The article traces the way Einstein formulated the relation between energy and mass in his work from 1905 to 1955. Einstein emphasized quite often that the mass m of a body is equivalent to its rest energy E₀. At the same time, he frequently resorted to the less clear-cut statement of the equivalence of energy and mass. As a result, Einstein’s formula E₀ = mc² still remains much less known than its popular form, E = mc², in which E is the total energy equal to the sum of the rest energy and the kinetic energy of a freely moving body. One of the consequences of this is the widespread fallacy that the mass of a body increases when its velocity increases and even that this is an experimental fact. As wrote the playwright A N Ostrovsky “Something must exist for people, something so austere, so lofty, so sacrosanct that it would make profaning it unthinkable.”

%0 Journal Article
%T The Einstein formula: E0 = mc2. “Isn't the Lord laughing?”
%A L. B. Okun
%I Physics-Uspekhi
%D 2008
%J Physics-Uspekhi
%V 51
%N 5
%P 513
%U http://ufn.ru/en/articles/2008/5/g/
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1070/PU2008v051n05ABEH006538

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