section_path: Life and career/1900–1905: First scientific papers
section_name: 1900–1905: First scientific papers
paragraph_text: 1900–1905: First scientific papers
  
  Einstein's first paper, "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen" ("Conclusions drawn from the phenomena of capillarity"), in which he proposed a model of intermolecular attraction that he afterwards disavowed as worthless, was published in the journal Annalen der Physik in 1901. His 24-page doctoral dissertation also addressed a topic in molecular physics. Titled "Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen" ("A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions") and dedicated to his friend Marcel Grossman, it was completed on 30 April 1905 and approved by Professor Alfred Kleiner of the University of Zurich three months later. (Einstein was formally awarded his PhD on 15 January 1906.) Four other pieces of work that Einstein completed in 1905— his famous papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, his special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy —have led to the year being celebrated as an annus mirabilis for physics akin to 1666 (the year in which Isaac Newton experienced his greatest epiphanies). The publications deeply impressed Einstein's contemporaries.