SOURCE: "Harbinger of the Atomic Age," in Books That Changed the World, revised edition, American Library Association, 1978, pp. 374-82.

Downs was an American librarian, author, and editor whose professional life was committed to championing intellectual freedom and opposing literary censorship. In the following essay, originally published in the first edition of Books That Changed the World, he discusses various concepts rooted in Einstein's special and general theories of relativity and their impact on scientific study.

Albert Einstein is one of the rare figures in history who succeeded in becoming a legend of heroic proportions during his own lifetime. The more incomprehensible to the lay public his ideas appeared, the more intriguing they seemed, and the more Olympian their progenitor. As Bertrand Russell aptly remarked, "Everybody knows that Einstein has done something astonishing, but very few people know exactly what it is that he has done." To be told...