Subtle Is the Lord by Pais, Abraham -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Foreword Reader Contents Plates I INTRODUCTORY

1 Purpose and Plan 2 Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory

2a. Orderly Transitions and Revolutionary Periods 2b. A Time Capsule

3 Portrait of the Physicist as a Young Man

II STATISTICAL PHYSICS

4 Entropy and Probability

4a. Einstein’s Contributions at a Glance 4b. Maxwell and Boltzmann* 4c. Preludes to 1905 4d. Einstein and Boltzmann’s Principle

5 The Reality of Molecules

5a. About the Nineteenth Century, Briefly

1. Chemistry. 2. Kinetic Theory. 3. The End of Indivisibility. 4. The End of Invisibility.

5b. The Pots of Pfeffer and the Laws of van ’t HofF 5c. The Doctoral Thesis 5d. Eleven Days Later: Brownian Motion*

1. Another Bit of Nineteenth Century History. 2. The Overdetermination of N. 3. Einstein’s First Paper on Brownian Motion. 4. Diffusion as a Markovian Process. 5. The Later Papers.

5e. Einstein and Smoluchowski; Critical Opalescence

III RELATIVITY, THE SPECIAL THEORY

6 ‘Subtle is the Lord … ’

6a. The Michelson–Morley Experiment 6b. The Precursors

1. What Einstein Knew. 2. Voigt. 3. FitzGerald. 4. Lorentz. 5. Larmor. 6. Poincaré.

6c. Poincaré in 1905 6d. Einstein before 1905

1. The Pavia Essay.* 2. The Aarau Question. 3. The ETH Student. 4. The Winterthur Letter. 5. The Bern Lecture. 6. The Kyoto Address. 7. Summary.

7 The New Kinematics

7a. June 1905: Special Relativity Defined, Lorentz Transformations Derived

1. Relativity’s Aesthetic Origins. 2. The Two Postulates. 3. From the Postulates to the Lorentz Transformations. 4. Applications. 5. Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory. 6. ‘I Could Have Said That More Simply.’

7b. September 1905: About E = mc2 7c. Early Responses 7d. Einstein and the Special Theory After 1905 7e. Electromagnetic Mass: The First Century*

8 The Edge of History

1. A New Way of Thinking. 2. Einstein and the Literature. 3. Lorentz and the Aether. 4. Poincaré and the Third Hypothesis. 5. Whittaker and the History of Relativity. 6. Lorentz and Poincaré. 7. Lorentz and Einstein. 8. Poincaré and Einstein. 9. Coda: The Michelson–Morley Experiment.

IV RELATIVITY, THE GENERAL THEORY

9 ‘The Happiest Thought of My Life’ 10 Herr Professor Einstein

10a. From Bern to Zurich 10b. Three and a Half Years of Silence

11 The Prague Papers

11a. From Zürich to Prague 11b. 1911. The Bending of Light is Detectable 11c. 1912. Einstein in No Man’s Land

12 The Einstein–grossmann Collaboration

12a. From Prague to Zürich 12b. From scalar to tensor 12c. The collaboration 12d. The Stumbling Block 12e. The Aftermath

13 Field Theories of Gravitation: the First Fifty Years

13a. Einstein in Vienna 13b. The Einstein–Fokker Paper

14 The Field Equations of Gravitation

14a. From Zürich to Berlin 14b. Interlude: Rotation by Magnetization 14c. The Final Steps

1. The Crisis. 2. November the Fourth. 3. November the Eleventh. 4. November the Eighteenth. 5. November the Twenty-Fifth [E1]:

14d. Einstein and Hilbert**

15 The New Dynamics

15a. From 1915 to 1980 15b. The Three Successes 15c. Energy and Momentum Conservation; the Bianchi Identities 15d. Gravitational Waves 15e. Cosmology 15f. Singularities; the Problem of Motion 15g. What Else Was New at GR9?

V THE LATER JOURNEY

16 ‘The Suddenly Famous Doctor Einstein ’

16a. Illness; Remarriage; Death of Mother 16b. Einstein Canonized 16c. The Birth of the Legend 16d. Einstein and Germany 16e. The Later Writings

1. The Man of Culture. 2. The Man of Science.

17 Unified Field Theory

17a. Particles and Fields around 1920 17b. Another Decade of Gestation 17c. The Fifth Dimension

1. Kaluza and Oskar Klein. 2. Einstein and the Kaluza–Klein Theory. 3. Addenda. 4. Two Options.

17d. Relativity and Post-Riemannian Differential Geometry 17e. The Later Journey: a Scientific Chronology 17f. A Postscript to Unification, a Prelude to Quantum Theory

VI THE QUANTUM THEORY

18 Preliminaries

18a. An Outline of Einstein’s Contributions 18b. Particle Physics: The First Fifty Years 18c. The Quantum Theory: Lines of Influence

19 The Light Quantum,

19a. From Kirchhoff to Planck 19b. Einstein on Planck: 1905. The Rayleigh–Einstein–Jeans Law 19c. The Light-Quantum Hypothesis and the Heuristic Principle 19d. Einstein on Planck: 1906 19e. The Photoelectric Effect: The Second Coming of h

1887: Hertz. 1888: Hallwachs. 1899: J. J. Thomson. 1902: Lenard. 1905: Einstein. 1915: Millikan; the Duane–Hunt Limit.

19f. Reactions to the Light-Quantum Hypothesis

1. Einstein’s Caution. 2. Electromagnetism: Free Fields and Interactions. 3. The Impact of Experiment.

20 Einstein and Specific Heats

20a. Specific Heats in the Nineteenth Century 20b. Einstein 20c. Nernst: Solvay I**

21 The Photon

21a. The Fusion of Particles and Waves and Einstein’s Destiny 21b. Spontaneous and Induced Radiative Transitions 21c. The Completion of the Particle Picture

1. Light-Quantum and Photon. 2. Momentum Fluctuations: 1909. 3. Momentum Fluctuations: 1916.

21d. Earliest Unbehagen about Chance 21e. An Aside: Quantum Conditions for Nonseparable Classical Motion 21f. The Compton Effect

22 Interlude: the Bks Proposal 23 A Loss of Identity: the Birth of Quantum Statistics

23a. From Boltzmann to Dirac 23b. Bose 23c. Einstein 23d. Postscript on Bose–Einstein Condensation

24 Einstein as a Transitional Figure: the Birth of Wave Mechanics

24a. From Einstein to de Broglie 24b. From de Broglie to Einstein 24c. From de Broglie and Einstein to Schroedinger

25 Einstein’s Response to the New Dynamics

25a. 1925–31: The Debate Begins 25b. Einstein at Princeton 25c. Einstein on Objective Reality

26 Einstein’s Vision

26a. Einstein, Newton, and Success 26b. Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory 26c. Überkausalität

VII JOURNEY’S END

27 The Final Decade 28 Epilogue

VIII APPENDICES

29 Of Tensors and a Hearing Aid and Many other Things: Einstein’s Collaborators 30 How Einstein got the Nobel Prize 31 Einstein’s Proposals for the Nobel Prize 32 An Einstein Chronology

Name Index Subject Index

← Prev
Back
Next →

← Prev
Back
Next →