‎Einstein‎

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie.‎

‎Berlin Gruyter & Co. 1923. 4to. Orig. orange printed wrappers. Offprint/Sonderabdruck aus Sitzungsberichten.pp. 32-38. Fine fresh copy. <br/><br/><em>First edition in the rare Offprint stilled called "Abdruck". Weil No. 131.The early Offprints from "Sitzungsberichten." are called "Sonderabdruck" up to Weil No.165 including this. From Weil 166 they are called "Sonderausgabe.". - Before 161 up to 160 the Offprints do not have separate title and pagination the pagination follows the numbering in the periodical. From 166 the Offprint has both separate printed title and pagination. - So Weil Nos 161-165 is still "Abdruck" but with separate title and pagination. These facts are not mentioned in the bibliographies. </em> unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 28359

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zur allgemeine Relativitatstheorie. Offprint from S. preuss. Akad. Wiss. Weil 131‎

‎1923. unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 37406

‎EINSTEIN, A[lbert]‎

‎Zur einheitlichen Feldtheorie‎

‎Berlin: Verlag der Akademia der Wissenschaften in Kommission bei Walter de Gruyter 1929. FIRST EDITION. Original printed orange wrappers; a fine copy unopened and bound into morocco-backed cloth boards spine labeled in gilt. First edition first issue in the rare author’s offprint form with a newly set title-page. One of Einstein’s last important scientific works this publication of the unified field theory caused quite a sensation. It was the first separate printing of one of a series of five papers published between 1925 and 1929 in which Einstein attempted to develop a unified field theory reconciling in a single formula the laws of electromagnetism and gravitation.<br /> <br /> Weil 165; Printing & the Mind of Man 418. Verlag der Akademia der Wissenschaften in Kommission bei Walter de Gruyter unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 19299

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Zur Einheitlichen Feldtheorie.‎

‎Berlin Gruyter & Co. 1929. 4to. Orig. orange printed wrappers. Offprint/Sonderabdruck aus Sitzungsberichten.pp. 1-8. Fine fresh copy. <br/><br/><em>First edition in the rare Offprint still called "Abdruck" but having separate printed title and separate pagination. See Weil No. 165 where this is not mentioned.Weil No. 165 with an asterix denoting a major work. "The Unified Field-Theory is one of the last importent works by Einstein. This paper presents a new development which was immediate news; translations and abstracts of ite appeared at once besides numerous articles in general periodicals" W. Alicke.The early Offprints from "Sitzungsberichten." are called "Sonderabdruck" up to Weil No.165 including this. From Weil 166 they are called "Sonderausgabe.". - Before 161 up to 160 the Offprints do not have separate title and pagination the pagination follows the numbering in the periodical. From 166 the Offprint has both separate printed title and pagination. - So Weil Nos 161-165 is still "Abdruck" but with separate title and pagination. These facts are not mentioned in the bibliographies. </em> unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 28362

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zur einheitlichen Feldtheorie. Weil 165. Offprint from S. preuss. Akad. Wiss‎

‎1929. <p>Einstein Albert 1879-1955. Zur einheitlichen Feldtheorie. Offprint from Sitzungsberichten der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1 1929. 8vo. 8pp. Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaft 1929. 256 x 183 mm. Original printed wrappers slightly soiled and creased. Very good. </p> <p>First Separate Edition. "In 1928 Einstein embarked on a new approach to a unified field theory . . . involving what he called 'distant parallelism'. . . . By early 1929 he had solved the main problems involved in writing down field equations for his unified theory. On the day of official publication of the third of a formidably technical series of nine articles on the theory . . . excited headlines appeared in foreign newspapers throughout the world. . . . In this frenzied unscientific atmosphere Einstein's new theory was hailed in the press as an outstanding scientific advance. Yet Einstein had stated in his article that it was still tentative; and soon he found he had to abandon it Hoffman Einstein pp. 225-26. This paper is included on Shields's list of Einstein's most significant papers; see Albert Einstein Philosopher-Scientist 1949 p. 758. Weil 165. Pais Subtle is the Lord pp. 344-46. </p> . unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 37419

‎EINSTEIN, Albert‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie des idealen Gases. Offprint from: Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Bd. 3 1925‎

‎Berlin: Königlich Akademie der Wissenschaften 1925. First edition. <p>First edition very rare author's presentation offprint from the library of the great German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld with his signature and annotations of Einstein's third paper on his quantum theory of the ideal gas of 1924-1925 Einstein's "last major innovative contribution to physics" Pais Subtle is the Lord. "The arguments advanced in this third paper do not make use of the new Bose-Einstein statistics. Instead Einstein invokes arguments involving dimensional analysis and adiabatic compression" Papers Vol. 14.</p>. BOSE-EINSTEIN STATISTICS - WITHOUT THE STATISTICS. <p>First edition very rare author's presentation offprint not to be confused with the more common trade separate - see below from the library of the great German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld with his signature and annotations of Einstein's third paper on his quantum theory of the ideal gas of 1924-1925 Einstein's "last major innovative contribution to physics" Pais Subtle is the Lord p. 343. In 1924 Einstein received a copy of the Indian physicist S. N. Bose's paper 'Planck's law and the hypothesis of light quanta.' Einstein immediately recognized its importance and had it published shortly followed by a paper of his own applying Bose's ideas to ideal gases rather than radiation molecules rather than light quanta. These two papers laid the foundations of 'Bose-Einstein statistics.' Einstein published a second paper in which he showed that the new statistics led to the prediction of a new state of matter the 'Bose-Einstein condensate' the creation of which in the laboratory was the topic of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. At the time however many of Einstein's colleagues in particular his close friend Paul Ehrenfest were sceptical of the new statistics. Einstein therefore attempted in the present paper to justify his quantum theory of the ideal gas by more traditional methods rather than the novel statistics he had used in his two previous papers. "It contains an attempt to extend and exhaust the characterization of the monatomic ideal gas without appealing to combinatorics. Its ambiguities illustrate Einstein's confusion with his initial success in extending Bose's results and in realizing the consequences of what later came to be called Bose-Einstein statistics . Its arguments are based on Einstein's belief in the complete analogy between the thermodynamics of light quanta and of material particles and invoke considerations of adiabatic transformations as well as of dimensional analysis. These techniques were well known to Einstein from earlier work on Wien's displacement law Planck's radiation theory and the specific heat of solids" Pérez & Sauer. "In a letter to Ehrenfest he writes that on his next visit in Leyden 'I shall then convince you completely of the gas-degeneracy-equation. I found another safe though not entirely complete approach to it free of the incriminating statistics'. The arguments advanced in this third paper indeed do not make use of the new statistics. Instead Einstein invokes arguments involving dimensional analysis and adiabatic compression" Papers p. lxx. The only other copy of this offprint listed on RBH is that in Einstein's own collection Christie's 2008.</p> <br /> <p>Provenance: Arnold Sommerfeld 1868-1951 his signature and characteristic numbering in red pencil '44' on front cover and three annotations in the text. The annotations consist of corrections to formulas 5 on p. 20 11 and 12 on p. 21 16a on p. 23 and 19 on p. 24 to the equation on the last line of p. 22 and to two mathematical symbolson lines 2 and 3 of p. 25. "The son of a physician Sommerfeld was educated at the University of Königsberg. After teaching briefly at the universities of Göttingen Clausthal and Aachen he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Münich in 1906. Sommerfeld should have retired in 1936 in favour of his pupil Werner Heisenberg. Opposition from the Nazi party to Heisenberg's appointment prolonged Sommerfeld's tenure and it was not in fact until late 1939 that he finally retired to be succeeded not by Heisenberg but by Wilhelm Müller a Nazi aerodynamicist without a single publication in physics to his credit. Although Sommerfeld and Heisenberg were not Jewish they were regarded by the Nazis as Jewish sympathizers. Sommerfeld however survived the war and returned to his Münich chair in 1945 continuing to work at physics until he died in a car accident in 1951" Oxford Reference. "Arnold Sommerfeld was one of the most distinguished representatives of the transition period between classical and modern theoretical physics. The work of his youth was still firmly anchored in the conceptions of the nineteenth century; but when in the first decennium of the century the flood of new discoveries experimental and theoretical broke the dams of tradition he became a leader of the new movement and in combining the two ways of thinking he exerted a powerful influence on the younger generation. This combination of a classical mind to whom clarity of conception and mathematical rigour are essential with the adventurous spirit of a pioneer are the roots of his scientific success while his exceptional gift of communicating his ideas by spoken and written word made him a great teacher" Max Born p. 275. </p> <br /> <p>The motivation for the publication of this paper is given by Einstein in the opening paragraph translation from Papers Vol. 14 English Translation Supplement:</p> <br /> <p>'Stimulated by a derivation of Planck's radiation formula originating from Bose which consistently supports itself on the light-quantum hypothesis I recently postulated a quantum theory for ideal gas. This theory seems legitimate when one starts out from the conviction that a light quantum disregarding its polarization property differs from a monatomic molecule essentially only in that the quantum's mass at rest is vanishingly small. But because the presupposition of this analogy is certainly not accepted by all researchers and furthermore because the statistical method used by Mr. Bose and me is certainly not beyond doubt but rather just seems justified a posteriori by its success in the case of radiation I looked for other considerations on the quantum theory of ideal gas that are as free of arbitrary hypotheses as possible. These considerations shall be communicated in the following. They provide an effective support for the theory postulated earlier even though the results attained do not yield a full substitute for that theory. Here it is a matter of establishing considerations in the field of gas theory by a method and with results largely analogous to those in the field of radiation theory leading to Wien's displacement law.'</p> <br /> <p>"Einstein followed an approach in this paper that was not based only on statistical considerations and that was closer to thermodynamics. He tried to find general conditions that any theory of the ideal gas would have to satisfy mainly by establishing and exploiting analogies with radiation where the displacement law at least provided some hints as to what the radiation law should look like" Pérez & Sauer.</p> <br /> <p>The problem Einstein wished to solve was to find the distribution function Ï = ÏL κT V m where L is the kinetic energy κ the Boltzmann constant T the temperature V the volume and m the mass of the molecules. The distribution law will be of the form</p> <br /> <p>dn = ÏL κT V mVdp1dp2dp3 / h3</p> <br /> <p>where dn is the number of molecules whose Cartesian components of the momenta are in the range p1 p2 p3 to p1 dp1 p2 dp2 p3 dp3 h is Planck's constant. Einstein did not assume that collisions between molecules are governed by the laws of mechanics. He asserted that if that were the case one would arrive at the classical Maxwell's distribution law. He neglected interactions among molecules this being essentially the definition of an ideal gas.</p> <br /> <p>Einstein first used dimensional analysis to place a restriction on the possible forms of the distribution function. He had used similar arguments in his 1909 paper 'Zum gegenwärtigen Stand des Strahlungsproblems' Physikalische Zeitschrift 10 185-193 to deduce Wien's displacement law and in his 1911 paper on the quantum theory of solids 'Elementare Betrachtungen über die thermische Molekularbewegung in festen Körpern' Annalen der Physik 35 679-694. Since Ï is dimensionless a pure number it had to be a function only of dimensionless combinations of L κT V m and h. There are two independent such combinations which means that Ï is reduced to a function of two variables rather than five:</p> <br /> <p>A = L/κT and B = mV/N2/3κT/h2.</p> <br /> <p>To reduce Ï to a function of a single variable Einstein needed further restrictions. "Einstein proposed two of those:</p> <br /> <br /> The entropy of an ideal gas does not change in an 'infinitely slow adiabatic' sic compression.<br /> The required velocity distribution is valid for an ideal gas also in an external field of conservative forces.<br /> <br /> <p>Einstein argued that these two properties should be valid disregarding collisions. But the neglect of intermolecular collisions made their assumption unprovable even if they would be 'very natural.' In support of both he announced they would lead not only to the same result but also to a result according to which Maxwell's distribution law is valid in the region where quantum effects can be neglected" Pérez & Sauer.</p> <br /> <p>Einstein deduced from these assumptions that </p> <br /> <p>Ï = ΨA χB </p> <br /> <p>where Ψ and χ are universal functions of dimensionless variables. </p> <br /> <p>Einstein then looked at the case in which the constant h disappears from the expression for dn i.e. at the classical limit. He found that </p> <br /> <p>Ï = Be-A </p> <br /> <p>i.e. the Maxwell-Boltzmann law. In contrast Einstein's statistical theory had produced the expression</p> <br /> <p>Ï = B/eA - 1.</p> <br /> <p>"Summarizing Einstein pointed out that two aims have been achieved:</p> <br /> <p>'First we found a general condition equation which has to be satisfied by any theory of the ideal gas. Second it follows from the above that the equation of state which I derived will not be changed by either adiabatic compression or by the existence of conservative force fields'" Pérez & Sauer. </p> <br /> <p>Why was this paper little noticed by Einstein's colleagues "The practically immediate appearance of the revolutionary contributions of 1925 to quantum theory eclipsed any possible interest of Einstein's paper. The arguments it contains only concern the ideal gas from a thermodynamic perspective. But what is more important it includes hypotheses that were in open contradiction with the course quantum researches had taken. Many physicists had rejected already the laws of mechanics and Einstein assumed their validity for describing the motions of the gas molecules.</p> <br /> <p>"The papers of the twenties that refer to Einstein's theory usually mention all three instalments. This indicates that in spite of the almost complete lack of comments on it its existence was known. We are inclined to think that it simply was not of any interest to Einstein's colleagues. Einstein justified the considerations of the non-statistical paper with the deep dissatisfaction over the statistical route by which he had arrived at the new distribution function. However the problem was not whether his colleagues saw Bose's statistics favourably but that in the following months the physicists' ideas around the quantum issues changed substantially. Bose's statistics in spite of implying a way of counting that was incompatible with classical statistics led to an already accepted result. This was much more than could be said of other attempts of explaining for example the Zeeman effect or multielectronic spectra .</p> <br /> <p>"In retrospect Einstein's initial suspicion about Bose's statistics will turn into one of the first symptoms of his later distancing himself from quantum mechanics. For this reason we find no justification for the neglect of Einstein's paper by historians of physics. Perhaps we are dealing here with Einstein's last attempt to contribute positively to the construction of the quantum theory for which he had done so much. In addition this paper closed the circle he initiated in 1905 with the hypothesis of energy quanta. First the analogy was going one way now finally it was also going the other way. The statistical dependence among light quanta which had limited the analogy with an ideal gas now was found also among molecules. Hence for the first time the analogy was complete .</p> <br /> <p>"The last 'positive contribution' of Einstein to statistical physics includes a paper in which he offered arguments independent of the 'incriminated statistics' because what nowadays is called Bose-Einstein's statistics was not more according to its creator than a calculatory artifice absolutely devoid of any physical meaning. It was simply a consequence of using the wrong mechanics or of not considering some kind of interaction. As Einstein explained to Halpern it 'cannot be considered as giving a true theoretical basis to Planck's law'" Pérez & Sauer.</p> <br /> <p>This author's presentation offprint is very rare and must be distinguished from other so-called 'offprints' of papers from the Berlin Sitzungsberichte many of which are commonly available on the market. The celebrated bookseller Ernst Weil 1919-1981 in the introduction to his Einstein bibliography wrote: "I have often been asked about the number of those offprints. It seems to be certain that there were few before 1914. They were given only to the author and mostly 'Ãœberreicht vom Verfasser' Presented by the Author is printed on the wrapper. Later on I have no doubt many more offprints were made and also sold as such especially by the Berlin Academy." If the term 'offprint' means as we believe it should a separate printing of a journal article given only to the author for distribution to colleagues then 'offprints' were not commercially available. Although there is certainly some truth in Weil's remark in our view it requires clarification and explanation.</p> <br /> <p>Until about 1916 most of Einstein's papers were published in Annalen der Physik; from 1916 until he left Germany for the United States in 1933 most were published in the Berlin Sitzungsberichte. The Sitzungsberichte differed from other journals in which Einstein published in that it made separate printings of its papers commercially available. These separate printings have 'Sonderabdruck' printed on the front wrapper the usual German term for offprint but they are not offprints according to our definition. They were available to anyone; indeed a price list of these 'trade offprints' is printed on the rear wrapper. True author's presentation offprints can be distinguished from these trade offprints by the presence of 'Ãœberreicht vom Verfasser' on the front wrapper as in the present offprint.</p> <br /> <p>In the period 1916 to 1919 or 1920 the Sitzungsberichte trade offprints are themselves rare: for example RBH list only three 'offprints' of Einstein's famous 1917 Sitzungsberichte paper 'Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie' the auction records do not distinguish between trade and author's presentation offprints. After 1919 or 1920 however the trade offprints become much more common although the author's presentation offprints are still very rare. The reason for this change is that it was only in 1919 that Einstein became famous among the general public.</p> <br /> <p>Weil 145. Shields "Writings of Albert Einstein" in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist 1948 pp. 689-758 no. 195. Born 'Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld 1868-1951' Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 8 1952 pp. 275-296. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein digital Vol. 14: The Berlin Years: Writings & Correspondence April 1923-May 1925. Pais Subtle is the Lord 1982. Pérez & Sauer 'Einstein's quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas: non-statistical arguments for a new statistics' Archive for History of Exact Sciences 64 2010 pp. 561-612.</p> <br/> <br/> 8vo 255 x 183 mm pp. 18-25. Original orange printed wrappers. Königlich Akademie der Wissenschaften unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 6417

‎Einstein, Albert and Paul Ehrenfest‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts. Offprint‎

‎1923. <p>Einstein Albert 1879-1955 and Paul Ehrenfest 1880-1933. Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts. Offprint from Zeitschrift für Physik 19 1923. 301-306pp. Original printed self-wrappers. 230 x 157 mm. Light toning but very good.</p> <p>First Edition Offprint Issue. In 1916 after publishing his great work on general relativity Einstein returned to the question of blackbody radiation. In November 1916 he wrote to his friend Besso that "a splendid light has dawned on me about the absorption and emission of radiation" quoted in Pais p. 405 one that led him to a new derivation of Planck's radiation law and convinced him of the reality of light-quanta photons. After publishing these results in three papers culminating with the famous "Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung" 1917 Einstein kept looking for "new ways in which the existence of photons might lead to observable derivations from the classical picture" Pais p. 413. He found none until 1923 when Arthur Compton and Peter Debye independently derived the relativistic kinematics for the scattering of a photon off an electron at rest. The work of Compton and Debye led Wolfgang Pauli to extend Einstein's work of 1917 to the case of radiation in equilibrium with free electrons see Pais p. 414n. "Pauli examined the requirements of detailed balance under Lorentz transformations and found that scattering of light by free electrons must include a term of a form which we would now call stimulated emission . . . Einstein and Ehrenfest then showed that Pauli's results could be obtained by an extension of Einstein's 1917 paper with the unnecessary specialization to discrete energy levels removed . . . The core of Einstein's argument is that the scattering process should be broken into two parts: the absorption of energy from radiation of frequency 1 and the emission of energy as radiation of frequency 2" Lewis p. 42. Lewis "Einstein's derivation of Planck's radiation law" American Journal of Physics 41 1973: 38-44. Pais Subtle is the Lord ch. 21. Weil Albert Einstein Bibliography 138.</p> . unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 43288

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎ZUR QUANTENTHEORIE DER STRAHLUNG contained in volume XVIII 1917 of Physikalische Zeitschrift‎

‎Lipezig 1917. first edition. 4to. hardcover. Volume 18 of Physikalische Zeitschrift volume 18 at pp. 121-128. One of Einstein's great achievements in quantum mechanics. 3/4 maroon cloth with green marbled boards. One old tiny circular stamp of German university NO other library marks no spine number no pocket no bookplate. VG. light cover wear. hinges secure; text clean. . hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : a94782

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT (+) P EHRENFEST‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts.‎

‎Berlin Julius Springer 1923. 8vo. Entire volume 19 and 20 of "Zeitschrift für Physik" bound in contemporary black half cloth with gilt title to spine. Library stamp to title-page and paper label pasted on to lower part of spine. Minor wear to extremities. A nice and clean copy. Pp. 301-6. Entire volume: IV 426 pp. <br/><br/><em>First edition.Weil 138; Schilpp-Shields 178.The volume also contains:Meitner Lise. Ueber eine mögliche Deutung des kontinuierlichen beta-Strahlenspektrums. Pp. 307-321.Pauli W. Zur Frage der Zuordnung der Komplexstrukturterme in starken und in schwachen äusseren Feldern. Pp. 371-88. </em> hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 43840

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung. - FOUNDING LASER PHYSICS.‎

‎Leipzig S. Hirzel 1917. Royal8vo. Bound in contemporary half calf with gilt lettering to spine and 5 raised bands with ornaments in gilt. In "Physikalische Zeitschrift" Bd. 18 1917. Spine and hinges with wear otherwise a fine and clean copy. Pp. 121-128. Entire volume: XI 1 604 pp. 14 plates. <br/><br/><em>The paper was first published in 1916 in Mitteilungen der Physikalischen Gesellschaft in Zürich but here for the first time in Physikalische Zeitschrift. All subsequent research on absorption and emission of radiation and the entire discovery of the maser later the laser was based on the research presented in the present paper. The paper is also notable for introducing the concept but not the name of the photon; Einstein argues that in the interaction of matter and radiation there must be in addition to the processes of absorption and spontaneous emission a third process of stimulated emission. If stimulated emission exists then he can derive the Planck distribution for blackbody radiation and without it the same argument implies the invalid Wien-distribution theory."In this paper he derived Planck's original quantum law from a different starting point he suggested that as well as spontaneous emission and absorption there could also take place the process of stimulated emission. In 1917 this seemed mainly of theoretical interest; forty years later it was utilized to provide the maser and laser of modern technology. In 1916 "Einstein came back once more to blackbody radiation and made further progress. In November 1916 he wrote to Besso: 'A splendid light has fallen on me about the absorption and emission of radiation'. His reasoning is divided into three papers two of which appeared in 1916 and the third one early in 1917 the two papers above - note that these are the two papers of Einstein on radiation theory cited by Weil as "principal works"; a third paper from 1916 is not. In these papers Einstein proposed a statistical theory of the interaction between atoms and photons gave a new demonstration of Planck's radiation theory and introduced the concept of 'stimulated emission' providing the basis for the discovery of masers and lasers " Bertolotti The History of the Laser."When Einstein returned to the radiation problem in 1916 the quantum theory had undergone a major change. Niels Bohr's papers had opened a new and fertile domain for the application of quantum concepts-the explanation of atomic structure and atomic spectra. In addition Bohr's work and its generalizations by Arnold Sommerfeld and others constituted a fresh approach to the foundations of the quantum theory of matter. Einstein's new work showed the influence of these ideas . He had found still another derivation of Planck's black-body radiation law an "astonishingly simple and general" one which he thought mightproperly be called "the derivation" 12 of this important law. It was based on statistical assumptions about the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and on Bohr's basic quantum hypothesis that atomic systems have a discrete set of possible stationary states. The proof turned on the requirement that absorption and emission of radiation both spontaneous and stimulated suffice to keep a gas of atoms in thermodynamic equilibrium. This paper introduced the concept of stimulated emission into the quantum theory and is therefore often described as the basis of laser physics. Einstein himself considered the most important contribution of this work to be not the new derivation of the distribution law but rather the arguments he presented for the directional character of energy quanta. DSB Weil No 91 with an asterix denoting major paper. </em> hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 46895

‎EINSTEIN, Albert‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtabsorption. Offprint from Annalen der Physik 4. Folge 20. Bd. 1906‎

‎Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth 1906. First edition. <p>First edition a very rare author's presentation offprint with 'Überreicht vom Verfasser' from the library of the eminent German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld of this important sequel to Einstein's revolutionary 1905 paper introducing the light-quantum hypothesis</p> <p>- the foundation of quantum theory. In this follow- up work Einstein further develops the implications of his light-quantum hypothesis arguing that Max Planck's black-body radiation law implicitly relies on the same assumption: that light itself consists of discrete quanta of energy.</p>. <p>EINSTEIN ON HIS LIGHT-QUANTUM HYPOTHESIS</p> . <p>First edition very rare author's presentation offprint "Überreicht vom Verfasser" from the library of the great German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld of this brilliant follow-up to Einstein's landmark 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect for which he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. "Thomas Kuhn has argued that it is not to Planck in 1900 but to Einstein in 1905 that we owe the origins of quantum theory" Cassidy. In the 1905 paper 'On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light' Einstein had explained the photoelectric effect-the emission of electrons from a metal when irradiated by light-by making the revolutionary proposal that light rather than consisting of continuous waves was instead made up of discrete particles of energy "light quanta" which transferred their entire payload of energy to an electron on impact. In the 1905 paper Einstein made use of Planck's formula for blackbody radiation which had introduced the concept of energy quantization. "In a companion paper published in 1906 offered here Einstein exposed appeal to the quantum as fundamentally counter to the ethos of classical physics: 'the theoretical bases on which Planck's radiation theory rests are different from those of Maxwell's theory'. Planck had not initially intended to quantify light-radiation itself but Einstein demonstrated that his own 'light-quantum hypothesis' was implicit in Planck's earlier work" Honner p. 31. "At first Einstein believed that the light-quantum hypothesis was merely 'heuristic': light behaved only as if it consisted of discontinuous quanta . In his 1906 paper Einstein used his statistical mechanics to demonstrate that when light interacts with matter Planck's entire formula can arise only from the existence of light quanta-not from waves" Cassidy. As Einstein stated when he published the 1905 paper "Planck's theory of radiation seemed to me in a certain respect the antithesis of my own. New considerations which are presented in section 1 of this paper demonstrated to me however that the theoretical bases on which Planck's radiation theory rests are different from those of Maxwell's theory and of electron theory. The difference furthermore is precisely that Planck's theory implicitly makes use of the light-quantum hypothesis" p. 199 of the present paper translation from Kuhn p. 182. Later in the paper p. 203 Einstein is forced to make the following assumption: "Although Maxwell's theory is not applicable to elementary resonators the average energy of such a resonator in a radiation field is the same as that which one would compute from Maxwell's theory". "That statement marks the emergence of the basic paradox of the old quantum theory. The theory has recourse to both Maxwell's equations and those of classical mechanics but its further formulation is incompatible with one or both of those classical theories. Other physicists were to exploit the resulting inconsistency as an argument against any form of quantum discontinuity and Einstein himself was deeply disturbed by it . But neither he nor anyone else was successful in finding a classical resolution of the quantum paradox. When two decades later Bohr and others found a way to resolve it Einstein was unable to accept their fundamentally non-classical interpretation" Kuhn pp. 184-185. RBH lists 4 other copies: in the offprint collections of Einstein himself Christie's June 17 2008 lot 100 Richard Green Christie's June 17 2008 lot 101 Hans Albert Einstein Christie's June 14 2006 lot 264 and Harvey Plotnick Christie's October 4 2002 lot 105. This copy was presented by Einstein to one of the leading physicists of the time surely hoping to make himself known in the scientific world when he was still a technical expert in the Swiss Patent Office.</p> <br /> <p>Provenance: Arnold Sommerfeld 1868-1951 his signature and characteristic numbering in red pencil '8' on front cover. "The son of a physician Sommerfeld was educated at the University of Königsberg. After teaching briefly at the universities of Göttingen Clausthal and Aachen he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Münich in 1906. Sommerfeld should have retired in 1936 in favour of his pupil Werner Heisenberg. Opposition from the Nazi party to Heisenberg's appointment prolonged Sommerfeld's tenure and it was not in fact until late 1939 that he finally retired to be succeeded not by Heisenberg but by Wilhelm Müller a Nazi aerodynamicist without a single publication in physics to his credit. Although Sommerfeld and Heisenberg were not Jewish they were regarded by the Nazis as Jewish sympathizers. Sommerfeld however survived the war and returned to his Münich chair in 1945 continuing to work at physics until he died in a car accident in 1951" Oxford Reference. "Arnold Sommerfeld was one of the most distinguished representatives of the transition period between classical and modern theoretical physics. The work of his youth was still firmly anchored in the conceptions of the nineteenth century; but when in the first decennium of the century the flood of new discoveries experimental and theoretical broke the dams of tradition he became a leader of the new movement and in combining the two ways of thinking he exerted a powerful influence on the younger generation. This combination of a classical mind to whom clarity of conception and mathematical rigour are essential with the adventurous spirit of a pioneer are the roots of his scientific success while his exceptional gift of communicating his ideas by spoken and written word made him a great teacher" Max Born p. 275. </p> <br /> <p>"Einstein started to study black-body radiation well before 1905. Mach's Wärmelehre which Einstein read in 1897 or shortly thereafter contains two chapters on thermal radiation culminating in a discussion of Kirchhoff's work. Kirchhoff showed that the energy emission spectrum of a perfectly black body defined as one absorbing all incident radiation at a given temperature is a universal function of the temperature and wavelength. He inferred that equilibrium thermal radiation in a cavity with walls maintained at a certain temperature behaves like radiation emitted by a black body at the same temperature. </p> <br /> <p>"H. F. Weber Einstein's physics professor at the ETH attempted to determine the universal black-body radiation function. He made measurements of the energy spectrum and proposed an empirical formula for the distribution function . anticipating Wien's formulation of the displacement law for black-body radiation. Weber described his work in a course at the ETH given during the winter semester of 1898-1899 for which Einstein registered. </p> <br /> <p>"By March 1899 Einstein had started to think seriously about the problem of radiation. In the spring of 1901 he was closely following Planck's work on black-body radiation. Originally Planck had hoped to explain irreversibility by studying electromagnetic radiation but came to recognize that this could not be done without introducing statistical elements into the argument. In a series of papers published between 1897 and 1900 Planck utilized Maxwell's electrodynamics to develop a theory of thermal radiation in interaction with one or more identical charged harmonic oscillators within a cavity. He was only able to account for the irreversible approach to thermal equilibrium by employing methods analogous to those Boltzmann used in kinetic theory. Planck introduced the notion of 'natural' that is maximally disordered radiation which he defined in analogy with Boltzmann's definition of molecular chaos . </p> <br /> <p>"Planck calculated the average energy of an oscillator by making assumptions about the entropy of the oscillators that enabled him to derive Wien's law for the blackbody spectrum which originally seemed well supported by the experimental evidence. But by the turn of the century new observations showed systematic deviations from Wien's law for large values of temperature. </p> <br /> <p>"Planck in 1900 presented a new energy density distribution formula that agreed closely with observations over the entire spectrum . this expression now known as Planck's law or Planck's formula involves a new constant h later called Planck's constant. To derive this formula Planck calculated the entropy of the oscillators using what Einstein later called 'the Boltzmann principle': S = k log W where S is the entropy of a macroscopic state of the system the probability of which is W and k is 'Boltzmann's constant'. Following Boltzmann Planck took W proportional to the number of 'complexions' or possible microconfigurations of the system corresponding to its state. He calculated this number by dividing the total energy of the state into a finite number of elements of equal magnitude and counting the number of possible ways of distributing these energy elements among the individual oscillators. If the size of the energy elements is set equal to hv where v is the frequency of the oscillators an expression for the entropy of an oscillator results that leads to Planck's formula .</p> <br /> <p>"In the 1905 paper Einstein showed that the expression for the volume dependence of the entropy of radiation at a given frequency is similar in form to that of the entropy of an ideal gas. He concluded that 'monochromatic radiation of low density behaves thermodynamically as though it consisted of quanta of energy which are independent of one another' . Einstein opened the paper by pointing out the 'fundamental formal distinction' between current theories of matter in which the energy of a body is represented as a sum over a finite number of degrees of freedom and Maxwell's theory in which the energy is a continuous spatial function having an infinite number of degrees of freedom. He suggested that the inability of Maxwell's theory to give an adequate account of radiation might be remedied by a theory in which radiant energy is distributed discontinuously in space. Einstein formulated 'the light quantum hypothesis' that the energy of a light ray emitted from a point is not continuously distributed over an ever increasing space but consists of a finite number of energy quanta which are localized at points in space which move without dividing and which can only be produced and absorbed as complete units . Einstein asserted that Planck's derivation implicitly assumes quantization of the energies of charged oscillators" Papers pp. 134-142.</p> <br /> <p>"In 1905 Einstein could not make sense of Planck's derivation of Planck's law. In fact he seems to have deliberately avoided any reference to Planck's law in his reasoning . The following year Einstein ceased to avoid Planck's law as he discovered a new way to justify Planck's formal steps toward this law. If a resonator of frequency ν can only emit or absorb full light quanta Einstein reasoned then its energy can only be an integral multiple of hν and Planck's characterization of the complexions for a set of resonators receives a dynamical justification. The only remaining difficulty is that Planck's derivation of the relation between the average energy of a resonator and the spectral density of radiation becomes void. Einstein expressed the need of a new derivation based on some quantized dynamics for the interaction between matter and radiation. Ten years elapsed however before he filled the gap" Janssen & Lehner p. 126. </p> <br /> <p>In the final section of this paper Einstein gives a new application of his 'heuristic principle' to the explanation of the 'Volta effect' - that when two different metals are placed in contact a potential difference between them is observed.</p> <br /> <p>BRL 12; Weil 12. Shields "Writings of Albert Einstein" in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist 1948 pp. 689-758 no. 13; also included in Shields' "Chronological list of principal works" on p. 757. The Cambridge Companion to Einstein Janssen & Lehner eds. 2014. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein Vol. 2: The Swiss Years: Writings 1900-1909. Born 'Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld 1868-1951' Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 8 1952 pp. 275-296.</p> <br /> <p>Cassidy "Einstein on the Photoelectric Effect." Einstein: Image and Impact. American Institute of Physics n.d. Honner The Description of Nature 1988. Kuhn Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity 1894-1912 1978. Pais Subtle is the Lord 1982.</p> <br/> <br/> 8vo 222 x 144 mm pp. 199-206. Original printed wrappers small chip from upper edge of front wrapper. Johann Ambrosius Barth unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 6413

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT - THE PHOTOELECTRIC EQUATION - THE NOBEL PRIZE PAPERS‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtsabsorption; withbound: Das princip von der Erhaltung der Schwerpunktsbewegung und die Trägheit der Energie; 2 papers.‎

‎Leipzig Johann Ambrosius Barth 1906. Full cloth. Spine with gilt lettering. In: "Annalen der Physik. Vierte Folge. Band 20. Herausgegeben von Paul Drude." Portrait Paul Drude VIII1048 pp. and 6 plates. Einstein papers: pp. 199-206 and 627-33. Internally fine and clean. The entire volume offered. Broad margins. <br/><br/><em>Both papers first edition. It was for the papers "Ueber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt" of 1905 and "Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung. Theory of light emission and absorption the offered item that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. "The quantum theory has affected virtually every branch of physics. Its earliest and one of its most significant developments was Einstein's application of the theory to what is known as the 'photo-electrical effect'.Einstein explained this effext by suggesting that the classical view that light is emitted in the form of continous waves must be abandoned. The photo-electrical effect could be explained only as an example of quantum action where the waves of light or X-rays are emitted in minute particles or bullets. It is he size of the bullet the wave-lenght of the radiation which determines the number of electrons ejected. It was for this and not for the theory of relativity that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. Einstein's two fundamental papers on this subject are "Ueber einem Erzeugung." 1905 and Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung the paper offered here" PMM the note to 391. In the second paper Principle of the conservation of the centre of mass motion and the inertia of energy he shows that the conservation of mass is a special application of his energy principle E= Mc2 - Weil: 12 & 13.Among the many papers in this volume we have Max von Laue: Zur Thermodynamik der Inteferenzerscheinungen. pp. 365-378. </em> hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 59121

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zur Theorie der Räume mit Riemann-Metrik und Fernparallelismus. Offprint‎

‎1930. Offprint from Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1930. Single sheet pp. 1-2. 256 x 184 mm. Upper edge a bit creased light toning but very good. First edition offprint issue. One of Einstein's last papers on Riemann metrics and distant parallelism written the year before he abandonded this approach to constructing a unified field theory. Pais Subtle is the Lord p. 347. Weil Albert Einstein Bibliography 173. unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 43314

‎EINSTEIN, A (+) S N BOSE‎

‎Zur Theorie der Radiometerkräfte Addendum to Bose's paper: Einstein Über die Entwicklung des Drehkristallverfahrens. Bemerkung zu der Arbeit von Polanyi Schiebold und Wissenberg.‎

‎Berlin Springer 1924. 8vo. Bound in contemporary half cloth. In "Zeitschrift für Physik" Bd. 27. Entire volume offered. Stamp to front free end paper. Fine and clean. Einstein: Pp. 1-6; P. 392. Bose: P. 392. Entire volume: IV 395 1 pp. <br/><br/><em>First appearance of Einstein's paper on statistical mechanics and the physics of radiometers. Weil 139 143a </em> hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 49431

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT - THE NOBEL-PRIZE PAPER‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtsabsorption; Eingegangen 13. März 1906. On the Theory of Light Production and Light Absorption.‎

‎Leipzig Johann Ambrosius Barth 1906. No wrappers. Extracted from "Annalen der Physik" Vierte Folge. Bd. 20. Pp. 199-206. Clean and fine. <br/><br/><em>First printing of one of the papers for which Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. It was for the papers "Ueber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt" of 1905 and "Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung. Theory of light emission and absorption the offered item that Einstein received the prize: "for his services to theoretical physics and especially for his discoveryof the law of the photoelectrical effect" - his reward was not based on relativity."The quantum theory has affected virtually every branch of physics. Its earliest and one of its most significant developments was Einstein's application of the theory to what is known as the 'photo-electrical effect'.Einstein explained this effext by suggesting that the classical view that light is emitted in the form of continous waves must be abandoned. The photo-electrical effect could be explained only as an example of quantum action where the waves of light or X-rays are emitted in minute particles or bullets. It is he size of the bullet the wave-lenght of the radiation which determines the number of electrons ejected. It was for this and not for the theory of relativity that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. Einstein's two fundamental papers on this subject are "Ueber einem Erzeugung." 1905 and Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung the paper offered here" PMM the note to 391.Weil: 12 with an asterix denoting a major paper - Boni:12. </em> unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 46956

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichtfortpflanzung in dispergierenden Medien.‎

‎Berlin Gruyter & Co. 1922. 4to. Orig.printed orange wrappers. Offprint/Sonderabdruck aus Sitzungsberichten. pp. 18-22. Fine fresh copy. <br/><br/><em>First edition in the rare Offprint still called "Abdruck". - Weil No. 120.The early Offprints from "Sitzungsberichten." are called "Sonderabdruck" up to Weil No.165 including this. From Weil 166 they are called "Sonderausgabe.". - Before 161 up to 160 the Offprints do not have separate title and pagination the pagination follows the numbering in the periodical. From 166 the Offprint has both separate printed title and pagination. - So Weil Nos 161-165 is still "Abdruck" but with separate title and pagination. These facts are not mentioned in the bibliographies. </em> unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 28358

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtabsorption AND Das Prinzip von der Erhaltung der Schwerpunktsbewegung und die Trägheit der Energie in Annalen der Physik Vol. 20 1906 pp. 199-206; pp. 627-633‎

‎Leipzig: Barth 1906. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION FIRST ISSUE of two important 1906 Einstein papers. Einstein wrote two papers on the photoelectric effect his revolutionary 1905 paper and "Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtabsorption" his continuation of it. In them Einstein employed Planck's theory that luminous energy can be absorbed or emitted only in discrete amounts called quanta and proposed a theory of light quanta involving particles with no mass photons whose energy depended on frequency. All of Einstein's experimental results confirmed that light actually consisted of discrete energy packets. <br /> <br /> "Based on this theory Einstein wrote an equation describing how the photoelectric effect works. The energy of individual electrons emitted by a photocell is a function of the frequency of the light hitting the photocell and the rate of electron emission is a function of the light source's intensity number of photons with sufficient energy being emitted. This is contrary to what is predicted by classical physics" History of Physics: The Wenner Collection. <br /> <br /> In this Einstein's second paper on photoelectrics he revisited Planck's theory and from it developed his ideas to show that an electromagnetic wave such as light could be described as a particle photon with discrete quanta of energy that was dependent on its frequency. In the long history of quantum mechanics this would lead to a theory of unity between subatomic particles and electromagnetic waves called wave-particle duality in which particles and waves were neither one nor the other but had certain properties of both. <br /> <br /> At first Einstein believed that light-quantum hypothesis was merely 'heuristic': that it behaved only as if it consisted of discontinuous quanta. But in this paper and others to follow Einstein used his statistical mechanics to demonstrate that when light interacts with matter Planck's entire formula can arise only from the existence of light quanta -- not from waves. In other words in explaining the photoelectric effect by extending Planck's concept of quantum of energy had Einstein "demonstrated that his own 'light-quantum hypothesis' was implicit in Planck's earlier work" Honner The Description of Nature 31. <br /> <br /> ALSO included in this volume is "Daz Prinzip von der Erhaltung." The Principle of Conservation of Motion of the Center of Gravity and the Inertia of Energy. In this "ingenious thought experiment involving energy transport in a hollow cylinder Einstein returned to the relationship between inertial mass and energy giving more general arguments for their complete equivalence" Calaprice The Einstein Almanac 18. This was the first statement that the conservation of mass is a special case of the conservation of energy. CONDITION & DETAILS: Leipzig: Barth 1906. Octavo. 8.75 x 6 inches; 222 x 152mm. Ex-libris bearing minimal markings only a small stamp on the title page. Illustration: 6 plates and figures throughout. Entire volume in black cloth gilt-lettered at the spine. The cloth is a bit rubbed and scuffed and there is fading at the spine. Solidly and tightly bound. Bright and clean throughout. Barth hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 292

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichtfortpflanzung in dispergierenden Medien. Weil 120. Offprint from S. preuss. Akad. Wiss‎

‎1922. unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 37405

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT und W MAYER‎

‎Zwei strenge statische Lösungen der feldgleichungen der einheitlichen Feldtheorie.‎

‎Berlin Gruyter & Co. 1930. 4to. Orig. printed orange wrappers. Offprint/Sonderausgabe aus Sitzungsberichten.pp. 1-13. Fine fresh copy. <br/><br/><em>First edition in the rare Offprint with its separate printed title and separate pagination. Se Weil No. 170 not mentioning this.The early Offprints from "Sitzungsberichten." are called "Sonderabdruck" up to Weil No.165 including this. From Weil 166 they are called "Sonderausgabe.". - Before 161 up to 160 the Offprints do not have separate title and pagination the pagination follows the numbering in the periodical. From 166 the Offprint has both separate printed title and pagination. - So Weil Nos 161-165 is still "Abdruck" but with separate title and pagination. These facts are not mentioned in the bibliographies. </em> unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 28376

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zwei strenge statische Losungen der Feldgleichungen der einheitlichen Feldtheorie. Offprint‎

‎Berlin: Akad. Wiss 1930. Weil 170. Offprint from S. preuss. Akad. Wiss. Akad. Wiss unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 37422

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎“Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtabsorption†and “Prinzip von der Erhaltung der Schwerpunktsbewegung und die Trägheit der Energie†in Annalen der Physik 4. Folge Band 20‎

‎<p>Contemporary half dark green roan. Rubbed some chipping separation at upper joint. Library markings.</p><p>FIRST EDITION of "On the Theory of Light Production and Light Absorption" pp. 199-206. This classic in the history of physics is Einstein's second paper on the photoelectric effect. Einstein reconciles his and Planck's independent derivations of the blackbody formula E=hν. Planck's derivation of this formula ascribed it to a restriction on the energy changes possible when radiation is produced or absorbed by matter which implied no restriction on the energies of either matter or radiation. Einstein's 1905 derivation ascribed it to a restriction on the energy of radiation alone but in this paper he proposes the modern idea that the energies of both matter and radiation are quantized which led to his work on quantum specific heats.</p><p>and</p><p>FIRST EDITION of "The Principle of Conservation of Motion of the Center of Gravity and the Inertia of Energy" pp. 627-633. In this "ingenious thought experiment involving energy transport in a hollow cylinder Einstein returned to the relationship between inertial mass and energy giving more general arguments for their complete equivalence" Calaprice The Einstein Almanac. This is the first statement that the conservation of mass is a special case of the conservation of energy.</p><br /> Annalen der Physik‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 32820369

‎EINSTEIN, Albert‎

‎“Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung.†In Physikalische Zeitschrift XVIII pp. 121-128‎

‎Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1917. FIRST EDITION. Contemporary half cloth and marbled boards preserved in a morocco slipcase. An excellent clean copy. First edition of this classic work on the quantum theory of radiation by Einstein in which he predicts the existence of the phenomenon of stimulated emission of radiation. He here analyzes the properties of photons and demonsrtrtes that Planck’s law is directly deducible from quantum theory and the concept of transition probabilities. Four decades later MASER and LASER devices are operated to prove him right.<br /> <br /> Boni 95; Weil 91. S. Hirzel unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 19286

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Äther und Relativitätstheorie. Rede gehalten am 5.Mai 1920 an der Reich=Universität zu Leiden.‎

‎Berlin Julius Springer 1920. Clothbacked boards. Bound with orig. printed wrappers. Small inkspots in inner margins of wrappers. 15 pp. <br/><br/><em>First edition. - Weil No. 111. </em> hardcover‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 29309

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Äther und Relativitäts-Theorie. Rede gehalten am 5. Mai 1920 an der Reichs-Universität zu Leiden.‎

‎Berlin Julius Springer 1920. Uncut in orig. printed wrappers. 15 1 pp. Clean and fine near mint condition. <br/><br/><em>First edition. - Weil: 111. </em> unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 38643

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Über das Relativitätsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn from It‎

‎Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1908. First edition. original wrappers. Very Good. THE BIRTH OF GENERAL RELATIVITY: FIRST PRINTING IN RARE ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF ONE ONE EINSTEIN'S MOST IMPORTANT PAPERS; containing the beginning of general relativity the derivations of the equivalence principle gravitational redshift and the gravitational bending of light. "Einstein's road to general relativity began in November 1907 when he was struggling against a deadline to finish an article for a science yearbook explaining his special theory of relativity. Two limitations of that theory still bothered him: it applied only to uniform constant-velocity motion. and it did not incorporate Newton's theory of gravity. <br /> <br /> "'I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me' he recalled. 'If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.' That realization which 'startled' him launched him on an arduous eight-year effort to generalize his special theory of relativity and 'impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.' Later he would call it 'the happiest though in my life.'<br /> <br /> "The tale of the falling man has become an iconic one and in some accounts it actually involves a painter who fell from the roof of an apartment building near the patent office. Einstein refined his thought experiment so that the falling man was in an enclosed chamber such as an elevator in free fall above the earth. In this falling chamber at least until it crashed the man would feel weightless. Any objects he emptied from his pocket and let loose would float alongside him.<br /> <br /> "Looking at it another way Einstein imagined a man in an enclosed chamber floating in deep space 'far removed from stars and other appreciable masses.' He would experience the same perceptions of weightlessness. 'Gravitation naturally does not exist for this observer. He must fasten himself with strings to the floor otherwise the slightest impact against the floor will cause him to rise slowly towards the ceiling.'<br /> <br /> "Then Einstein imagined that a rope was hooked onto the roof of the chamber and pulled up with a constant force. 'The chamber together with the observer then begin to move "upwards" with a uniformly accelerated motion.' The man inside will feel himself pressed to the floor. 'He is then standing in the chest in exactly the same way as anyone stands in a room of a house on our earth. The man in the chamber will come to the conclusion that he and the chest are in a gravitational field. Just then however he discovers the hook in the middle of the lid of the chest and the rope which is attached to it and he consequently comes to the conclusion that the chamber is suspended at rest in the gravitational field.'<br /> <br /> Einstein observed that inertial mass always equals gravitational mass and through his thought experiments concluded that "From this correspondence it follows that it is impossible to discover by experiment whether a given system of coordinates is accelerated or whether. the observed effects are due to a gravitational field."<br /> <br /> "Einstein called this 'the equivalence principle.' The local effects of gravity and of acceleration are equivalent. <br /> <br /> "In 1907 working against the deadline imposed by the Yearbook of Radioactivity and Electronics Einstein tacked on a fifth section to his article on relativity that sketched out his new ideas. He also came up with many predictions that could be tested including that light should be bent by gravity and that the wavelength of light emitted from a source with a large mass such as the sun should increase slightly in what has become known as the gravitational redshift. <br /> <br /> "It would take Einstein another eight years until November 1915 to work out the fundamentals of this theory and find the math to express it. Then it would take another four years before the most vivid of his predictions the extent to which gravity would bend light was verified by dramatic observations. But at least Einstein now had a vision one that started him on the road toward one of the most elegant and impressive achievements in the history of physics: the general theory of relativity" Isaacson Einstein 145-49. <br /> <br /> Weil in his bibliography also notes that "On p.443 are probably the first explicit statements both of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass and of the equation for mass in terms of energy now regarded as the theoretical basis for the release of atomic energy." Weil 21. <br /> <br /> Although Einstein submitted the paper on 4 December 1907 it wasn't published until the January 22 issue of the Jarbuch. Note: There was a very short "Correction" in a subsequent issue not included here.<br /> <br /> IN: Jahrbuch der Radioactivität under Electronik Vierter Band - 4. Heft No. 16 pp. 411-462. Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1908. Octavo original wrappers; handsome custom box. Light wear to wrappers and split to spine; text fine with Einstein paper largely unopened. <br /> <br /> AN EXTREMELY RARE COPY IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF ONE OF EINSTEIN'S MOST IMPORTANT PAPERS. S. Hirzel unknown‎

Riferimento per il libraio : 2507