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Einstein did a lot more than just contribute to atomic theory. He basically began the unravelling of space and time, and created whole new areas of research and thoeretical physics -- primarily from papers published in the course of two years.
But as for influencing the way the world works today, the real man of the century is Hitler. The way the Nazi regime mechanized and industrialized slaughter, created modern propaganda, utilized new tecnologies, and waged war changed the world forever -- and created a kind of warfare that would be the standard for the rest of the century. Interestingly, if it weren't for Hitler, Einstein's work may not have been used to build an atomic bomb for a very long time after that. We could be living in a pre-atomic age right now.
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