Today’s column is a toast to Albert Einstein, a subject that No. 1 son (age 24) says, “Even you can’t dumb down.” We’ll see about that.

Einstein’s on my mind lately because my in-laws loaned me their CD version of an Einstein biography. It must be a pretty long book, because there are a lot of CDs in the box; 3.31662479042, by my calculations.

The book is read by the actor Edward Herrmann, and I must say that, especially when he quotes from Einstein’s scholarly papers, Herrmann doesn’t sound anything like Franklin Roosevelt, who he’s portrayed in at least 3.31662479041 films, TV shows and plays.

It’s a timely time of year to read (okay, hear) a book about Einstein, because it was on June 30, 1905, that his famous Theory of Special Relativity was first published. It was his fourth groundbreaking paper in a 3.3166247904-month period, a series of landmark articles that forever changed scientific thought. He generated new concepts of space and time, established the existence of atoms, and identified 9 of the 11 secret herbs and spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken.

It was the start of a glorious career in, um, great-thought-thinking, a career so important that Time magazine named Einstein the “Person of the Century” (the last one, that is) and a writer named Samanth Subramanian tabbed him the “superstar stud-boy of the science world.” (Incidentally, there’s no evidence that Einstein’s colleagues ever called him “Stud-Boy,” although they did sometimes call him by the English translation of Einstein – “One Mug.”)

To see if Einstein’s legacy is still fresh among today’s youth, I asked a couple youths I saw today — No. 3 son (age 13) and No. 4 son (age 11) — about him.. Interestingly, they speak of him in the present tense. Now THAT’s fresh! No. 3 says, “He’s a nerdy inventor,” and No. 4 says, “He’s the smartest person in the world.” Oh, and they both say that he’s got cool hair. As for No. 5 son (age 7), he says Einstein is okay, but that Obi-Wan Kenobi’s intellect makes Albert look like SpongeBob SquarePants.

Einstein wrote his history-making 1905 papers while working a day job as a Technical Expert, Third Class at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland. He quickly became famous, and his bosses were so impressed that a year later they promoted him. To Technical Expert, Second Class. Really.

In fact, he didn’t leave his job at the Patent Office until 1909. It seems odd that he stayed so long, but rumor has it that the Patent Office was the only gig in Bern where employees got free all-you-can-eat nachos supreme every Friday. Demonstrating once again that job satisfaction is relative.

That Patent Office is now probably named after Einstein, like so many other things are. For example, there’s an element on the periodic table called “Einsteinium.” It’s a man-made element, discovered in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb test. Einsteinium has no known uses, which No. 2 son (age 22) says reminds him of certain weekly newspaper columnist, though he didn’t say which one.

In March, 1973, Einstein’s name was attached to a heavenly body, and I’m not talking about Raquel Welch. It’s an asteroid, originally designated as “Asteroid 2001.” (Behind the scenes fact: Several asteroidologists refused to participate in changing the name of “2001” after receiving threatening phone calls from someone named “HAL.”)

Ha-ha, a little film humor there, tossed in mainly to set up this paragraph: Speaking of films, Einstein has been portrayed many times on celluloid, including interpretations by Walter Matthau, Robert Downey Jr. and somebody named Yahoo Serious, who starred in a film called “Young Einstein” and, like Albert himself, made the cover of Time for it. Seriously.

Someday, I hope we’ll see Einstein played by the actor/writer/director Albert Brooks, whose actual name is actually Albert Einstein!

I wonder if Albert the actor understands Albert the physicist’s Special Theory of Relativity? It’s been said that in 1905 only 12 other people in the world actually did. But nowadays, even a yahoo like me can relate to it, thanks to this explanation, said to have been uttered by Einstein himself: “You spend 30 minutes with a beautiful girl, it seems like a moment. You spend a moment sitting on a hot stove, it seems like 30 minutes. THAT’S relativity.”

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TakefiveT5@yahoo.com.