RELATIVITY SPEAKING EINSTEIN EXHIBIT EXPLAINS THEORIES, MAN.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

While planning what has become the most comprehensive exhibit yet on Albert Einstein and his work, Michael M. Shara wanted to know what the public knew about the great man.

``And what we got back was `E = mc2,' we got back `genius,' we got back `atom bomb,' we got back `incomprehensible,' and we got back `hair,' '' says Shara, curator of the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

Shara's goal was to put together an exhibit that could connect as easily with those who truly understand the meaning of E = mc2 as it does with those who might have responded ``incomprehensible'' or ``hair.''

``Here was a man who, right after the first World War, when the world was still in terrible pain and turmoil, came in and presented something that was absolutely fresh, absolutely new, a kind of dreamer of human thoughts, human philosophy, that just captivated the public,'' Shara says. ``And as one of my colleagues in New York beautifully put it, he became overnight Madonna plus George Bush plus Tiger Woods rolled into one person.''

Today the cultural icon has faded, instead becoming a shorthand equation for genius. ``Einstein at the Skirball,'' a new exhibit on the life and work of the man who completely altered our concept of time and space, is out to change that perception. With its interactive experiences coupled with science, the exhibit manages to spark both the right and the left sides of the brain. And that's probably just as the violin-playing physicist would have wanted it.

It also has cheek. Look at the famous photo of the scientist with his tongue stuck out, and it's easy to speculate that Einstein would have been amused, maybe even pleased, that along with books about his work, the Skirball gift shop is selling life-size cardboard cutouts, T-shirts, mugs - even an Einstein action figure (complete with wild hair) and a bobblehead doll.

The exhibit, running through May 29, marks the centennial of Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis - the ``miracle year'' of 1905 in which at age 26 he published four landmark findings, including his Special Theory of Relativity and the well-known equation E = mc2.

When Einstein died in 1955, his will left his entire intellectual legacy to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, of which he was a founder. More than 50,000 items comprise its Albert Einstein Archives, and the bequest left it to the university's discretion as to how the papers, books, awards and photos would be used.

``Naturally, the only appropriate thing to do is share it with the world,'' says Hanoch Gutfreund, physicist and president emeritus of Hebrew University. The exhibit is a joint venture among the Skirball Center, Hebrew University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Related events are planned at the Skirball and California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where Einstein spent three winters in the 1930s and where his suite in the faculty club remains in demand.

Gutfreund calls Einstein ``a man through whom one can tell the story of the 20th century'' - its world wars, empires, nuclear weapons, mass communication and the emergence of the United States as a world power. ``This exhibit is an attempt to portray all of these phenomena.''

The exhibit couples artifacts from his greatest accomplishments in physics with installations that make those abstract concepts tangible. It includes sections on his personal life, his pacifism and other political beliefs, his legacy in the technical world and an interactive installation created by USC's Labyrinth Project focusing on Einstein's time in Southern California.

The opening feature is a projection of a camera aimed at exhibit guests, warping their image around a black hole in the same way that, as Einstein predicted, the gravity of a star warps the space around it and the waves of light traveling through that space. That Theory of General Relativity, which states that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, was confirmed in 1919 by British astronomers studying a solar eclipse. When Einstein was proven right, he instantly became a worldwide celebrity. The results were later verified with greater precision by the Hubble Space Telescope.

That fame led to Einstein teaching for several months at Caltech in Pasadena, where he hobnobbed with other kinds of stars - those from Hollywood.

The display of his landmark papers from 1905 is a single glass case about the size of a dining room table. In one paper, he elaborated on the principle of Brownian motion, leading to a greater understanding of the nature of matter at the molecular level.

Another explains the release of electrons from metal when the surface is hit with ultraviolet light. His work on the photoelectric effect, for which he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics, led to vacuum-tube technology and, ultimately, solid-state physics, which is the basis of contemporary electronic devices.

His theory of Special Relativity upended presumptions about the relationship of space and time. As Shara explains: ``You can move through space, Einstein tells us, or you can move through time, or you can move through both of them. And it turns out that you move at constant speed through both of them, not through one or the other. In other words, the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time.''

And there is E = mc2, which boils down the relationship between energy and mass to a simple equation.

``All of that - the basis of chemistry, the basis of in many ways the theory of stellar structure and evolution, how the stars evolve and how they power themselves, all of electronics, the modern information age - all that is in this one case,'' Shara says.

If all that boggles your mind, there are ``Explainers'' on hand to guide you through Einstein's universe. (If it doesn't boggle your mind and you're not a physicist, you may want to rethink your profession.)

For the rest of us, the Explainers will use a gravity table to demonstrate the curvature of space-time. This is accomplished, believe it or not, with a couple of spinning metal balls. There is also an interactive black-hole demonstration, but you don't have to worry about getting sucked in - except by your curiosity. After all, it was Einstein who once said, ``I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.''

While Einstein's scientific accomplishments tower over the exhibition, his personal life is on display as well.

Shara says that if Einstein were able to look at this exhibit, he might wish that his human failings, such as his affair with his second cousin during his first marriage, were not subject to such scrutiny. But he probably would smile at the innovative and dazzling ways in which his scientific ideas have been illustrated in the gallery.

``I'd like to think that he would enjoy it,'' Shara said. ``I hope and I think that perhaps he would give us ... an A+ for effort and a B+ for presentation.''

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

EINSTEIN AT THE SKIRBALL

Where: Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays; through May 29.

Tickets: $8 to $12. [phone] or www.ticketweb.com.

The inner (and outer) Einstein

FASHION: Einstein made earthshaking discoveries in science and corresponded with such important figures as Sigmund Freud and Franklin Roosevelt on matters of war and peace.

That did not, however, exempt him from the occasional silly interview question. He once was asked, ``What is the secret of your hairdo?''

He paused and replied, ``Neglect.''

LOVE: Einstein was a ladies' man, historians say, although one love letter to his first wife, Mileva Marec, a fellow doctoral student in physics, shows his rather odd idea of sweet nothings:

``My dear kitten, I just read a wonderful paper ... on the generation of cathode rays by ultraviolet light.''

SMARTS: Einstein dyslexic? Only a myth, curator Michael Shara says. A display of Einstein's school papers does away with the idea that he suffered from any learning disability in his youth. ``He did not misplace any letters. His handwriting was extremely precise, and his mode of thinking was that of a person who really thought extraordinarily clearly and had no learning disabilities.''

So where did this mistaken idea come from? Shara says Einstein's school inverted its grading scale - the lowest being 1 and the highest being 5 - the year he left high school, giving some researchers the impression that he failed miserably in the classroom.

FAME: David Baltimore, president of California Institute of Technology, said, ``Caltech honors Einstein as a scientist, and we admire him for the ability to take on the mantle of 'public intellectual.' ''

Einstein apparently did not bear that responsibility in comfort. ``For my disrespect for authority I am being punished with fame,'' he once said.

TO ERR ... : ``I made one mistake in my life - when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt advocating that the (atomic) bomb should be built.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) NICE GOING, EINSTEIN

Skirball celebrates intellect, irreverence of 20th century's greatest mind

(2) ``What is the secret of your hairdo?''

Einstein: `Neglect.'

(3) Find Einstein's theories puzzling? Don't worry - the Skirball Center has ``Explainers'' on hand to make sense of it all.

(4) Report card from 1896

Box: The inner (and outer) Einstein (see text)