Albert Einstein

German-born theoretical physicist (1879–1955), author of the special and general theories of relativity — and, in Fuller's own telling, the scientist whose ideas he dared to explain to a general audience.

Einstein reshaped twentieth-century physics by dissolving absolute space and time and making energy, not static matter, the fundamental currency of the universe. That shift — from things to events, from matter to energy — is exactly the ground on which Fuller built his own "energetic" cosmology.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: influence on Fuller. In Nine Chains to the Moon (1938) Fuller included a lay exposition of Einstein's theories, and afterward told the much-repeated — but never independently confirmed — story that Einstein, on meeting him, said "Young man, you amaze me." Whether or not the anecdote is literally true, Einstein's relativity and the primacy of energy over static matter run through the synergetic, "energy-as-number" worldview of R. Buckminster Fuller — who treated Einstein as license for a physics-grounded, whole-systems view of Universe.

See Also

• Nine Chains to the Moon (Nine Chains to the Moon) — the book that recounts Fuller's engagement with Einstein's theories
• Isaac Newton (Isaac Newton) — the classical physicist Fuller paired against Einstein

Sources

• Nine Chains to the Moon (source reference) — the work documenting the Einstein connection