As we approach the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (you have your party planned already, right?), how cool is it that some of his ideas are just now being proved as correct.

To be sure, he wasn’t right about everything. By physicist’s standards, he wasn’t terribly good at math, and he spent the last 30 years of his life chasing theoretical dead ends. But his ability to conceive the unimaginable and convey it clearly is unparalleled in history. From about 1905 to 1916 he was blessed with a clarity of thought that most of us can only dream about.