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| History of Special Relativity 1:1 |
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| History of Special Relativity 1:1 |
History of Special Relativity |
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Einstein was far from being the only person who contributed to the development of the theory of special relativity. However, he was the one who put everything together. Some important years: |
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| 1687 Sir Isaac Newton published his book Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (or just Principia). In classical Newtonian mechanics, time was universal and absolute. |
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| 1873 James Clerk Maxwell completed his theory of electromagnetism. This theory turned out to be compatible with special relativity, even though special relativity was not known at that time. |
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| 1887 The famous Michelson-Morley experiment was performed by Albert Abraham Michelson and Edward Williams Morley. In the same year, during studies of the Doppler effect, Woldemar Voigt wrote down what were later to be known as the Lorentz transformations. The Lorentz transformations were also written down in 1898 by Joseph Larmor and in 1899 by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. |
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| 1898 Jules Henri Poincaré said that "... we have no direct intuition about the equality of two time intervals." |
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| 1904 Poincaré came very close to special relativity: "... as demanded by the relativity principle the observer cannot know whether he is at rest or in absolute motion." |
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| 1905 On June 5, Poincaré finished an article in which he stated that there seems to be a general law of Nature, that it is impossible to demonstrate absolute motion. On June 30, Einstein finished his famous article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, where he formulated the two postulates of special relativity. Furthermore, in September, Einstein published the short article Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy-Content? In which he derived the formula E0=mc2. |
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| 1908 Max Planck wrote an article on special relativity. He was the second person after Einstein who wrote an article about this theory. In the same year, Hermann Minkowski also published an important article about special relativity. |
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| 1915 On November 25, nearly ten years after the foundation of special relativity, Einstein submitted his paper The Field Equations of Gravitation for publication, which gave the correct field equations for the theory of general relativity (or general relativity for short). |
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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1902 - Hendrik
Antoon Lorentz »
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1907 -
Albert Abraham Michelson »
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1918 - Max Karl
Ernst Ludwig Planck »
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 - Albert
Einstein »