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Preface

Table of Contents

Einstein’s contributions to our ideas of time and space, and to our knowledge of the universe in general, are of so momentous a nature, that they easily take their place among the two or three greatest achievements of the twentieth century. This little book attempts to give, in popular form, an account of this work. As, however, Einstein’s work is so largely dependent upon the work of Newton and Newton’s successors, the first two chapters are devoted to the latter.

B. H.

Preface To Second Edition

Table of Contents

The preparation of this new edition has made it possible to correct errors, to further amplify certain portions of the text and to enlarge the ever-increasing bibliography on the subject. Photographs of Professors J. J. Thomson, Michelson, Minkowski and Lorentz are also new features in this edition.

The explanatory notes and articles in the Appendix will, I believe, present no difficulties to readers who have mastered the contents of the book. They are in fact “popular expositions” of various phases of the Einstein theory; but experience has shown that even “popular expositions” of the theory need further “popular introductions.”

I wish to take this opportunity of thanking Prof. Einstein, Prof. A. A. Michelson of the University of Chicago, Prof. J. S. Ames of Johns Hopkins University, and Professor G. B. Pegram of Columbia University for help in various ways which they were good enough to extend to me. Prof. J. S. Ames and the editor of Science have been kind enough to allow me to reprint the former’s excellent presidential address on Einstein’s theory, delivered before the members of the American Physical Society.

B. H.

NEWTON

“Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed.”—Lagrange, one of the greatest of French mathematicians.

“The efforts of the great philosopher were always superhuman; the questions which he did not solve were incapable of solution in his time.”—Arago, famous French astronomer.

EINSTEIN

“This is the most important result obtained in connection with the theory of gravitation since Newton’s day. Einstein’s reasoning is the result of one of the highest achievements of human thought.”—Sir J. J. Thomson, president of the British Royal Society and professor of physics at the University of Cambridge.

“It surpasses in boldness everything previously suggested in speculative natural philosophy and even in the philosophical theories of knowledge. The revolution introduced into the physical conceptions of the world is only to be compared in extent and depth with that brought about by the introduction of the Copernican system of the universe.”—Prof. Max Planck, professor of physics at the University of Berlin and winner of the Nobel Prize.