W. Perrett and G.B. Jeffery Physics

THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY

THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY

A COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL MEMOIRS ON THE SPECIAL AND GENERAL RELATIVITY THEORY OF RELATIVITY

BY H. A. LORENTZ, A. EINSTEIN H. MINKOWSKI AND H. WEYL

WITH NOTES BY A. SOMMERFELD

TRANSLATED BY W. PERRETT AND G. B. JEFFERY

WITH SEVEN DLAGRAMS

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1923

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE

THE Theory of Relativity is at the moment the subject of two main lines of inquiry: there is an endeavour to express its principles in logical and concise form, and there is the struggle with analytical difficulties which stand in the way of further progress. In the midst of such problems it is easy to forget the way in which the theory gradually grew under the stimulus of physical experiment, and thus to miss much of its meaning. It is this growth which the present collection of papers is designed chiefly to exhibit. In the earlier papers there are some things which the authors would no doubt now express differently; the later papers deal with problems which are not by any means yet fully solved. At the end we must confess that Relativity is still very much of a problem—and therefore worthy of our study.

The authors of the papers are still actively at work on the subject—all save Minkowski. His paper on "Space and Time" is a measure of the loss which mathematical physics suffered by his untimely death.

The translations have been made from the text, as published in a German collection, under the title "Des Relativitätsprinzip" (Teubner, 4th ed., 1922).

The second paper by Lorentz is an exception to this. It is reprinted from the original English version in the Proceedings of the Amsterdam Academy. Some minor changes have been made, and the notation has been brought more nearly into conformity with that employed in the other papers.

W. P.

G. B. J.