Of pots and holes: Einstein's bumpy road to general relativity

@article{Janssen2005OfPA,
  title={Of pots and holes: Einstein's bumpy road to general relativity},
  author={Michel Janssen},
  journal={Annalen der Physik},
  year={2005},
  volume={14},
  pages={58-85}
}
  • M. Janssen
  • Published 23 February 2005
  • Physics
  • Annalen der Physik
Readers of this volume will notice that it contains only a few papers on general relativity. This is because most papers documenting the genesis and early development of general relativity were not published in Annalen der Physik.After Einstein took up his new prestigious position at the PrussianAcademy of Sciences in the spring of 1914, the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin academy almost by default became the main outlet for his scientific production. Two of the more important papers on general… Expand
View via Publisher
netfiles.umn.edu
62 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
3
Background Citations
16
Methods Citations
3

Figures from this paper

62 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Einstein’s 1917 static model of the universe: a centennial review
Abstract We present a historical review of Einstein’s 1917 paper ‘Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity’ to mark the centenary of a key work that set the foundations of… Expand
Untying the Knot: how Einstein Found his way Back to Field Equations Discarded in the Zurich Notebook
Sometimes the most obvious questions are the most fruitful ones. The Zurich Notebook is a case in point. The notebook shows that Einstein already considered the field equations of general relativity… Expand
Nothing but coincidences: the point-coincidence and Einstein’s struggle with the meaning of coordinates in physics
In his 1916 review paper on general relativity, Einstein made the often-quoted oracular remark that all physical measurements amount to a determination of coincidences, like the coincidence of a… Expand
Mie's Theories of Matter and Gravitation
Unifying physics by describing a variety of interactions—or even all interactions— within a common framework has long been an alluring goal for physicists. One of the most ambitious attempts at… Expand
Historical and Philosophical Aspects of the Einstein World
This article presents a brief review of some historical and philosophical aspects of Einstein's 1917 paper 'Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity', a landmark work that… Expand
The Cambridge Companion to Einstein
Introduction Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner 1. Einstein's Copernican revolution Jurgen Renn and Robert Rynasiewicz 2. Einstein's special theory of relativity and the problems in the… Expand
New version of General Relativity that unifies Mass and Gravitation in a common 4D Theory
Eintein’s General Relativity does not explain recent enigmas of astrophysics such as dark energy or accelerating universe. A thorough examination of the Einstein Field Equations (EFE) highlights four… Expand
A structuralist account of the theory-change from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics.
Some philosophers - such as Popper and Kuhn - have cited the theory-shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics as one of the great scientific revolutions. This thesis argues against this that the… Expand
The Forgotten Tradition: How the Logical Empiricists Missed the Philosophical Significance of the Work of Riemann, Christoffel and Ricci
This paper attempts to show how the logical empiricists’ interpretation of the relation between geometry and reality emerges from a “collision” of mathematical traditions. Considering Riemann’s work… Expand
The twins and the bucket: How Einstein made gravity rather than motion relative in general relativity
Abstract In publications in 1914 and 1918, Einstein claimed that his new theory of gravity in some sense relativizes the rotation of a body with respect to the distant stars (a stripped-down version… Expand
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 141 REFERENCES
Einstein and the History of General Relativity
This book is a collection of essays by the authors and other people that deal with scientific opinions that led Einstein and his contemporaries to their views of general relativity. Some of the… Expand
Hilbert's Foundation of Physics: From a Theory of Everything to a Constituent of General Relativity
Remarkably, Einstein was not the first to discover the correct form of the law of warpage [of space-time, i.e. the gravitational field equations], the form that obeys his relativity principle.… Expand
Untying the Knot: how Einstein Found his way Back to Field Equations Discarded in the Zurich Notebook
Sometimes the most obvious questions are the most fruitful ones. The Zurich Notebook is a case in point. The notebook shows that Einstein already considered the field equations of general relativity… Expand
The attraction of gravitation : new studies in the history of general relativity
PART 1 DISPUTES WITH EINSTEIN: Einstein and Nordstrom - Some Lesser Known Thought Experiments in Gravitation, John D. Norton Out of the Labyrinth? Einstein, Hertz, and the Gottingen Answer to the… Expand
The expanding worlds of general relativity
I Relativity in the Making.- The Search for Gravitational Absorption in the Early Twentieth Century.- Minkowski, Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Theory of Relativity.- Heuristics and… Expand
The Meaning of Relativity
In 1921, five years after the appearance of his comprehensive paper on general relativity and twelve years before he left Europe permanently to join the Institute for Advanced Study, Albert Einstein… Expand
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, the ether, and the general theory of relativity
From the early days of the development of the general theory of relativity the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz showed a lively and active interest in this theory of gravitation. He devoted… Expand
The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
In his monumental 1687 work "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", known familiarly as the "Principia", Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion… Expand
Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World
ANDREW MOTTE'S translation of the “Principia” is not so well known as it deserves to be. It was supplied to his brother, the publisher, soon after Newton's death. One might expect it then to be no… Expand
Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute
According to the commonly accepted view, David Hilbert completed the general theory of relativity at least 5 days before Albert Einstein submitted his conclusive paper on this theory on 25 November… Expand
...
1
2
3
4
5
...