Albert Einstein's 1916 Review Article on General Relativity

The first comprehensive overview of the final version of the general theory of relativity was published by Einstein in 1916 after several expositions of preliminary versions and latest revisions of the theory in November 1915. A historical account of this review paper is given, of its prehistory, including a discussion of Einstein's collaboration with Marcel Grossmann, and of its immediate reception.Comment: 27 pages, 1 jpg imag

Remarks on the Origin of Path Integration: Einstein and Feynman

I offer some historical comments about the origins of Feynman's path integral approach, as an alternative approach to standard quantum mechanics. Looking at the interaction between Einstein and Feynman, which was mediated by Feynman's thesis supervisor John Wheeler, it is argued that, contrary to what one might expect, the significance of the interaction between Einstein and Feynman pertained to a critique of classical field theory, rather than to a direct critique of quantum mechanics itself. Nevertheless, the critical perspective on classical field theory became a motivation and point of departure for Feynman's space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of 'Path Integrals - New Trends and Perspectives,' Dresden, 23-28 September 200

Quantum Theory at the Crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference [Book Review]

Can the reassessment of a historical debate contribute to the better understanding of an open philosophical question? The editors of this volume say that it can. The open question concerns the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The historical debate under review is the famous 1927 Solvay conference in Brussels. According to the received view, the standard Copenhagen interpretation was established as the canonical understanding of the new concepts brought about by quantum mechanics during that conference. The conference is remembered, above all, for the famous debate between Bohr and Einstein about the limits and understanding of the quantum uncertainty relations. Again and again, the received view has it, Einstein would come up with ideas for an experiment proving the inconsistency or incompleteness of the new quantum theoretical concepts. And again and again, Bohr would come up with a refutation of Einstein's challenge, proving the Copenhagen interpretation to be consistent and inevitable. But we really know about that debate between Einstein and Bohr only from the latter's own account, published some twenty years later in Paul Arthur Schilpp's Albert Einstein: Philosopher‐Scientist (Open Court, 1949). Contemporary accounts, most importantly a famous letter by Ehrenfest, are less explicit and more equivocal about the debate between Bohr and Einstein

Einstein's Generation: The Origins of the Relativity Revolution

No abstract

Marcel Grossmann and his contribution to the general theory of relativity

This article reviews the biography of the Swiss mathematician Marcel Grossmann (1878-1936) and his contributions to the emergence of the general theory of relativity. The first part is his biography, while the second part reviews his collaboration with Einstein in Zurich which resulted in the Einstein-Grossmann theory of 1913. This theory is a precursor version of the final theory of general relativity with all the ingredients of that theory except for the correct gravitational field equations. Their collaboration is analyzed in some detail with a focus on the question of exactly what role Grossmann played in it.Comment: 52pp, 7 figs, to appear in Proceedings of 13th Marcel Grossmann meeting; revised version with some minor stylistic emendation

A Look Back at the Ehrenfest Classification. Translation and Commentary of Ehrenfest's 1933 paper introducing the notion of phase transitions of different order

A translation of Paul Ehrenfest's 1933 paper, entitled "Phase transitions in the usual and generalized sense, classified according to the singularities of the thermodynamic potential" is presented. Some historical commentary about the paper's context is also given.Comment: 13p

Hilbert's 'World Equations' and His Vision of a Unified Science

In summer 1923, a year after his lectures on the `New Foundation of Mathematics' and half a year before the republication of his two notes on the `Foundations of Physics,' Hilbert delivered a trilogy of lectures in Hamburg. In these lectures, Hilbert expounds in an unusually explicit manner his epistemological perspective on science as a subdiscipline of an all embracing science of mathematics. The starting point of Hilbert's considerations is the claim that the class of gravitational and electromagnetic field equations implied by his original variational formulation of 1915 provides valid candidate `world equations,' even in view of attempts at unified field theories \'a la Weyl and Eddington based on the concept of the affine connection. We give a discussion of Hilbert's lectures and, in particular, examine his claim that Einstein in his 1923 papers on affine unified field theory only arrived at Hilbert's original 1915 theory. We also briefly comment on Hilbert's philosophical viewpoints expressed in these lectures.Comment: 23 pages; to appear in Einstein Studie

Computer Simulations of Quantum Chains

We report recent progress in computer simulations of quantum systems described in the path-integral formulation. For the example of the $\phi^4$ quantum chain we show that the accuracy of the simulation may greatly be enhanced by a combination of multigrid update techniques with a refined discretization scheme. This allows us to assess the accuracy of a variational approximation.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX + 2 postscript figures. Talk presented by TS at "Path Integrals from meV to MeV: Dubna '96". See also http://www.cond-mat.physik.uni-mainz.de/~janke/doc/home_janke.htm