RELATIVITY

Special and General Relativity

{Resimli, Illustrated}

by

Albert EINSTEIN

SUMMARY

Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the large-scale structure of the universe.

He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the U.S., becoming an American citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he helped alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon and recommended that the U.S. begin similar research; this eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project. Einstein was in support of defending the Allied forces, but largely denounced using the new discovery of nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

PRECAFE / ÖZET/ İÇİNDEKİLER

22. A Few Inferences from the General Principle of Relativity

23. Behaviour of Clocks and Measuring−Rods on a Rotating Body of Reference

24. Euclidean and non−Euclidean Continuum

25. Gaussian Co−ordinates

26. The Space−Time Continuum of the Speical Theory of Relativity Considered as a Euclidean

Continuum

27. The Space−Time Continuum of the General Theory of Realtiivty is Not a Eculidean Continuum

28. Exact Formulation of the General Principle of Relativity

29. The Solution of the Problem of Gravitation on the Basis of the General Principle of Relativity

Part III: Considerations on the Universe as a Whole

30. Cosmological Difficulties of Netwon's Theory

31. The Possibility of a "Finite" and yet "Unbounded" Universe

32. The Structure of Space According to the General Theory of Relativity

Appendices:

01. Simple Derivation of the Lorentz Transformation (sup. ch. 11)

02. Minkowski's Four−Dimensional Space ("World") (sup. ch 17)

03. The Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity

04. The Structure of Space According to the General Theory of Relativity (sup. ch 32)