Abstract
Einstein is best known for relativity and his other 1905 breakthroughs – explaining the photoelectric effect and his work on Brownian motion – but his ideas also underpinned the development of the laser and the creation of a new state of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate. These discoveries, which were made in 1916 and 1924, respectively, were based on Einstein's investigations into "bosonic" particles such as photons. Moreover, Bose – Einstein condensation was predicted to occur in one of the simplest physical systems: the ideal gas.