Einstein: On Theoretical Physics: Einstein's Essays on Relativity, Geometry, and Scientific Methods, #2

Einstein: On Theoretical Physics

New Modern Translation 2024-2025 (2024-05-01)

Albert Einstein & Harry Yoon (Translator)

2025-02-21

Table of contents

Foreword

On Principles in Theoretical Physics

Method of Theoretical Physics

Theories without Known Principles

Theories outside the Realm of Our Experience

The Special Theory of Relativity

Need for Generalization

Afterword

The Einstein’s Books Project

Not Available on $AMZN

Title Page

Table of Contents

Foreword

By the Translator, Harry Yoon, PhD.

Einstein was born in Germany, in 1879.¹ But, he left the country in 1895, at the tender age of 15, and he ended up renouncing the German citizenship altogether a few months later. For the following two decades or so, he primarily lived in Switzerland, mostly in the cities of Bern and Zurich.

When he submitted the two seminal papers on the new theory of special relativity in 1905, back to back, in the journal, Annalen der Physik, it is most likely that Max Planck immediately noticed them. Planck was an all-powerful Advisor to the journal at the time, and he likely had a huge influence on which papers were accepted for publication.

In fact, it is more than probable that Planck played an important role in helping Einstein publishing all four groundbreaking papers in 1905. This includes the paper on the photoelectric effect, which, along with Max Planck’s earlier work on blackbody radiation, literally created a new field of quantum physics, and for which he was awarded a Nobel prize (and, not for relativity).

Interestingly, Max Planck never believed in atomic theory, which had been widely accepted at the time, although experimental proofs were not available. People like Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs (one of the very first American physicists with important contributions to the foundations of physics), built the new field of statistical physics based on the