‎Einstein‎

‎EINSTEIN, Albert‎

‎Zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie with: Zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie Nachtrag. Offprint from Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XLIV November 4 1915 & XLV. XLVI November 11 1915‎

‎Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1915. First edition. <p>EINSTEIN’S COMPLETION OF THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY</p> . <p>First editions extremely rare author’s presentation offprint not to be confused with the much more common trade separate – see below from the library of the great German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld of the first two of the papers published in November 1915 that document Einstein’s final version of the general theory of relativity. “In the half century and more of Einstein’s work in science one discovery stands above all as his greatest achievement. It is his general theory of relativity†Norton. “There was difficulty reconciling the Newtonian theory of gravitation with its instantaneous propagation of forces with the requirements of special relativity; and Einstein working on this difficulty was led to a generalization of relativity – which was probably the greatest scientific discovery that was ever made†Dirac quoted in Chandrasekhar p. 3. Einstein’s special theory of relativity 1905 showed that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial i.e. non-accelerating frames of reference. It was then natural to ask whether it was possible to extend this principle of relativity to the more general case of frames of reference in arbitrary states of motion. This problem became linked to a theory of gravitation with Einstein’s ‘equivalence principle’ of 1907 according to which the effects of gravity are locally equivalent to those of accelerated motion. Einstein’s first steps towards a geometrical theory of gravitation were taken in August 1912 when his friend Marcel Grossmann provided the necessary mathematical tools. “Some time between August 10 and August 16 it became clear to Einstein that Riemannian geometry is the correct mathematical tool for what we now call general relativity theory. The impact of this abrupt realization was to change his outlook on physics and physical theory for the rest of his life†Pais p. 210. The resulting ‘Entwurf’ theory 1913 had much in common with the final theory of 1915 but based on a fallacious argument Einstein abandoned the requirement that the theory should be ‘generally-covariant’ i.e. that arbitrary frames of reference should be allowed. “After three years of fruitless peregrinations the revelation came to Einstein that he had been constantly on the wrong track although in 1913 he had been so near to the right solution†Lanczos p. 211. On November 4 1915 he presented to a plenary session of the Prussian Academy a new version of general relativity ‘Zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie’ “based on the postulate of covariance with respect to transformations with determinant 1†and stated that he had “completely lost confidence†in the ‘Entwurf’ equations. On November 18 he published his calculation of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury based on the new theory: its agreement with observation confirmed that the theory was correct the Entwurf theory predicted half the observed value of the precession.</p> <br /> <p>Provenance: Arnold Sommerfeld 1868-1951 his characteristic numbering in red pencil ‘30’ 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>“In June 1905 while still a patent examiner in Bern Einstein submitted his famous work on the electrodynamics of moving bodies to the Annalen der Physik. This work contained his special theory of relativity in which he asserted the equivalence of all inertial frames of reference as a fundamental postulate of physics. The question which then naturally arose was whether it was possible to extend this principle of relativity to the more general case of frames of reference in arbitrary states of motion. But he could find no workable basis for such an extension until he tried to incorporate gravitation into his new special theory of relativity for a review article in 1907 ‘Uber das Relativitätsprinzip und die ausdemselben gezogenen Folgerungen’ Jahrbuch der Radioaktivitat und Elektronik 4 1907 411-62. The difficulties of this task led him to a new principle later to be called the ‘principle of equivalence.’</p> <br /> <p>“On the basis of the fact that all bodies fall alike in a gravitational field Einstein postulated the complete physical equivalence of a homogeneous gravitational field and a uniform acceleration of the frame of reference. This extended the principle of relativity to the case of uniform acceleration. It also foreshadowed the problem whose complete solution would lead him to his general theory of relativity: the construction of a relativistically acceptable theory of gravitation based on the principle of equivalence†Norton p. 258.</p> <br /> <p>One application of the equivalence principle proved crucial to the subsequent development of his ideas on general relativity. Einstein considered an observer standing on a rotating disc – a non-inertial accelerating reference frame. According to special relativity measuring rods aligned with the circumference of the disc will contract due to their motion whereas measuring rods positioned along the radius of the disc will not. Hence the ratio of the circumference of the disc to its diameter will be less than Ï€. “The spatial geometry for the rotating observer is therefore non-euclidean. Invoking the equivalence principle Einstein concluded that this will be true for an observer in a gravitational field as well. This then is what first suggested to Einstein that gravity should be represented by curved space-time. </p> <br /> <p>“To describe curved space-time Einstein turned to Gauss’s theory of curved surfaces a subject he vaguely remembered from his student days at the ETH in Zürich. He had learned it from the notes of his classmate Marcel Grossmann. Upon his return to his alma mater as a full professor of physics in 1912 Einstein learned from Grossmann now a colleague in the mathematics department of the ETH about the extension of Gauss’s theory to spaces of higher dimension by Riemann and others. Riemann’s theory provided Einstein with the mathematical object with which he could unify the effects of gravity and acceleration: the metric field†Janssen p. 65.</p> <br /> <p>The first product of this collaboration was the Entwurf einer verallgemeinerten Relativitätstheorie und einer Theorie der Gravitation published before the end of June 1913 which contained many of the essential features of the final general theory of relativity; most importantly it introduced the ‘metric’ of space-time. In Minkowski’s formulation of special relativity 1908 the most important quantity is the ‘world function’ of two events which determines the metric and causal structure of space-time. If these events have coordinates x y z t and x’ y’ z’ t’ in some inertial reference frame the world function is:</p> <br /> <p>c2t’ – t2 – x’ – x2 – y’ – y2 – z’ – z2</p> <br /> <p>where c is the speed of light. Its crucial property is that it depends only on the two events and not on the choice of inertial reference frame – in other words it is unchanged ‘invariant’ when x y z t and x’ y’ z’ t’ are both subjected to any Lorentz transformation. Einstein and Grossmann began with the world function in differential form:</p> <br /> <p>ds2 = c2dt2 – dx2 – dy2 – dz2</p> <br /> <p>If we now subject x y z t to an arbitrary coordinate transformation not necessarily a Lorentz transformation this takes the general form</p> <br /> <p>ds2 = g11dx12 g12dx1dx2 …. ;</p> <br /> <p>the collection of quantities gμν which in general depend on the coordinates x1 x2 x3 x4 is called the metric. Based on analogy with Newton’s theory Einstein expected that the gravitational equations should be of the form</p> <br /> <p>Gμν = Tμν</p> <br /> <p>where Gμν is a purely geometric quantity constructed solely from the metric gμν and its derivatives up to the second order and the ‘stress-energy tensor’ Tμν contains the information about the matter that is producing the gravitational field including energy density momentum fluxes and stresses. The question was: what exactly should Gμνbe</p> <br /> <p>Einstein and Grossmann found that generally covariant equations did not seem to be compatible with energy-momentum conservation or reduce to the equations of Newtonian gravitational theory for weak static fields both essential requirements of the correct theory. Einstein therefore decided to settle in the ‘Entwurf’ for equations with very limited covariance – instead of arbitrary changes in coordinates only linear ones were allowed. The restricted covariance of the ‘Entwurf’ field equations continued to bother him until in late August 1913 he convinced himself that such restrictions are unavoidable by means of the infamous “hole argument†first published as an addendum to the reprint of the ‘Entwurf’ article in Zeitschrift für Physik in January 1914. This ingenious argument showed correctly that if the gravitational equations were generally covariant the metric gμν would not be uniquely determined by the matter distribution i.e. by Tμν. He concluded incorrectly that this implied that general covariance must be ruled out the hole argument does not work if only linear coordinate transformations are allowed. The appropriate analogy is with electromagnetism: the metric is analogous to the scalar and vector potentials of electromagnetism and it was well known certainly to Einstein that these potentials are not uniquely determined by the charges and currents producing the electromagnetic field. </p> <br /> <p>That the ‘Entwurf’ theory was incorrect was made clear by Einstein’s attempt in collaboration with Michele Besso another former classmate to explain the motion of the perihelion of Mercury. In 1859 Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier had observed the ‘precession’ of Mercury’s orbit: this orbit is an ellipse but the ellipse is not fixed in space but slowly rotates. From early on in his search for a new relativistic theory of gravitation Einstein had been interested in the problem of Mercury’s perihelion. In a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht in 1907 Einstein had already expressed his hope that such a theory would explain the anomalous advance of Mercury’s perihelion. Besso visited Einstein in Zürich in June 1913 and the two men calculated the precession expected on the basis of the ‘Entwurf’ theory. Disappointingly it was only about half the observed anomaly. </p> <br /> <p>Einstein left Zürich in March 1914 to take up a professorship in Berlin which was to be his home until December 1932. He made no further progress on the gravitational equations until the summer of 1915 although a detailed exposition of the ‘Entwurf’ theory was published in October 1914 in which Einstein maintained the need for restricted covariance and even claimed that this determined the gravitational Lagrangian uniquely. “Einstein still believed in the ‘old’ theory as late as July 1915 between July and October he found objections to that theory and his final version was conceived and worked out between late October and November 25 … What made Einstein change his mind between July and October Letters to Sommerfeld and Lorentz show that he had found at least three objections against the old theory: 1 its restricted covariance did not include uniform rotations 2 the precession of the perihelion of Mercury came out too small by a factor of about 2 and 3 his proof of October 1914 of the uniqueness of the gravitational Lagrangian was incorrect. Einstein got rid of all these shortcomings in a series of four brief articles offered here …</p> <br /> <p>“On November 4 Einstein presented to the plenary session of the Prussian Academy a new version of general relativity ‘based on the postulate of covariance with respect to transformations with determinant 1’. He began this paper by stating that he had ‘completely lost confidence’ in the equations proposed in October 1914. At that time he had given a proof of the uniqueness of the gravitational Lagrangian. He had realized meanwhile that this proof ‘rested on misconception’ and so he continued ‘I was led back to a more general covariance of the field equations a requirement which I had abandoned only with a heavy heart in the course of my collaboration with my friend Grossmann three years earlier’ …</p> <br /> <p>“Einstein and Grossmann had concluded that the gravitational equations could be invariant under linear transformations only and Einstein’s justification for this restriction was based on the belief that the gravitational equations ought to determine the gμν uniquely a point he continued to stress in October 1914. In his new paper he finally liberated himself from this three-year-old prejudice. That is the main advance on November 4. His answers were still not entirely right. There was still one flaw a much smaller one which he eliminated three weeks later. But the road lay open. He was lyrical. ‘No one who has really grasped it can escape the magic of this new theory.’</p> <br /> <p>“The remaining flaw was of course Einstein’s unnecessary restriction to unimodular transformations. The reasons which led him to introduce this constraint were not deep I believe. He simply noted that this restricted class of transformations permits simplifications of the tensor calculus … The new equations are a vast improvement over the Einstein-Grossmann equations and cure one of the ailments he had diagnosed only recently: unimodular transformations do include rotations with arbitrarily varying angular velocities. In addition he proved that the new equations can be derived from a variational principle and that the conservation laws are satisfied†Pais pp. 250-252.</p> <br /> <p>On November 11 he submitted a ‘Nachtrag’ to his paper of a week earlier. “Einstein proposes a scheme that is even tighter than the one of a week earlier. Not only shall the theory be invariant with respect to unimodular transformations … but more strongly it shall satisfy the condition that the determinant of the matrix gμν is equal to minus one … During the next two weeks Einstein believed that this new condition had brought him closer to general covariance … One week later he remarked that ‘no objections of principle’ can be raised against it†ibid. pp. 252-253. Norton p. 309 points out that Einstein had in fact made a significant advance in this paper: namely he had finally found generally covariant field equations that reduced to the Newtonian equations in the weak field limit†ibid. p. 253.</p> <br /> <p>On November 18 still retaining the restrictions of his paper of a week earlier Einstein presented in ‘Erklarung der Perihelbewegung des Merkur aus der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie’“two of his greatest discoveries. Each of these changed his life. The first result was that his theory explains … quantitatively … the secular rotation of the orbit of Mercury discovered by Le Verrier … without the need of any special hypothesis. This discovery was I believe by far the strongest emotional experience in Einstein’s scientific life perhaps in all his life. Nature had spoken to him. He had to be right. 'For a few days I was beside myself with joyous excitement’. Later he told Fokker that his discovery had given him palpitations of the heart. What he told de Haas is even more profoundly significant: when he saw that his calculations agreed with the unexplained astronomical observations he had the feeling that something actually snapped in him …</p> <br /> <p>“Einstein’s discovery resolved a difficulty that was known for more than sixty years. Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier had been the first to find evidence for an anomaly in the orbit of Mercury and also the first to attempt to explain this effect … In 1859 he found that the perihelion of Mercury advances by thirty-eight seconds per century due to ‘some as yet unknown action on which no light has been thrown … a grave difficulty worthy of attention by astronomers’†ibid. pp. 253-254. A more accurate measurement of 43 seconds was made by Simon Newcomb in 1882 and this was precisely the value predicted by the new theory. </p> <br /> <p>The prediction of the bending of light in a gravitational field was treated only briefly in ‘Erklarung der Perihelbewegung des Merkur aus der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie’ probably because no accurate measurement of it had been made so this prediction could not be confirmed at the time. Einstein had realised in 1907 based on the equivalence principle that some bending of light should occur but he believed that the effect was too small to be observed. In 1911 he realized that the effect could be detected for starlight grazing the sun during a total eclipse and found that the amount of bending in that case is 0''.87 – this value could in fact have been computed by Newton from his law of gravitation and his corpuscular theory of light. In 3 Einstein discovered that general relativity implies a bending of light by the sun equal to 1".74 twice the Newtonian value. This factor of 2 set the stage for a confrontation between Newton and Einstein.</p> <br /> <p>“It was not until May 1919 that two British expeditions obtained the first useful photographs and not until November 1919 that their results were formally announced … In March 1917 the Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Watson Dyson drew attention to the excellence of the star configuration on May 29 1919 an eclipse date for measuring the alleged deflection … Two expeditions were mounted one to Sobral in Brazil led by Andrew Crommelin from the Greenwich Observatory and one to Principe Island off the coast of Spanish Guinea led by Eddington. Before departing Eddington wrote ‘The present eclipse expeditions may for the first time demonstrate the weight of light i.e. the Newton value; or they may confirm Einstein’s weird theory of non-Euclidean space; or they may lead to a result of yet more far-reaching consequences – no deflection’ … The expeditions returned. Data analysis began. According to a preliminary report by Eddington to the meeting of the British Association held in Bournemouth on September 9-13 the bending of light lay between 0''.87 and double that value. Word reached Lorentz. Lorentz cabled Einstein … Then came November 6 1919 the day on which Einstein was canonized†Pais 304-305. At a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society on that date Dyson concluded his remarks with the statement “‘After a careful study of the plates I am prepared to say that they confirm Einstein’s prediction. A very definite result has been obtained that light is deflected in accordance with Einstein’s law of gravitation’†ibid. p. 305. </p> <br /> <p>Three remarks may be made on the speed with which after eight years of struggle Einstein completed these final papers on his theory. The first is that Einstein had come very close to the correct gravitational equations in the second half of 1912 – they are recorded in his ‘Zurich notebook’ – but he discarded them because of his arguments against general covariance as we have seen. Once he no longer believed in these arguments he could return to the work carried out in the Zurich notebook and complete it. The second is that the detailed calculations in 3 relating to Mercury’s perihelion were in fact very similar to those he had carried out with Besso in 1913 and so required relatively little extra effort. The final point is that Einstein was in competition with the great Göttingen mathematician David Hilbert.</p> <br /> <p>This author’s presentation offprint is of extreme rarity 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 ‘Überreicht 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 ‘Überreicht 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>It might seem obvious that Einstein’s fame dates from 1905 his ‘annus mirabilis’ in which he published his epoch-making papers on special relativity and the light quantum. However these works did not make him immediately well known even in the physics community – many physicists did not understand or accept his work and it was two or three years before his genius was fully accepted even by his colleagues. Among the general public Einstein became well known only in late 1919 following the success of Eddington’s expedition to observe the bending of light by the Sun which confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This was front-page news and made Einstein universally famous. See Chapter 16 ‘The suddenly famous Doctor Einstein’ in Pais Subtle is the Lord for an account of these events. Before 1919 the trade offprints of Einstein’s papers would probably only have been purchased by professional physicists; after 1919 everyone wanted a memento of the famous Dr. Einstein whether or not they understood anything of theoretical physics and the trade offprints of his papers were printed and sold in far greater numbers than before to meet the demand. It is telling that when these post-1919 trade offprints appear on the market they are often in mint condition – they were never read simply because their owners were unable to understand them.</p> <br /> <p>In our view Einstein’s author’s presentation offprints are rare from any journal and any period though of course some are rarer than others. Before 1919 or 1920 the Sitzungsberichte trade offprints are also rare although not are rare as the author’s presentation offprints; after 1919 or 1920 the trade offprints are much more common.</p> <br /> <p>BRL 74; Weil 75; Born ‘Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld 1868-1951’ Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 8 1952 pp. 275-296. Chandrasekhra ‘The general theory of relativity: Why “It is probably the most beautiful of all existing theories†Journal of Astrophysics 5 1984 pp. 3-11; Eisenstaedt The Curious History of Relativity 2006; Janssen ‘Of pots and holes: Einstein’s bumpy road to general relativity’ Annalen der Physik 14 Supplement 2005 pp. 58-85; Lanczos Einstein Decade: 1905-1915 1974; Norton ‘How Einstein found his field equations: 1912-1915’ Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14 1984 pp. 253-316; Pais Subtle is the Lord 1982.</p> <br/> <br/> Large 8vo 252 x 180mm pp. 778-786; 799-801. Original printed wrappers light vertical crease from posting. Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 6406

‎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

Bookseller reference : 28359

‎Einstein, Albert‎

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

‎1923. unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 37406

‎Einstein, Alfred‎

‎Zur Deutschen Literatur Für Viola Da Gamba Im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert Issue 1 German Edition‎

‎hardcover. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book. hardcover‎

Bookseller reference : 1016678002.G ISBN : 1016678002 9781016678001

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Zur Einheitlichen Feldtheorie.‎

‎1929. S.Ber. Akad. Wiss. Berl. 1929/ 1. - Berlin Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften 1930 8° 8 S. in schönem Pappband der Zeit. First Edition! "The unified Field Theory" is one of Einstein's last important scientific works. According to Weil "This paper represents a new development which was immediate news. A translation by L.L.Whyte appeared in the London Times of Feb. 4 1929. It was quoted in full in "Observatory" vol. 52 under the title "New Field Theory" pp.82-87 and 1930 pp.11-118." 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 field theory. On the day of offical publication of the third of a formidably technical series of 9 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 it was still tentative; and soon he found he had to abandon it. - cf.Parkinson Breakthroughs p.279 Weil No. 165 Schlipp Einstein No.226; Alicke No. 141; Norman Coll. I 700 unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 27093

‎EINSTEIN, A.‎

‎Zur einheitlichen Feldtheorie.‎

‎Berlin 1929. Orig. printed orange wrappers. Back strengthend with matching paper. Fresh copy. Offprint/Sonderabdr. aus "Sitzungsberichte". pp. 1-8. <br/><br/><em>First edition. Weil No. 165 - with asterics denoting major work. Printing and the Mind of Man 416. </em> unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 22771

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper Special Relativity; WITH: Ãœber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt Light Quanta. WITH: Ãœber die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Warme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flussigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen Existence of Atoms‎

‎<p>Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth 1905. First edition. original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST PRINTINGS WITH EXTREMELY RARE ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of Einstein's revolutionary papers of 1905 including the first edition of the initial paper on special relativity; three of the most important papers in the history of science. Beautiful clean copies without any institutional stamps. In the first paper "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" published in March "Einstein postulated that light is composed of individual quanta later called photons that in addition to wavelike behaviour demonstrate certain properties unique to particles. In a single stroke he thus revolutionized the theory of light and provided an explanation for among other phenomena the emission of electrons from some solids when struck by light called the photoelectric effect" Britannica. It was for this paper on the photoelectric effect that Einstein was granted the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. The next paper "On the Motion-Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat-of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid" published in May provided a theoretical explanation of Brownian motion. It is generally regarded as the first proof that molecules exist.<br /><br />Although the first two papers were of astonishing originality and importance it was the third paper introducing what would be later known as Einstein's special theory of relativity that would make him famous. "Toward the end of June it was all written up and on June 30 receipt of the manuscript was recorded at the editorial office of Annalen in Berlin. The thirty-page article published three months later was titled 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies'. It was a treatise beyond compare and without precedent one of the greatest scientific achievements in content and one of the most brilliant in style. Of course there were later additions some from Einstein himself and some from others but these were mere addenda to a theory which had appeared before all the world ready and complete valid for all time" Folsing Albert Einstein. Einstein's theory with the premise that "if for all frames of reference the speed of light is constant and if all natural laws are the same then both time and motion are found to be relative to the observer" "involved a complete rethinking of the entire conceptual tradition of modern physics from its beginning" Britannica; Folsing. Weil 6. Weil 8. Weil 9. Grolier/Horblit 26b.<br /><br />Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper in Annalen der Physik Vierte Folge Volume 17 part 10 pp. 891-921; WITH: Ãœber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt ibid part 6 pp. 132-148. WITH: Ãœber die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Warme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flussigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen ibid part 8 pp. 549-560. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth 1905. Octavo three issues in original wrappers rebacked; three custom boxes. <br /><br />Note: The issues are slightly trimmed indicating that it is likely they were originally bound with the wrappers and then re-assembled. With general title page volume half-title and index included in part 6. Some chipping to exceedingly rare and brittle original wrappers; otherwise fine. Extremely rare in such outstanding condition.</p> Johann Ambrosius Barth‎

Bookseller reference : 2895

‎Einstein, Albert and Paul Ehrenfest‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts Zeitschrift fur Physik Vol. 19 20 pp. 301-306 1923. ON THE QUANTUM THEORY OF THE RADIATIVE EQUILIBRIUM Not ex-library‎

‎Berlin: Vieweg und Springer 1923. 1st Edition. This paper "On the Quantum Theory of the Radiative Equilibrium" introduces the expression "negative irradiance" "negative Einstrahlung" for the emission of a quantum by action of irradiance Calaprice 121. <br /> <br /> Following his work on general relativity in 1916 Einstein continued searching for new ways in which the existence of photons might lead to observable derivations from the classical picture" Pais p. 413. In 1922 after six years of experimental and theoretical work Arthur H. Compton discovered what came to be called the Compton effect; Peter Debye also discovered this independently and virtually simultaneously. <br /> <br /> Pauli then used Compton & Deby's work to extend Einstein's 1917 work to the case of radiation in equilibrium with free electrons Pais 414. "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 . . . <br /> <br /> "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 "Einstein's derivation of Planck's radiation law" AJP 1973 38-44. <br /> <br /> Weil Einstein Bibliography 138; Pais Subtle is the Lord 21 413; Lewis "Einstein's derivation of Planck's radiation law" AJP 1973 38-44; Calaprice Einstein Almanac 121. <br /> <br /> ALSO INCLUDED IN VOLUME 19 ARE PAPERS BY: Hertz Meitner Lande Hertzfeld Joos Kossel Lande Sommerfeld Seeliger Wentzel Raschevsky Ebert and Toussaint among many others. <br /> <br /> ALSO INCLUDED IN VOLUME 20 ARE PAPERS BY: Pauli Ornstein Raschevsky Bothe Walter Hermann and Przibram among many others. CONDITION: Berlin: Julius Springer. Volumes 19 & 20 bound as one. iv 415pp v 426pp. NOT EX-LIBRARY. Solidly and cleanly bound in blue cloth gilt-lettered at the spine. Bright and clean inside and out. Very good condition. Vieweg und Springer hardcover‎

Bookseller reference : 1650

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT (+) P. EHRENFEST.‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts.‎

‎Berlin Julius Springer 1923. 8vo. Bound in contemporary full cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Entire volume 19 "Zeitschrift für Physik" 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. </em> hardcover‎

Bookseller reference : 49498

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT (+) P. EHRENFEST.‎

‎Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts.‎

‎Berlin Julius Springer 1923. 8vo. Bound in contemporary half cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Library stamp to front free end paper and titel page. In "Zeitschrift für Physik" bd. 19. Fine and clean. Pp. 301-6. Entire volume: IV 415 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. </em> hardcover‎

Bookseller reference : 48937

‎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>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 theoryâ€. “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

Bookseller reference : 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

Bookseller reference : 59121

‎Einstein, A.‎

‎Zur Theorie der Radiometerkräfte.‎

‎Braunschweig Friedrich Vierweg & Sohn; Berlin J. Springer 1924. 8vo 22.8 x 15.4 cm. 6 pp. Original printed wrappers. = On the theory of radiometer forces. "The Crookes radiometer also known as a light mill consists of an airtight glass bulb containing a partial vacuum with a set of vanes which are mounted on a spindle inside. The vanes rotate when exposed to light with faster rotation for more intense light providing a quantitative measurement of electromagnetic radiation intensity. The reason for the rotation was a cause of much scientific debate in the ten years following the invention of the device" Wikipedia. James Clerk Maxwell first gave a wrong then a correct explanation. However some subtleties still needed to be solved and in 1924 Albert Einstein had a crack at it "A partial explanation is that gas molecules hitting the warmer side of the vane will pick up some of the heat bouncing off the vane with increased speed. Giving the molecule this extra boost effectively means that a minute pressure is exerted on the vane. The imbalance of this effect between the warmer black side and the cooler silver side means the net pressure on the vane is equivalent to a push on the black side and as a result the vanes spin round with the black side trailing. The problem with this idea is that while the faster moving molecules produce more force they also do a better job of stopping other molecules from reaching the vane so the net force on the vane should be the same. The greater temperature causes a decrease in local density which results in the same force on both sides. Years after this explanation was dismissed Albert Einstein showed that the two pressures do not cancel out exactly at the edges of the vanes because of the temperature difference there. The force predicted by Einstein would be enough to move the vanes but not fast enough" Wikipedia. Contained first paper in: Zeitschrift für Physik volume 271. The complete issue in its original wrappers. Front wrapper slightly spotted at the fore and bottom edges. Volume number written on spine. A very good clean copy. Weil 139. unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 72535

‎EINSTEIN, A. (+) S. N. BOSE.‎

‎Zur Theorie der Radiometerkräfte Addendum to Bose's paper: Einstein Ãœber 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

Bookseller reference : 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

Bookseller reference : 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

Bookseller reference : 28358

‎Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)‎

‎Zur Theorie der Lichtfortpflanzung in dispergierenden Medien‎

‎Berlin: Sitzungsberichten der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1922. First Thus. First Thus. Einstein Albert 1879-1955. Zur Theorie der Lichtfortpflanzung in dispergierenden Medien. Complete. Quarto. Offprint from Sitzungsberichten der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: 1922. First edition in very fine condition. This superb offprint is a separate printing of the Prussian Academy's session reports here with independent pagination. A small number of such off prints were presented to the author by the publisher as voucher copies. References: Schilpp-Shields 162; Weil 120. This paper gives evidence that Einsteins ideas on the photon were not able to contradict classical theory. "Since after 1917 Einstein firmly believed that light-quanta were here to stay it is not surprising that he would look for new ways in which the existence of photons might lead to observable deviation from the classical picture. In this he did not succeed. At one point in 1921 he thought he had found a new quantum criterion but it soon turned out to be a false lead as demonstrated in this paper". An excellent example. "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. Sitzungsberichten der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 32430

‎Einstein, Albert‎

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

‎1922. unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 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

Bookseller reference : 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

Bookseller reference : 37422

‎EINSTEIN, ALBERT‎

‎“Allgemeinen molekulare Theorie der Wärme†in Annalen der Physik 4. Folge Band 14‎

‎<p>Brown buckram. Library markings.</p><p>FIRST EDITION of Einstein's fifth published paper "On the General Molecular Theory of Heat" pp. 354-362.</p><br /> Annalen der Physik‎

Bookseller reference : 32820371

‎EINSTEIN, Albert‎

‎Ãœber das Relativitätprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen On the relativity principle and the conclusions drawn from it. Offprint from: Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik Band 4 Heft 16‎

‎Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1907. First edition. <p>THE EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE ‘THE HAPPIEST THOUGHT OF MY LIFE’</p> . <p>First edition extremely rare author’s presentation offprint with ‘Überreicht vom Verfasser’ Presented by the Author stamped on front wrapper from the library of the great German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld of this crucially important transitional paper in which Einstein introduced the equivalence principle that uniform acceleration and gravitation are equivalent in their physical effects which launched him on his path to general relativity. “Einstein's efforts to incorporate gravitation into the theory of relativity led him in 1907 to formulate a new formal principle later named the principle of equivalence. He stressed that when gravitational effects are taken into account it is impossible to maintain the privileged role that inertial frames of reference still have in the original relativity theory. He concluded that if gravitation is to be included it is necessary to extend the relativity principle. The search for a group of transformations wider than the Lorentz group under which the laws of physics remain invariant when gravitation is included lasted from 1907 until the end of 1915 leading finally to what Einstein considered his greatest achievement the general theory of relativity†Collected Papers 2 p. xxix. “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 E = mc2 now regarded as the theoretical basis for the release of atomic energy†Weil. In 1905 “Einstein said that all energy of whatever sort has mass. It took even him two years more to come to the stupendous realization that the reverse must also hold: that all mass of whatever sort must have energy. . With mass and energy thus wholly equivalent Einstein was able in 1907 in a long and mainly expository paper published in the Jahrbuch der Radioactivität the offered paper to write his famous equation E = mc2 . In presenting his equation in 1907 Einstein spoke of it as the most important consequence of his theory of relativity†Hoffmann Albert Einstein p. 81. “Of greatest importance is the last part of the paper which generalizes the principle of relativity from uniformly moving systems to uniformly ‘accelerated’ systems. . He introduces the principle of equivalence which claims that the problem of a uniform and stationary gravitational field on the one hand and the system moving with a constant acceleration without any gravitation on the other hand are physically indistinguishable situations. This principle put him in a position to find out what effect gravitation has on an arbitrary physical phenomenon because all he had to do was to observe that phenomenon from an accelerated reference system. He thus obtains the speeding up of clocks in a field of increased gravitational potential which must lead to a universal red shift of the spectral lines coming from the Sun and likewise to a bending of light rays near to the limb of the Sun. Furthermore this hypothesis at once makes it clear why inertial mass and gravitational mass must be under all circumstances strictly proportional to one another. . Hence the principle of the energy value of inertial mass must be extended to the gravitational mass†Lanczos The Einstein Decade p. 153. Later Einstein wrote that when he was working on this paper “There occurred to me the happiest thought of my life in the following form. The gravitational field has only a relative existence in a way similar to the electric field generated by magnetoelectric induction. Because for an observer falling freely from the roof of a house there exists – at least in his immediate surroundings – no gravitational field†Einstein’s emphasis Pais Subtle is the Lord p. 178. Although Einstein submitted the paper on 4 December 1907; it was published in the January 22 issue of the Jahrbuch. This is one of Einstein’s rarest major papers in offprint form. RBH lists three copies: Plotnick Christie’s 2002; Einstein’s own collection of his offprints Christie’s 2008; and Richard Green Christie’s 2008. OCLC lists 6 copies worldwide Morgan; Princeton; Stanford; Trinity College Cambridge; Queen’s University Kingston ON; Thomas Fisher. 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 ‘11’ 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>“His first important paper on relativity theory after 1905 is the 1907 review. This article was written at the request of Johannes Stark the editor of the Jahrbuch. On September 25 1907 Einstein had accepted this invitation. On November 1 Einstein further wrote to Stark: ‘I am now ready with the first part of the work for your Jahrbuch. I am working zealously on the second part in my unfortunately scarce spare time.’ Since this second part contains the remarks on gravitation it seems probable that Einstein’s ‘happiest thought’ came to him sometime in November 1907. We certainly know where he was when he had this idea. In his Kyoto lecture he told the story: ‘I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me. ‘If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight!’ I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation’ …</p> <br /> <p>“Three main issues are raised in Section V of the Jahrbuch article. </p> <br /> <p>The Equivalence Principle. ‘Is it conceivable that the principle of relativity also holds for systems which are accelerated relative to each other’ That is Einstein’s starting question. Then he gives the standard argument. A reference frame Σ1 is accelerated in the x direction with a constant acceleration γ. A second frame Σ2 is at rest in a homogeneous gravitational field which imparts an acceleration –γ in the x direction to all objects. ‘In the present state of experience we have no reason to assume that … Σ1 and Σ2 are distinct in any respect and in what follows we shall therefore assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and the corresponding acceleration of the reference frame. This assumption extends the principle of relativity to the case of uniformly accelerated motion of the reference frame … he began by applying his new postulate to the Maxwell equations always for uniform acceleration. He did not raise the question of the further extension to nonuniform acceleration until 1912 the year he first referred to his hypothesis as the ‘equivalence principle.’</p> <br /> <p>The Gravitational Red Shift. Many textbooks on relativity ascribe to Einstein the method of calculating the red shift by means of the Doppler effect of light falling from the top to the bottom of an upwardly accelerating elevator. That is indeed the derivation he gave in 1911. However he was already aware of the red shift in 1907. The derivation he gave at that time is less general more tortured and yet oddly more sophisticated. It deserves particular mention because it contains the germ of two ideas that were to become cornerstones of his final theory: the existence of local Lorenz frames and the constancy of the velocity of light for infinitesimally small paths …</p> <br /> <p>Maxwell’s Equations; Bending of Light; Gravitational Energy = mc2. Indomitably Einstein goes on. He tackles the Maxwell equations next. He concludes that Maxwell’s equations have the same form in a uniformly accelerated reference frame as in a non-accelerated frame but with a modified velocity of light. ‘It follows that the light rays … are bent by the gravitational field.’ Second he examines the energy conservation law in the accelerated frame and finds ‘a very notable result … In a gravitational field one must associate with every energy E an additional position-dependent energy which equals the position-dependent energy of a ‘ponderable’ mass of magnitude E/mc2. The law E = mc2 therefore holds not only for inertial but also for gravitational mass’ …</p> <br /> <p>“This review does not have the perfection of the 1905 paper on special relativity. The approximations are clumsy and mask the generality of the conclusions. Einstein was the first to say so in 1911. The conclusion about the bending of light is qualitatively correct quantitatively wrong – though in 1907 not yet logically wrong. Einstein was the first to realize this in 1915. Despite all this I admire this article at least as much as the perfect relativity paper on 1905 not as much for its details as for its courage†Pais pp. 179-182.</p> <br /> <p>“In 1920 Einstein recalled how he first arrived at the ideas behind the equivalence principle: </p> <br /> <p>‘While I was occupied in 1907 with a comprehensive survey of the special theory for the ‘Yearbook for Radioactivity and Electronics’ I also had to attempt to modify Newton’s theory of gravitation in such a way that its laws fitted into the theory. Attempts along these lines showed the feasibility of this enterprise but did not satisfy me because they had to be based on physical hypotheses that were not well-founded. Then there came to me the most fortunate thought of my life in the following form: </p> <br /> <p>‘Like the electric field generated by electromagnetic induction . the gravitational field only has a relative existence. Because for an observer freely falling from the roof of a house during his fall there exists—at least in his immediate neighborhood—no gravitation field. Indeed if the observer lets go of any objects relative to him they remain in a state of rest or uniform motion independently of their particular chemical or physical composition note by AE: air resistance is naturally ignored in this argument. The observer is thus justified in interpreting his state as being at rest. </p> <br /> <p>‘Through these considerations the unusually extraordinary experimental law that all bodies fall with equal acceleration in the same gravitational field immediately obtains a deep physical significance. For if there were just one single thing that fell differently from the others in the gravitational field then with its help the observer could recognize that he was falling in a gravitational field. If such a thing does not exist—which experiment has shown with great precision—then there is no objective basis for the observer to regard himself as falling in a gravitational field. Rather he has the right to regard his state as one of rest and with respect to a gravitational field his neighborhood as field free. The experimental fact of the material-independence of the acceleration due to gravity is thus a powerful argument for the extension of the relativity postulate to coordinate systems in non-uniform relative motion with respect to each other . The generalization of the relativity principle thus indicates a speculative path towards the investigation of the properties of the gravitational field.’ </p> <br /> <p>“Einstein alludes here to his initial attempts to set up a special-relativistic theory of gravitation but gives no details. In 1933 he gave the fullest account of how he ‘arrived at the equivalence principle by a detour Umweg’ through such attempts. After mentioning his doubts after 1905 about the privileged dynamical role of inertial systems and his early fascination by Mach’s idea that the acceleration of a body is not absolute but relative to the rest of the bodies in the universe he turns to the events of 1907:</p> <br /> <p>‘I first came a step closer to the solution of the problem when I attempted to treat the law of gravitation within the framework of special relativity. Like most authors at the time I attempted to establish a field law for gravitation since the introduction of an unmediated action at a distance was no longer possible at least in any sort of natural way on account of the abolition of the concept of absolute simultaneity. </p> <br /> <p>‘The simplest thing naturally was to preserve the Laplacian scalar gravitational potential and to supplement Poisson’s equation in the obvious way by a term involving time derivatives so that the special theory of relativity was satisfactorily taken into account. The equation of motion of a particle also had to be modified to accord with the special theory. The way to do so was less uniquely prescribed since the inertial mass of a body might well depend on its gravitational potential. This was even to be expected on the basis of the law of the inertia of energy. </p> <br /> <p>‘However such investigations led to a result that made me highly suspicious. For according to classical mechanics the vertical acceleration of a body in a vertical gravitational field is independent of the horizontal component of its velocity. This is connected with the fact that the vertical acceleration of a mechanical system or rather of its center of mass in such a gravitational field turns out to be independent of its internal kinetic energy. According to the theory I was pursuing however such an independence of the gravitational acceleration from the horizontal velocity or from the internal energy of a system did not occur.</p> <br /> <p>‘This did not accord with an old fact of experience that all bodies experience the same acceleration in a gravitational field. This law which can also be formulated as the law of equality of inertial and gravitational mass now appeared to me in its deep significance. I was most highly amazed by it and guessed that in it must lie the key to the deeper under- standing of inertia and gravitation.’ </p> <br /> <p>“Turning from later reminiscences let us see how Einstein presented his approach to gravitation in 1907:</p> <br /> <p>‘Up to now we have only applied the principle of relativity i.e. the presupposition that the laws of nature are independent of the state of motion of the reference system to acceleration-free reference systems. Is it conceivable that the principle of relativity also holds for systems that are accelerated relative to each other </p> <br /> <p>‘This is not the place for an exhaustive treatment of this question. Since however it is bound to occur to anyone who has followed the previous applications of the relativity principle I shall not avoid taking a position on the question here. Consider two systems in motion Σ1 and Σ2. Let Σ1 be accelerated in the direction of its X -axis and let γ be the magnitude constant in time of this acceleration. Let Σ2 be at rest but in a homogeneous gravitational field that imparts an acceleration –γ in the direction of the X -axis to all objects. As far as we know the laws of physics with respect to Σ1do not differ from those with respect to Σ2; this is due to the circumstance that all bodies in a gravitational field are equally accelerated. So we have no basis in the current state of our experience for the assumption that the systems Σ1and Σ2differ from each other in any respect; and therefore in what follows shall assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and the corresponding acceleration of a reference system. </p> <br /> <p>‘This assumption extends the principle of relativity to the case of uniformly-accelerated translational motion of the reference system. The heuristic value of this assumption lies in the circumstance that it allows the replacement of a homogeneous gravitational field by a uniformly accelerated reference system which to a certain extent is amenable to theoretical treatment.’ </p> <br /> <p>“Some further comments on this equivalence in his next paper on gravitation in 1911 are illuminating. He notes that in both systems objects subject to no other forces fall with constant acceleration:</p> <br /> <p>‘For the accelerated system K′ corresponding to the 1907 Σ1 this follows directly from the Galileian principle of inertia; for the system K at rest in a homogeneous gravitational field corresponding to the 1907 Σ2 however it follows from the experimental fact that in such a field all bodies are equally strongly uniformly accelerated. This experience of the equal falling of all bodies in a gravitational field is the most universal with which the observation of nature has provided us; in spite of that this law has not found any place in the foundations of our physical picture of the world … From this standpoint one can as little speak of the absolute acceleration of a reference system as one can of the absolute velocity of a system according to the usual special theory of relativity. Naturally one cannot replace an arbitrary gravitational field by a state of motion of the system without a gravitational field; just as little as one can trans- form all points of an arbitrarily moving medium to rest by a relativity transformation. From this standpoint the equal falling of all bodies in a gravitational field is obvious. </p> <br /> <p>‘As long as we confine ourselves to purely mechanical processes within the realm of validity of Newtonian mechanics we are certain of the equivalence of the systems K and K′. Our point of view will only have a deeper significance however if the systems K and K′ are equivalent with respect to all physical processes i.e. if the laws of nature with respect to K agree completely with those with respect to K′. By assuming this we obtain a principle that if it really is correct possesses a great heuristic significance. For by means of theoretical consideration of processes that take place relative to a uniformly accelerated reference system we obtain conclusions about the course of processes in a homogeneous gravitational field.’</p> <br /> <p>“With hindsight one can see that Einstein’s attempt to find the best way to implement mathematically the physical insights about gravitation incorporated in the equivalence principle was hampered significantly by the absence of the appropriate mathematical concepts. His insight as he put is a few years later that gravitation and inertia are “essentially the same†wesensgleich cries out for implementation by their incorporation into a single inertio-gravitational field represented mathematically by a non-flat affine connection on a four-dimensional manifold. But the concept of such a connection was only developed after and largely in response to the formulation of the general theory. So Einstein had to make do with what was available: Riemannian geometry and the tensor calculus as developed by the turn of the century i.e. based on the concept of the metric tensor without a geometrical interpretation of the covariant derivative†Stachel pp. 83-86.</p> <br /> <p>BRL 20; Stanitz 94; Weil 21. Born ‘Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld 1868-1951’ Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 8 1952 pp. 275-296. Stachel ‘The first two acts’ pp. 81-112 in: Gravitation in the Twilight of Classical Physics. The Promise of Mathematics Renn & Schemmel eds. 2007.</p> <br/> <br/> 8vo 231 x 157 mm pp. 411-462. Original printed wrappers upper cover a bit soiled lower part of spine worn light vertical crease for posting faint ink stain to page 418 spine strip with wear and tear. S. Hirzel unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 6410

‎EINSTEIN, Albert‎

‎Ãœber den Einfluss der Schwerkraft auf die Ausbreitung des Lichtes On the influence of gravity on the propagation of light. Offprint from: Annalen der Physik Vierte Folge Band 35‎

‎Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth 1911. First edition. <p>GRAVITATIONAL RED-SHIFT AND THE BENDING OF LIGHT</p> . <p>First edition extremely rare author’s presentation offprint with ‘Überreicht vom Verfasser’ Presented by the Author stamped on front wrapper from the library of the great German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld of Einstein’s “first paper completely devoted to general relativity†Brandt p. 105. This epochal paper applies the equivalence principle that acceleration and gravitation are equivalent in their physical effects to demonstrate two effects of gravity on light: the gravitational bending of light and the gravitational redshift. “In 1911 Einstein proceeded to revise and improve his earlier presentation in 1907 making the principle of equivalence the central feature of his treatment. Einstein now included an elegant proof based on a cyclic process reminiscent of thermodynamics that the gravitational mass of a body as well as its inertial mass is increased by the amount E/c2 when the body absorbs energy E c being the speed of light†Collected Papers p. xxix. Einstein applies this result to show first that if light of frequency ν travels a distance d against a gravitational field which would exert an acceleration g on a gravitating body its frequency is reduced by Δν = νgd/c2 – this is the gravitational redshift. And second Einstein deduced the deflection of a light ray moving in the gravitational field of a spherical body – he finds that the light suffers a deflection toward the source given by 2Gm/dc2 where d is the distance of closest approach to the body of mass m and G is the gravitational constant. “The paper ends with a plea to the astronomers: ‘It is urgently desirable that astronomers concern themselves with the question brought up here even if the foregoing considerations might seem insufficiently founded or even adventurous’†Pais p. 200. The bending of light was famously observed by Eddington and his team during a solar eclipse in 1919; the gravitational redshift was more difficult to measure but Einstein’s prediction was confirmed by Pound & Rebka at Harvard in 1960 using a laboratory experiment not astronomical observations. “Thus in 1911 we discern the first glimpses of the new Einstein program: to derive the equivalence principle from a new theory of gravitation. This cannot be achieved within the framework of what he called the ordinary relativity theory the special theory. Therefore one must look for a new theory not only of gravitation but also of relativity. Another point made in this paper likewise bears on that new program. ‘Of course one cannot replace an arbitrary gravitational field by a state of motion without gravitational field as little as one can transform to rest by means of a relativity transformation all points of an arbitrarily moving medium.’ This statement would continue to be true in the ultimate general theory of relativity†Pais pp. 195-196. OCLC lists three copies: King’s College London; Württembergische Landesbibliothek; Swiss National Library. RBH list only two other copies both sold by Christie’s: the Plotnick copy in 2002 and that in Einstein’s own collection of his offprints in 2008.</p> <br /> <p>Provenance: Arnold Sommerfeld 1868-1951 his characteristic numbering in red pencil ‘20’ 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>“In 1907 still working at the patent office in Bern Einstein began to study the laws of physics in reference frames with an accelerated relative motion. When he completed this work in 1915 he called it the General Theory of Relativity. At various occasions Einstein recalled his starting point in this project. It struck him that a man falling from the top of a roof he said did not feel his own weight. In the reference frame of the building it is the weight or gravitational force which make the man fall but in a reference frame moving with the man there is another force exactly counteracting the weight so that there is no net force. In that frame the man stays at rest. Einstein realized that acceleration and gravitation are equivalent to each other. That was later called the equivalence principle. If he would be able to extend his theory of relativity to accelerated reference frames he would be able to do for the theory of gravitation what he had done for electrodynamics with special relativity. He gave a first glimpse at his new topic in a review article on special relativity written in 1907 ‘Über das Relativitätprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen’ Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik Bd. 4 pp. 411-62†Brandt p. 105.</p> <br /> <p>“A few months before the Solvay Congress Einstein had returned to the questions concerning gravitation and accelerated frames of reference that he first raised in his 1907 review article on relativity. These subjects had gone unmentioned in his papers for four years and hardly ever appear in his correspondence during that time. But in June 1911 Einstein completed a short paper ‘On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light.’ This was only a month after his letter to Besso announcing that he was abandoning his efforts to create a new theory of radiation. It looks as though his renunciation of that quest set him free to focus his attention once more on gravitation†Collected Papers p. xxix. </p> <br /> <p>“It is characteristic for Einstein that in the same paper he proposed a way to verify his predictions experimentally … From his formula for the gravitational redshift he computed that the frequency of a spectral line emitted by an atom on the surface of the sun would be reduced by two parts in a million when that light reached the earth. Thus a line spectrum originating from the sun is shifted to lower frequencies and therefore to longer wavelengths compared to a spectrum emitted in the laboratory. This redshift is difficult to measure because the surface of the sun is a nasty environment with high pressure storms and magnetic fields all influencing spectral lines. But with modern techniques it has been well established even in the laboratory with radiation climbing against the earth’s gravitation for only a few meters.</p> <br /> <p>“Einstein also computed the bending of light by gravitation. If the light of a star passes near the surface of the sun and is then observed by an astronomer on the earth the star appears to be in a slightly different position because the light was attracted by the sun and thus the ray was bent on its way from star to the earth. Einstein found a bending angle of 0.83 seconds of an arc. This number was too small by a factor of two but nobody knew because the effect had not been measured. However Einstein himself realized that his theory had to be refined. For a homogeneous gravitational field a field that is constant everywhere he could replace gravitation by a single transformation to an accelerated coordinate system. For a more complicated field like that of the sun or that of all stars the transformation would have to be different for every point in space. That seemed a formidable problem†Brandt p. 106. The correct calculation of light bending was made only in 1915 when Einstein had the final version of general relativity.</p> <br /> <p>“His 1911 paper was specifically prompted by his new realization that it should be possible to observe the gravitational bending of light … One had to observe a star whose light would travel close by the sun on its way to the observer. This could be done during a total eclipse of the sun …</p> <br /> <p>“Einstein took the initiative in consulting experimental colleagues about the possibilities for checking these results. In August 1911 he began corresponding with W.H. Julius of Utrecht about the gravitational redshift among other matters. At about the same time he raised with Erwin Freundlich at Berlin the question of observing the deflecting of starlight by the gravitational field of the sun a subject on which he corresponded with George Ellery Hale at the Mount Wilson Observatory two years later. There would however be no reliable results on either of these subjects for years to come. But whether or not there were experimental results to help in guiding his work generalizing relativity and creating a new theory of gravitation became the problem that absorbed his attention for the next few years. ‘I am just now lecturing on the foundations of that poor dead mechanics which is so beautiful’ he wrote to Zangger a month after the Solvay Congress. ‘What will its successor look like With that question I torment myself ceaselessly’†Collected Papers pp. xxix-xxx.</p> <br /> <p>“English interest in the bending of light developed soon after copies of Einstein’s general relativity papers were sent from Holland by de Sitter to Arthur Stanley Eddington at Cambridge … a subsequent report by Eddington … stressed the importance of the deflection of light. In March 1917 the Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Watson Dyson drew attention to the excellence of the star configuration on May 29 1919 another eclipse date for measuring the alleged deflection … Two expeditions were mounted one to Sobral in Brazil led by Andrew Crommelin from the Greenwich Observatory and one to Principe Island off the coast of Spanish Guinea led by Eddington. Before departing Eddington wrote ‘The present eclipse expeditions may for the first time demonstrate the weight of light i.e. the Newton value; or they may confirm Einstein’s weird theory of non-Euclidean space which predicted twice the Newton value; or they may lead to a result of yet more far-reaching consequences – no deflection’ … The expeditions returned. Data analysis began. According to a preliminary report by Eddington to the meeting of the British Association held in Bournemouth on September 9-13 the bending of light lay between 0.87 and double that value. Word reached Lorentz. Lorentz cabled Einstein … Then came November 6 1919 the day on which Einstein was canonized … the setting a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society resembled a Congregation of Rites. Dyson acted as postulator ably assisted by Crommelin and Eddington as advocate-procurators. Dyson speaking first concluded his remarks with the statement ‘After a careful study of the plates I am prepared to say that they confirm Einstein’s prediction. A very definite result has been obtained that light is deflected in accordance with Einstein's law of gravitation’†Pais pp. 304-305.</p> <br /> <p>The gravitational bending of light has recently found a new application – the search for extra-solar planets. “… the ‘most curious effect’ of the bending of starlight by the gravity of intervening foreground stars – now commonly referred to as ‘gravitational microlensing’ – has become one of the successfully applied techniques to detect planets orbiting stars other than the Sun while being quite unlike any other … Gravitational microlensing favours a range of orbital separations that covers planets whose orbital periods are too long to allow detection by other indirect techniques but which are still too close to their host star to be detected by means of their emitted or reflected light. Rather than being limited to the Solar neighbourhood a unique opportunity is provided for inferring a census of planets orbiting stars belonging to two distinct populations within the Milky Way with a sensitivity not only reaching down to Earth mass but even below with ground-based observations. The capabilities of gravitational microlensing extend even to obtaining evidence of a planet orbiting a star in another galaxy†Dominik.</p> <br /> <p>BRL 39; Parkinson p. 471; Weil 43. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein vol. 3 The Swiss Years: Writings 1909–1911 Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994. Born ‘Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld 1868-1951’ Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 8 1952 pp. 275-296. Brandt The Harvest of a Century Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009. Dominik ‘Studying planet populations with Einstein’s blip’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences vol. 368 no. 1924 2010. Pais Subtle is the Lord Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982.</p> <br/> <br/> 8vo 222 x 144 mm pp. 1 blank 898–908. Original printed orange wrappers light vertical crease for posting. Johann Ambrosius Barth unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 6407

‎Einstein, A.‎

‎Ãœber die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie Wissenschaftliche Taschenbücher 59 German Edition‎

‎hardcover. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book. hardcover‎

Bookseller reference : 3112596013.G ISBN : 3112596013 9783112596012

‎Einstein, Albert‎

‎Ãœber die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie.‎

‎1969. Berlin/ Oxford/ Braunschweig Akademie-Verlag/ Pergamon Press/ Vieweg&Sohn 1969. Kl.-8°. 4 Abb. im Text 130 S. 1 Bl. Anzeigen. Original-Kartonband leicht braunrandig und kncikspurig. Innen sauber und gut erhalten. Wissenschaftliche Taschenbücher Band 59. unknown‎

Bookseller reference : 46171HB