2005-10-11 • 55 min
Exactly 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. 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 documentary, Einstein's Big Idea illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unrevealing the story of how it came to be.
John Lithgow
Narrator
Aidan McArdle
Albert Einstein
Shirley Henderson
Mileva Maric
Steven Robertson
Michael Faraday
Julian Rhind-Tutt
Antoine Lavoisier
Ty Glaser
Marie Anne Lavoisier
Brendan Fleming
Hermann Einstein
Stephen Noonan
Marat
Anton Lesser
Voltaire
Emily Woof
Lise Meitner
Christian Pedersen
Otto Hahn
Alex Macqueen
Chater
Samuel West
Humphry Davy
Robert Styles
Newman
Philip Herbert
Count de Amerval
Di Trevis
Baroness de la Garde
James Tovell
Manson