XVI CONTENTS
HI RELATIVITY, THE SPECIAL THEORY
- 'Subtle is the Lord ...' 111
(a) The Michelson-Morley experiment 111
(b) The precursors 119
- What Einstein knew. 2. Voigt. 3. FitzGerald. 4. Lorentz. 5. Larmor.
- Poincare.
(c) Poincare in 1905 128
(d) Einstein before 1905 130
- The Pavia essay. 2. The Aarau question. 3. The ETH student.
- The Winterthur letter. 5. The Bern lecture. 6. The Kyoto address.
- Summary.
- The new kinematics 138
(a) June 1905: special relativity defined, Lorentz transformations derived 138
- Relativity's aesthetic origins. 2. The new postulates.
- From the postulates to the Lorentz transformations. 4. Applications.
- Relativity theory and quantum theory. 6. 'I could have said that more
simply.'
(b) September 1905; about E = mc^2
(c) Early responses 149
(d) Einstein and the special theory after 1905 153
(e) Electromagnetic mass: the first century 155
- The edge of history 163
- A new way of thinking. 2. Einstein and the literature.
- Lorentz and the aether. 4. Poincare and the third hypothesis.
- Whittaker and the history of relativity. 6. Lorentz and Poincare.
- Lorentz and Einstein. 8. Poincare and Einstein. 9. Coda: the
Michelson-Morley experiment.
IV RELATIVITY, THE GENERAL THEORY
- 'The happiest thought of my life' 177
- Herr Professor Einstein 184
(a) From Bern to Zurich 184
(b) Three and a half years of silence 187
11.. The Prague papers 192
(a) From Zurich to Prague 192
(b) 1911. The bending of light is detectable 194
(c) 1912. Einstein in no man's land 201
