In this resource, MIT professor and author (
Einstein's Dreams, Good Benito, and
Dance for Two) Alan Lightman explains the implications of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. General Relativity predicts, among other things, the bending of starlight by gravity, a slight irregularity in Mercury's orbit, and the existence of black holes.
Because no one else was thinking of gravity in the same terms as he was -- that is, as a geometrical phenomenon and a bending of time and space -- and because experimental results have yet to prove him wrong, Lightman states that Einstein merits the acclaim he has received as a scientist uniquely creative in his time.