Max von Laue's role in the relativity revolution
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Max von Laue's role in the relativity revolution
zbMATH Open document ID: 1200.01024
DOI: 10.1007/BF02985380
author: David E. Rowe
published in: The Mathematical Intelligencer
publication date: 2010-06-17T00:00:00Z
review text: To appreciate Max von Laue's role in the relativity revolution, the author emphasizes the great influence of Laue's early articles and two monographs on the history of special and general relativity. He argues that the meaning of these works did not only consist in that they made the theory of relativity understandable and, thus, acceptable to German physicists, but, what is more: (i) Laue's monograph on special relativity [Das Relativitätsprinzip. Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg u. Sohn. X u. 208 S. (1911; JFM 42.0718.04)] following Minkowski's lead provided Einstein with some of the essential physical and mathematical concepts he would later employ in his search for gravitational field equations, and (ii) Laue's companion volume on general relativity [Die Relativitätstheorie. 2. Band: Die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie und Einsteins Lehre von der Schwerkraft. Braunschweig: Vieweg, XII u. 276 S. (1921; JFM 48.1321.01)] offered important clues to Laue's understanding of Einsteinian gravitation and also for appreciating the climate of reception in Germany during tumultuous years. Keeping in mind the contributions of a number of prominent physicists and mathematicians to special relativity and the clarification of the interplay between mathematical and physical conceptions, the author comes to the conclusion that, however, it was Laue who first saw the fertility of Minkowski's physical conceptions ``and not just his mathematical tools'' for realizing Einstein's fundamental program of special relativity from 1905. To give arguments in favor of the statement that Laue's insights influenced Einstein's thinking notably in the time when Einstein was looking for a generalization of special relativity, a long-forgotten manuscript by Einstein (the Marx manuscript) is discussed. This paper is of interest in this context because it partly was formulated just at that time when Einstein and Laue working next door in Zurich and when Laue continued his work on the revised second editi…
reviewed by: Horst-Heino von Borzeszkowski
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A60
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 83-03
zbMATH DE Number: 5722962
zbMATH Keywords: Einsteinian relativity
zbMATH Keywords: Minkowski's 4-dimensional space-time
zbMATH Keywords: reception of relativity theory
MaRDI profile type: Publication
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description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5722962