A look back at Hermann Minkowski's Cologne lecture ``Raum und Zeit''
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: A look back at Hermann Minkowski's Cologne lecture ``Raum und Zeit''
zbMATH Open document ID: 1172.01010
author: David E. Rowe
published in: The Mathematical Intelligencer
publication date: 2009-06-25T00:00:00Z
review text: 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.
reviewed by: Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A70
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 83-03
zbMATH DE Number: 5570747
zbMATH Keywords: mathematical physics
zbMATH Keywords: theory of relativity
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: s00283-009-9027-0
OpenAlex ID: W2081607198
Wikidata QID: Q125622914
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DOI: 10.1007/S00283-009-9027-0
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5570747