  Year 2005 was the World Year of Physics, and it was commemorated worldwide as
the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's legendary works in which the
foundations of at least three areas of modern physics were laid: statistical
mechanics, quantum mechanics and special relativity. These works turned year
1905 in what deservedly was called the "miraculous year" (annus mirabilis) of
Einstein. However, the influence of this great mind was not limited to science.
As it is well known, his fingerprint remains engraved in many aspects of our
daily life. Because of that, in this work we have tried to cover almost all the
subjects in which Einstein was involved during the last century and, of course,
try and reveal the future projection his actions will have in this new century
that has just begun. Among the subjects covered in the volume one can find the
possible connection between Einstein and the artistic vanguard movement, his
religiosity, his days in Argentina, the Nobel Prize, the Einstein-Freud
correspondence, his pacifism and the nuclear energy, science and politics under
the Second Empire and the Weimar Republic, and even a description of his
patents and experiments, the studies performed to search for "built-in"
features in his brain and the doubts many had regarding whether Einstein was a
genius or a crank. Also included are essays on Einstein and Borges, philosophy
and relativity, Mach's principle, the relation among science, arts and
humanities, and, closer to Einstein's own theoretical research, the twin
paradox, chance and quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, gravitational lenses,
string theory, holography and black holes, gravitomagnetism, superconductivity,
gravitational waves, the photoelectric effect and the alternative theories for
gravitation.
