History of Special Relativity| History of Special Relativity |
In General
> s.a. special relativity / Michelson-Morley Experiment.
* Precursors: 1887, W Voigt
published a paper in which he demanded form invariance of the wave equation in
inertial frames (invariance of the speed of light and relativity principle) and
obtained a set of spacetime transformations including t' = t
– vx/c2; This marked
the birth of physical symmetries in field theories.
* Ether and the Michelson-Morley experiment:
Crucial support for Einstein's special relativity was provided by Albert Michelson and
Edward Morley's experiment in Cleveland in 1887, thad found no evidence of the ether;
Despite what is now said, it appears that the conclusions of the Michelson-Morley experiment
were not immediately clear and generally accepted; But in 1925, physicist Dayton Miller
reported results of new experiments at Mount Wilson in California and claimed to find
substantial signs of the ether; As late as the 1930s a review of the phenomena stated
that the existence of the ether was a fact [< Harry Collins].
@ General references: Holton Isis(69);
Tonnelat 71;
Miller 81;
Feuer 82;
Darrigol HSPS(96);
Staley Isis(98) [Germany, 1905–1911];
Logunov phy/04-book;
Jammer FP(04);
Will gq/05-proc [semi-pedagogical],
AdP(05)gq [and tests];
Yuan phy/05 [and development of physics];
Ferraro in(07)-a0705;
Field a0811 [re Langevin's 1911 paper; ?];
Ferraro a1302-ch;
Wazeck 14 [1920s opposition];
Heras a1407,
a1411 [Voigt's 1887 paper];
Petkov ed-20.
@ Specific topics:
Bonizzoni & Giuliani phy/00 [time dilation];
Galison 03 [and clocks];
Roberts phy/06 [on Miller's results];
Provost a1211
[relativistic dynamics and the energy-momentum tensor, 1900-1912];
Carvalho Martins a1309 [and the nature of light].
> Related topics: see Ether;
Lorentz-FitzGerald Contraction; mass [E
= mc2]; Thought Experiments.
Specific Contributions
@ Poincaré:
Granek SHPMP(00);
Reignier phy/00,
Giulini in(05)phy [and Lorentz, Einstein];
Damour ht/05-conf;
Cerf AJP(06)sep [what was missing];
Bracco & Provost a1001 [the electron and the 1905 Palermo Memoir];
Adlam a1112
[philosophical ideas underlying the approaches by Poincaré and Einstein];
Weinstein a1204;
Messager et al CP(12);
Bracco a1211
[role of quanta in Poincaré's and Einstein's ideas].
@ Einstein:
Kennedy SHPMP(05) [1905 paper];
Brown EJP(05) [1905 misgivings];
Martínez 09 [spacetime, kinematics];
Weinstein a1204;
Weinstein a1204
[Einstein and the Fizeau 1851 water tube experiment];
Weinstein a1204 [Mileva Marić's contributions];
Weinstein a1210
[Max Born, Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski's spacetime formalism];
Weinstein a1307 [Einstein's 1905 paper];
Bracco a1412 [Einstein and Milano, Besso, 1899-1901];
Engelhardt PE(16)-a1506 [Einstein's demonstration of time dilation];
Bodziony a1811 [1905 paper];
in sn(20)mar [Einstein's letters].
@ Minkowski: Bertolami a0804-in;
Damour AdP(08)-a0807-in [analysis of "Raum und Zeit" lecture];
Goenner a0811 [and Finsler geometry].
@ Specific countries:
ten Hagen a2002 [Belgium, 1910s and 1920s].
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– other sites – acknowledgements
send feedback and suggestions to bombelli at olemiss.edu – modified 2 jan 2021