Dr. Michio Kaku once had to deliver a 90-second sound bite on Einstein’s legacy. Asked to do the same for Big Think, he bends space and time and nails it in 50 flat.

Question: In 90 seconds, can you summarize what Einstein did?

Michio Kaku: If I were to rank perhaps the top 20 individuals who helped to shape the world around us, I think Albert Einstein would be on that short list. Kings and queens, they come and go. Emperors and empresses, they leave almost no trace in the footprints of history, but Albert Einstein’s work resonates throughout history even today. People ask the question, what has Einstein done for me lately? And the answer is everything. Everything we see around us; the electronics, the satellites, the atom smashers. All of that in some sense can be traced back to the work of Albert Einstein. In fact, many of the crumbs, the crumbs from his table, have gone on to win Nobel Prizes for physicists even today.