What did Einstein do after discovering general relativity in 1915? Sit around and complain about the Lord playing dice with the universe? Not quite:
In 1916 he showed his theory predicts gravitational waves, whose existence was first confirmed in 1974.
In 1917 he introduced what we now call "dark energy", whose existence was first confirmed in 1998.
In 1925 he wrote a key paper on what we now call "Bose-Einstein condensates", predicting that particles of integer spin form a new state of matter at low temperatures. This idea is important for understanding superconductors and even lasers - though photons, being massless, work differently.
In 1935 he wrote about the "Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox", which laid the groundwork for understanding the true weirdness of the quantum world. Even though the paper was phrased as an argument against quantum mechanics, when Bell sharpened the argument it revealed features of quantum entanglement that are crucial to quantum information processing!
Also in 1935 he coauthored the first paper on wormholes, showing that general relativity allows amazing solutions that connect distant regions of space. He wanted to use this to explain particles as wormhole ends: the paper was called "The particle problem in general relativity".
I think it's cool that items 3 and 4 served as the basis for current and future quantum technologies. He was always way ahead of his time.
And don't forget all his work on unified field theories! Though not successful, it was crucial in lifting the goals of theoretical physics to something very ambitious: unifying all the forces of nature! He spent most of his later years on this.
@johncarlosbaez It's the Brownian motion paper of 1905 that I think interesting in this regard. For many physicists it might be their crowning achievement, but it wasn't in Einstein's top three that year. But my question is, how influential was it at the time?
@dearlove - Einstein's Brownian motion paper was incredibly important! It showed how to demonstrate the existence of atoms and measure their mass. At the time most physicists believed in atoms but most chemists did not! Following Einstein's theoretical work, Jean Perrin measured Brownian motion in 1908 and won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1926 "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter".
@spacemagick - it had no moving parts, it operated at constant pressure, and he invented it with Leo Szilard, the guy who wrote the letter that Einstein signed warnng Roosevelt that an atomic bomb was possible!
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