In the first article in 1905 called "On the Motion-Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat-of Small particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid", includes research on Brownian motion. Using the kinetic theory of fluids at the time was controversial, he determined that the phenomenon, which still lack a satisfactory explanation after a few decades after his first time he observed, provided empirical evidence (based on observation and experiment) the reality of atoms. It also lent credence to statistical mechanics, which at that time also controversial.
Before this paper, atoms were recognized as a useful concept, but physicists and chemists hotly debated whether atoms were actually a real thing. Einstein's statistical discussion of atomic behavior gave experimentalists a way to count atoms by looking through an ordinary microscope. Wilhelm Ostwald, a leader of the anti-atom school, later told Arnold Sommerfeld that he had converted to Einstein's complete explanation of Brownian motion.
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