Studies in the history of general relativity. Based on the proceedings of the 2nd international conference held in Luminy, France, September 6-9, 1988
This third volume of the Einstein Studies series presents the proceedings of the Second International Conference on the History of General Relativity held in Luminy in 1988. The first section, containing seven papers, is devoted to the reception and development of general relativity. Four of these papers are concerned with the reception in Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain, respectively. \textit{Joshua N. Goldberg} who was himself a leading member of the relativity research group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, tells the story of this institution that existed from 1959 to 1972. \textit{André Lichnerowicz} discusses the mathematical research in the field between 1937 and 1945, and \textit{André Mercier} gives an account of his organizing the 1955 Berne Jubilee Conference which marks the beginning of the renaissance of general relativity after 30 years of rather little research activity. The second section of this volume collects five papers on conceptual issues in general relativity, discussing from historical perspectives topics such as the ``Machian'' character of Einstein's theory, the discussion on general covariance, Einstein's relativistic ether conception, and Einstein's assumption that a theory of gravitation is acceptable only if its field equations determine completely or uniquely a solution in all regions of spacetime including those devoid of matter and energy. The third section, comprising ten papers, deals with technical aspects of general relativity, covering issues such as Einstein's 1907 Jahrbuch paper, the origin of the concept of Einstein space, Lorentz's 1916 geometrical approach to general relativity, the history of quantization of the gravitational field, the early history of quantum gravity, Dirac equations in curved spacetime, the problem of motion in general relativity, the early history of the Cauchy problem, and the use of spherical coordinates in general relativity. The fourth and last section on relativistic cosmology contains a discussion of Georges Lemaître's contributions on general relativity as well as a review of Erwin Schrödingers work on cosmology.
scientific article; zbMATH DE number 808426