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Einstein in Prague: Relativity Then and Now

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General Relativity, Cosmology and Astrophysics

Part of the book series: Fundamental Theories of Physics ((FTPH,volume 177))

Abstract

It was during his stay in Prague that Einstein started in earnest to develop his ideas about general relativity. I will recall those days in 1911 and 1912, discuss Einstein’s papers on gravitation from that period and emphasize which new concepts and ideas he introduced. I also want to indicate how the main themes that preoccupied him then, the principle of equivalence, bending of light, gravitational redshift and frame dragging effects, are alive in contemporary relativity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In 1879/80 and 1883/84 Ernst Mach was elected Rector of the University. However, during his second Rectorship he resigned since he disapproved of the division of Prague University into Czech and German parts.

  2. 2.

    Anton Lampa (1968–1938) was an experimental physicist, interested also in philosophy, history and cultural aspects of physics. Interestingly, he was the first to publish a paper on the appearance of a moving rod according to special relativity (Zeits. f. Phys., 1924). For the life and work of Lampa, see [1].

  3. 3.

    P. Frank (1884, Vienna—1966, Cambridge, Mass.) was a theoretical physicist and logical positivist, a member of the Vienna Circle. His work in relativity is summarized in detail in the comprehensive article by Havas [2]. With R. von Mises, Frank published a book on differential and integral equations in physics; later he wrote several books on the philosophy of science. His booklet Relativity–a richer truth, with a foreword by Albert Einstein on the “Laws of science and the laws of ethics”, published in 1951, is less known. It touches on a number of philosophical and ethical issues.

  4. 4.

    Copies of their letters are available in “Einstein Archives Online”—see http://www.alberteinstein.info/

  5. 5.

    To give some examples, we quote a booklet [5] published on the occasion of Einstein’s centenary in 1979 (in Czech and partially in German), the 3rd number of the Czechoslovak Journal of Physics from the same year dedicated to Einstein and the comprehensive article on his route to general relativity, concentrated primarily on the Prague period [6]. Two articles in English [7, 8] are texts of talks about Einstein’s Prague papers on gravity given at the Conference of the European Physical Society in Prague in 1984 and at the Marcel Grossmann meeting in Perth in 1988. And a very recent detailed work [9] by Těšínská, a historian of science (containing 57 references) concentrates on Einstein’s call to Prague and on development of theoretical physics at the Czech university in Prague in relation to Einstein’s work.

  6. 6.

    See Coryacher-Chaplygin, Kovalevskaya, and Brdička-Eardley-Nappi-Witten pp-waves spacetimes with higher rank Stäckel-Killing tensor, J. Math. Phys 52, 122901 (2011).

  7. 7.

    Unfortunately they did not recall where Einstein’s or even Frank’s office was. However, their faces turned into a fine smile when we went through the big door to see the Einstein memorial tablet in the entrance hall inside because they could clearly identify the door into the building in Fig. 1.

  8. 8.

    Einstein’s long review on the Special Theory of Relativity for the Handbuch der Radiologie was started in Prague at the beginning of 1912, and continued after Einstein’s move to Zurich (the quality of ink and paper improved after the move). The First World War interrupted the publication. Einstein was later unwilling to add material on general relativity or even revise the existing manuscript. Still, it is an extraordinarily precious document since it is the earliest and most significant of the surviving scientific manuscripts written by Einstein before World War I. A fine facsimile was published in 1996 by George Braziller, Inc., in association with J. Safra Foundation and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. For more details on the manuscript, see the Collected papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 4.

  9. 9.

    The book was translated by an excellent physics teacher at a highly regarded Czech Gymnasium in Prague, V. Štíbr. Incidentally, after World War II Štíbr was the physics teacher of Karel Kuchař.

  10. 10.

    Fürth says that “Pick, professor of mathematics at Prague and a fellow violin player, drew his [Einstein’s] attention to the Italian, Levi-Civita, and his absolute differential calculus\(\ldots \) (see Einstein—the first hundred years, ed. by M. Goldsmith et al. Pergamon Press 1980). Fürth became a member of Max Born’s group in Edinburgh in 1939 but still in October 1938, after the Munich agreement, he was in Prague and published the text “Der Streit um die Deutung der Relativitaetstheorie” (The struggle about the meaning of the relativity theory) in which he defends relativity against philosophers like Prof. Kraus in Prague who wanted to find inconsistencies of the theory by “metaphysical” arguments.

  11. 11.

    Einstein notices the effect of gravity on the light propagation in his paper from 1907 already in which, for the first time, the gravitational field and equivalence principle are mentioned. However, only a homogeneous field is analyzed and the effect considered in the field of the Earth is found to be unobservable.

  12. 12.

    For a detailed account on Freundlich and tests of relativity theory, see [27]. In fact, the first attempt to measure light deflection was already made during an eclipse in October 1912 by C. D. Perrine from Cordoba, Argentina, who was inspired by Freundlich. However, rain frustrated all efforts. (I thank Jorge Pullin for pointing this out in the discussion after my lecture in the conference.) Freundlich later wrote one of the first books on Einstein’s gravitation theory (Springer 1916, Cambridge 1920). From the “Prague perspective” it is interesting to notice that in 1937 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the Charles University in Prague, however, was forced to leave because of Hitler’s policies towards Czechoslovakia in January 1939.

  13. 13.

    Will’s reviews on the verification of Einstein’s theory are well known. Perhaps less recognized is his “Resource Letter” on the tests of gravity [28] which gives many references on both current literature as well on some of historical papers.

  14. 14.

    On the occasion of the centenary of Link’s birth there was a seminar organized by astronomers and historians of science at Charles University on November 29, 2006, where gravitational lensing was extensively discussed and the role of Link, the first director of the Astronomical Institute of the Academy, recalled. Incidentally, after my talk was prepared, including the part on lensing and Link, a preprint appeared in the arXiv:1206.1165v1 [physics.hist-ph] by D. Valls-Gabaud in which the pioneering role of Link in the origins of gravitational lensing is emphasized.

  15. 15.

    I dared to make this intermezzo since our group in Prague has been devoting quite an effort to understand these spacetimes (see, e.g., contribution by Bičák and Kofroň in the Proceedings [11] and the literature quoted therein).

  16. 16.

    It started thus contemporaneously with my studies at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Prague and closed close to my retirement; but I enjoyed this long time span because the experiment is interesting and well explainable to a general public.

  17. 17.

    In Albert Einstein-Philospher and Scientist, The Library of the Living Philosphers Vol. VII, ed. P. A. Schild, Open Court Publ. Co. 1949.

  18. 18.

    For a detailed analysis of the “Zurich notebook” which Einstein began to write soon after leaving Prague, see [32].

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to David Kofroň for the help with the manuscript, especially with the figures, and for his suggestions improving the text. I also thank the Albert Einstein Institute, Golm, where most of this text was written after the conference, for the kind hospitality, Lars Andersson for comments and Ian Hinder for correcting some of my Czechisms. The partial support from the Czech Science Foundation No 14-37086G (A. Einstein Center) is also acknowledged.

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  1. Institute of Theoretical Physics, Charles University in Prague, V Holešovičkách 2, 180 00, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jiří Bičák

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  1. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Praha 8, Czech Republic

    Jiří Bičák

  2. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Praha 8, Czech Republic

    Tomáš Ledvinka

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Bičák, J. (2014). Einstein in Prague: Relativity Then and Now. In: Bičák, J., Ledvinka, T. (eds) General Relativity, Cosmology and Astrophysics. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 177. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06349-2_2

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