Einstein : The Formative Years, 1879-1909

by Howard, Don; Stachel, John J.

• ISBN13: 9780817640309
• ISBN10: 0817640304
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

This volume brings together some of the best recent scholarship on what might be termed Einstein's formative period, that is, the thirty years before he obtained his first academic position in 1909. Topics covered include Einstein's early reading and his university education, his early views on scientific method and some of the crucial philosophical influences shaping those views, his early work on statistical mechanics, Brownian motion, quantum theory, relativity theory, and his youthful vision of a unified foundation for physics. Seven of the eight papers appear here in print for the first time. The contributors draw extensively upon much of the interesting new documentation, such as personal letters, including love letters to his fiancee, and unpublished manuscripts, that has come to light in the course of work on the first several volumes of {it The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein}. This engaging book examining the young Einstein from a variety of perspectives---personal, scientific, historical, and philosophical--- will be accessible to a broad general readership.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Contributors	xi
Introduction to Einstein: The Formative Years	1	(22)
John Stachel
The Mysteries and Wonders of Natural Science: Aaron Bernstein's Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbucher and the Adolescent Einstein	23	(20)
Frederick Gregory
The Young Einstein's Physics Education: H.F. Weber, Hermann von Helmholtz, and the Zurich Polytechnic Physics Institute	43	(40)
David Cahan
Kant's Impact on Einstein's Thought	83	(24)
Mara Beller
Einstein's Controversy with Drude and the Origin of Statistical Mechanics: A New Glimpse from the ``Love Letters''	107	(52)
Jurgen Renn
The Construction of the Special Theory: Some Queries and Considerations	159	(44)
Robert Rynasiewicz
Physical Approximations and Stochastic Processes in Einstein's 1905 Paper on Brownian Motion	203	(28)
Sahotra Sarkar
Einstein's Light-Quantum Hypothesis, or Why Didn't Einstein Propose a Quantum Gas a Decade-and-a-Half Earlier?	231	(22)
John Stachel
Index	253