Space and time

Abstract

The dilemma mentioned at the end of the last chapter was one of a small number of outstanding problems that faced physicists at the end of the last century. Among the others were the so-called ‘ultra-violet catastrophe’ and the photoelectric effect. Within the next two decades all of these problems, if not solved, would at least have the foundations of the solutions laid. In two of these problems the man responsible for the major breakthrough was Albert Einstein (1879–1955). It is difficult, after a span of some seventy years, to realize the magnitude of the problem and to appreciate the enormous intellectual and imaginative leap that Einstein had to make. It is, however, salutory to read that even for Einstein the problem was not an easy one.