The Cambridge Companion to Einstein

Edited by Michel Janssen, University of Minnesota , Christoph Lehner, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin

Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Online publication date : May 2014
Print publication year : 2014
Online ISBN : 9781139024525

Description

This volume is the first systematic presentation of the work of Albert Einstein, comprising fourteen essays by leading historians and philosophers of science that introduce readers to his work. Following an introduction that places Einstein’s work in the context of his life and times, the book opens with essays on the papers of Einstein’s ‘miracle year’, 1905, covering Brownian motion, light quanta, and special relativity, as well as his contributions to early quantum theory and the opposition to his light quantum hypothesis. Further essays relate Einstein’s path to the general theory of relativity (1915) and the beginnings of two fields it spawned, relativistic cosmology and gravitational waves. Essays on Einstein’s later years examine his unified field theory program and his critique of quantum mechanics. The closing essays explore the relation between Einstein’s work and twentieth-century philosophy, as well as his political writings.