ABSTRACT
The first step to recognise a good idea is to have an idea. To decide if an idea is good is a critical step. Einstein’s life is beautifully documented in Abraham Pais’s biography of Einstein. A significant feature of Einstein’s 1905 special relativity paper is that it has no cited references. Pais elaborates at length about this, in particular, discussing the correspondence that Einstein had with Lorentz and Poincare. The conclusion of the award presentation was that the Nobel Prize was for his theory of the photoelectric effect, also published in 1905. Einstein’s law of the photo-electrical effect has been extremely rigorously tested by the American Millikan and his pupils and passed the test brilliantly. Owing to these studies by Einstein the quantum theory has been perfected to a high degree and an extensive literature grew up in this field whereby the extraordinary value of this theory was proved.
