A look back at Hermann Minkowski's Cologne lecture ``Raum und Zeit'' (Q1026609)

The article recollects Hermann Minkowski's (1864--1909) famous lecture `Space and Time' before a meeting of the German mathematicians and physicists in Cologne in September 1908. The lecture, which Minkowski gave less then 5 months before his premature death from a ruptured appendix, has been widely appreciated as a milestone in the prehistory of the General Theory of Relativity. The richly illustrated article gives a broad view of Minkowski's collaboration in Göttingen with his friend David Hilbert (1862--1943), his advice for Hilbert`s Paris lecture of 1900. The author comments on the different working styles of the two friends, on L. Boltzmann's influence on Minkowski's physics, and on the impact of the latter. Hilbert is described as `a master builder, a systematizer who only seldom broke entirely new ground' (29), while Minkowski is characterized as `more original and highly inventive (who) had the temperament of an artist'. Minkowski was less successful as a lecturer, but one of his students was exactly Einstein, when Minkowski was still in Zurich.