Einstein: The Formative Years,1879–1909

Abstract

The publication of the first two volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein in the years 1987 and 1989 marks a watershed in the history of Einstein scholarship. These volumes put together all available documents relevant to Einstein’s early years up to his move to Berne, and they present all his published writings up to 1909, when he would take up his first proper academic appointment at Zurich university. The initiator of the editorial enterprise and editor of these first two volumes, John Stachel, was well aware of the significance of this endeavour. Together with Don Howard, active in the editorial project as well, he also founded the Einstein Studies series whose first volume came out around the same time, in 1989. The series provides a forum for Einstein research, with an emphasis, however, on the history and philosophy of general relativity in those volumes that have appeared up to now. The present volume, number 8 in the series, focuses on the young Einstein and his early work. It has been long in the making. Some papers originated at a conference on Einstein’s early years held in 1990, in an attempt to harvest and digest the fruits of the publication of the first volumes of Einstein’s Collected Papers. Other contributions were written especially for the volume, one paper was published before and is reprinted here. It was the editors’ intention to offer a selection of some of the best recent scholarly studies of Einstein’s early years, and the outcome certainly justifies this claim.