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.

Production

Production

Trailers & Videos

Thumbnail for video: Einstein's Big Idea - Preview (PBS-NOVA) Music: Michael J McEvoy

Einstein's Big Idea - Preview (PBS-NOVA) Music: Michael J McEvoy

Cast

Photo of Aidan McArdle

Aidan McArdle

Einstein

Photo of Anton Lesser

Anton Lesser

Voltaire

Photo of Julian Rhind-Tutt

Julian Rhind-Tutt

Antoine Lavoisier

Photo of Shirley Henderson

Shirley Henderson

Mileva Maric

Photo of Ty Glaser

Ty Glaser

Marie Anne Lavoisier

Photo of Samuel West

Samuel West

Humphry Davy

Photo of Wolf Kahler

Wolf Kahler

Horlein

Photo of George Layton

George Layton

Emilie’s Father

Photo of Alex Macqueen

Alex Macqueen

Chater

Photo of Christopher Eccleston

Christopher Eccleston

Narrator (voice)

Photo of John Lithgow

John Lithgow

Narrator (voice) U.S. edition

Photo of Steven Robertson

Steven Robertson

Michael Faraday

Photo of Christian Rubeck

Christian Rubeck

Otto Hahn

Photo of Emily Woof

Emily Woof

Lise Meitner

More Like This

Backdrop for Awake

65% Match2007HD

Awake

While undergoing heart surgery, a man experiences a phenomenon called ‘anesthetic awareness’, which leaves him awake but paralyzed throughout the operation. As various obstacles present themselves, his wife must make life-altering decisions while wrestling with her own personal drama.

Backdrop for Ninotchka

75% Match1939HD

Ninotchka

A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.

Backdrop for Toy Story 4

75% Match2019HD

Toy Story 4

Woody has always been confident about his place in the world and that his priority is taking care of his kid, whether that's Andy or Bonnie. But when Bonnie adds a reluctant new toy called "Forky" to her room, a road trip adventure alongside old and new friends will show Woody how big the world can be for a toy.

Backdrop for Titanic

79% Match1997HD

Titanic

101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.

Backdrop for Oppenheimer

80% Match2023HD

Oppenheimer

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

Backdrop for Joker

81% Match2019HD

Joker

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

Backdrop for Inside Out

79% Match2015HD

Inside Out

When 11-year-old Riley moves to a new city, her Emotions team up to help her through the transition. Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness work together, but when Joy and Sadness get lost, they must journey through unfamiliar places to get back home.

Backdrop for Back to the Future

83% Match1985HD

Back to the Future

Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.

Backdrop for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

74% Match2019HD

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…

Backdrop for In Time

70% Match2011HD

In Time

In the not-too-distant future, the aging gene has been switched off. To avoid overpopulation, time has become the currency and the way people pay for luxuries and necessities. The rich can live forever, while the rest struggle to negotiate for their immortality. A poor young man who suddenly comes into a fortune of time finds himself on the run from a corrupt police force known as the "time keepers".

Backdrop for Soul

81% Match2020HD

Soul

Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.

Backdrop for Call Me by Your Name

81% Match2017HD

Call Me by Your Name

In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.

Backdrop for PK

77% Match2014HD

PK

A stranger in the city asks questions no one has asked before. Known only by his initials, the man's innocent questions and childlike curiosity take him on a journey of love, laughter and letting go.

Backdrop for Extraction

73% Match2020HD

Extraction

A hardened gun-for-hire's latest mission becomes a soul-searching race to survive when he's sent into Bangladesh to rescue a drug lord's kidnapped son.

Backdrop for Eden Lake

68% Match2008HD

Eden Lake

When a young couple goes to a remote wooded lake for a romantic getaway, their quiet weekend is shattered by an aggressive group of local kids. Rowdiness quickly turns to rage as the teens terrorize the couple in unimaginable ways, and a weekend outing becomes a bloody battle for survival.

Backdrop for The Truman Show

82% Match1998HD

The Truman Show

An insurance salesman begins to suspect that his whole life is actually some sort of reality TV show.

Backdrop for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

71% Match1938HD

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

A beautiful girl, Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of seven dwarfs to hide from her stepmother, the wicked Queen. The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as "the fairest in the land," and Snow White's beauty surpasses her own.

Backdrop for Shutter Island

82% Match2010HD

Shutter Island

World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.

Backdrop for Tenet

72% Match2020HD

Tenet

Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

Backdrop for Interstellar

85% Match2014HD

Interstellar

The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

Reviews

No reviews available yet.