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Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics

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I am a nonscientist, general reader, but have read many popular accounts of special relativity. I have always felt shortchanged, though, just at the point where things get most interesting. I think that is because the real physics does lie in the equations, and verbal metaphors fall short. For me, here, for the first time, I see where the science is: just beyond the metaphors. Although I do not follow all the math by any means, so it is partly like listening to a foreign language, I recognized enough of the concepts to get a glimmer: and it is stunning. Here is Einstein himself, deriving E=mc2 in paper 4; so briefly, so lucidly (although another reader from California seems to have missed it). Paper 3 on special relativity is, even to this nonscientist, dazzling.

As a retired physicist I have taken great interest in the history of science, especially the times around the turn of the twentieth century when so many new ideas were put forward which have the basis of quantum mechanics and our current thinking from cosmology to quarks. This little volume is recommended either for bedtime reading or more serious study. The personal history reveals aspects previously unknown to me and the five papers themselves, in their original form, demonstrate Einstein's wonderful insightfulness and ability to make use of every aspect of a problem. Tney are a bit heavy going in themselves, and the mathematics is not for everyone, but what else would one expect from a distillation of so much into so relatively few words. I recommend this book to both the scintist and the layman who seeks a better understanding of these momentous mental leaps.

This book is a compilation of five important papers including Albert Einstein's dissertation, all published in Annalen der Physik the year 1905. The papers are;

(1) "A new determination of molecular dimensions". Which is Einstein's dissertation.

(2) On the motion of Small particles Suspended in Liquids at Rest Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat. This is what is referred to as Brownian Motion.

(3) On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. This is what is referred to as the special theory of relativity. This paper is to some degree a synthesis of work done by H.A. Lorentz and Henri Poincare, which is common in science (and Lorentz is given his fair due).

(4) Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? This is essentially E = mc² and is an extension of the aforementioned paper.

(5) On a heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light. This is his paper on the photo electric effect and the quantum hypothesis. This is what Einstein got his Nobel price for. However, both (2) and (3) above are often considered to be Nobel Prize work.

The way I see it, these papers are of great historical value and it is awesome to be able to read the originals. However, I do not recommend this book as a good introduction to any of this material. As an engineering physics student I encountered most of the content of these papers in a more complete and clearer format. For example, the special theory of relativity is explained better in many text books on physics. Remember these papers are research papers not educational texts. That does not mean that I endorse the many non-mathematical popularizations of the topic that often end up misleading the reader. I should add, however, that in many texts on the special theory of relativity its foundation in electrodynamics is lost or downplayed, so reading the original will remind the student where it really came from.

I was surprised to see how the formula K0 - K1 = Lv²/ (2V²) was derived. This formula states the change in the kinetic energy of a body emitting radiation with energy L/2 in each direction. An implicit approximation (K = mv²/2, classic kinetic energy) was cancelled out by a MacLaurin/Taylor expansion and a corresponding approximation (when dropping terms). This is not wrong, and the proof is still valid, but it seems unnecessary to use approximations from classical mechanics when it is just as easy to make do without them. In any case from this formula it is concluded that when a body that emits the energy L in the form of radiation, then its mass decreases by L/V², or E = mc² ("V" is "c" plus classic formula above).

However, the formula E = mc² can be easily derived directly from the special theory of relativity without any approximation, which he did at a later date. You integrate E = F S (where S is distance) using the relativistic formulas for force and mass. In any case the paper proves the genial insight that "that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content", which is worth perhaps yet another Nobel Prize. It is also short paper.

I can add that Einstein's opus magnum, the general theory of relativity, came much later 1915/1916. Some other huge achievements were "stimulated emission" the principle behind the laser, Bose-Einstein statistics, and relativistic cosmology. In addition he also did the following, critical opalescence, the geometrization of physics, unified field theory, the EPR paradox, the Einstein refrigerator, a refrigerator without any moving parts, and much more. So 1905 was a very good start, a miracle year, but still just the beginning.

Anyway, reading the originals is thrilling. It is recommended reading to anyone who is literate in physics, and also recommended to anyone who would like to have these master pieces in his library.

Translations of these five revolutionary papers, written in Einstein's annus mirabilis of 1905, have been widely available from other sources. However, it is a delight to have them compiled in this handsome, low cost edition. And the thoughful foreward by Roger Penrose and the interesting historical introductions and annotations by John Stachel make this text invaluable.

As for the papers themselves, they still serve as pedagogically excellent introductions to the fields they created. And they provide stunning insight into the workings of one of the most amazing intellects the world has ever seen.

This book should be part of any science library worthy of the name.

If you're looking for a good book to learn a bit about Einstein's theories of relativity, you'd be better served reading his "The Meaning of Relativity." "Einstein's Miraculous Year," being a compilation of translated versions of his original 1905 papers, is more suited for the seasoned physicist who already understands the material but is curious about how Einstein really did it all. In the latter case, of course, one could turn to the professional physics literature, but it's nice to have all his 1905 papers in one place. The extra commentary is a nice addition, since it provides the necessary historical context. Too bad the book doesn't include Einstein's papers on his general theory of relativity but, of course, that would fall out of the miraculous year of 1905.

The material in this book is on a par with other great masterpieces of the human intellect, like Newton's Principia, the Sistine Ceiling, and Bach's B-minor Mass. Each of the five papers is revolutionary, the product of a 25-year-old genius with a rigorous education in science and math and an unsurpassed intuition for how the physical world works. There are two papers which provide a firm basis for the atomic theory of matter, still controversial in 1905; one which explains the photoelectric effect by introducing a new theory of light as quantum particles; and two which announce special relativity, a remarkable new way of looking at space and time. At the time of their publication Einstein was employed as a patent examiner in Bern, having failed to find an academic job. He worked largely alone, supplementing his reading of the current physics literature with discussions with a few close friends. His ideas sprang from penetrating insights into how the world should work, supplemented by brilliant use of math to bring these insights into fruition as full-fledged physical theories. He was fearless in pursuing the strange implications of his ideas regardless of their consequences, and was of course ultimately rewarded by the confirmation of his theories by the scientific community at large.

It is fascinating to read these papers. To understand them requires a background in calculus and differential equations. Each is characterized by a remarkable clarity and simplicity in the exposition which belies the profundity and far-reaching implications of the conclusions. The paper on Brownian motion in particular is a gem: just a few pages of unassailable mathematical logic leading to a prediction that if particles of a certain size are suspended in a liquid composed of atoms of a certain size, then Brownian motion of a certain magnitude would be observed. And so it was.

The paper which introduces special relativity is entitled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". The title refers to the paper's starting point: that depending on an observer's frame of reference a certain electromagnetic force may or may not be present, which strikes Einstein as unsatisfactory. He then proposes two simple axioms: 1) that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial (unaccelerated) frames of reference; and 2) that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames of reference. He then shows that these two axioms lead to the striking result that there is no absolute time, i.e., that different observers will disagree as to whether two events are simultaneous. They also lead directly to the Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformations of time and space previously developed by the Dutch physicist Lorentz in an attempt to explain why the Michelson-Morley experiment looking for changes in the velocity of light based on the earth's motion through the ether gave a null result. The same transformations are then shown to be compatible with Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, and to resolve the unsatisfactory situation with which the paper started, the presence of a certain force in one inertial frame but not in another.

To the reviewer who believes this paper is erroneous, I would simply say that the predictions of special relativity have been fully borne out by experiment, and are validated every day in high-energy accelerators.

To the reviewer who believes that Einstein somehow borrowed all this from Poincare, I would point out that although Poincare came to the same mathematical conclusions, it was Einstein who derived them by starting with the two simple axioms outlined above, without recourse to any additional justification, thereby achieving the revolution in our understanding of space and time that Poincare never fully grasped.

Then there is the famous paper deriving E=mc2, the equation which ultimately earned Einstein the sobriquet "father of the atomic bomb", a largely undeserved title. The real "father of the atomic bomb" was Leo Szilard, who first realized the potential for a nuclear chain reaction and was tireless in urging the American scientific establishment and government to develop it as a weapon before Nazi Germany did. Only to the extent that a letter signed by Einstein was instrumental in convincing President Roosevelt to commit America's resources to this task does he deserve the title.

Finally, there is the paper explaining the photoelectric effect as a quantum effect induced by particles of light with discrete energies equal to multiples of the quantum of action discovered by Planck 5 years earlier. Although Planck had used this discovery to explain blackbody radiation, he did not consider it a feature of light itself, but only of the emission of light by matter. In Einstein's hands it became an entirely new theory of light, a revolutionary departure from the wave theory of light which then held sway and had been highly successful in explaining a wide range of optical phenomena. That Einstein was willing to propose an alternate theory of light as particles (in a way a reversion to Newton's original theory) indicates just how self-confident and fearless he was. Indeed, it was only in the 1920s after the Compton effect demonstrated that light particles had momentum did the scientific community as a whole accept Einstein's theory of light as quantum particles.

By the way, the first paper on special relativity and the paper on light quanta taken together neatly dispose of that mythic relic of 19th century physics, the ether. Conceived as the medium in which light waves travel, but never directly observed and possessing impossible qualities, it was simply ignored in special relativity, and shown to be unnecessary for the propagation of light since particles can move in empty space.

I purchased this book so that I could read Einstein's 1905 papers (in English translations). The book gives you these (actually instead of the paper written from his thesis, the book provides the thesis itself), and much more. The book starts with a short, interesting, forward by Roger Penrose, which puts these papers in the context of previous and contemporaneous physics. There is then a lengthy (70 page) new introduction to this centenary edition of the book. This introduction provides interesting historical information about Einstein's life and the development of these 1905 papers, particularly with regard to the charge (clearly refuted in this introduction) that Einstein's wife Mileva was an unsigned co-author of these 1905 papers (or the perhaps the real author). Then there is the original 25-page introduction that provides more information regarding the development of these 1905 papers. Following this are the papers themselves, each of which is preceded by a technical discussion of the paper. Finally, there are editor's notes following each paper that correct mistakes and help explain a few points.

The material that is provided in addition to the papers actually occupies more pages than the papers themselves and is definitely a very welcome addition. In fact, I think that they are a primary reason to get his book. Einstein's papers, while generally quite short are not the easiest to follow (at least I found this to be the case), so the notes preceding and following each paper defiantly helped me understand the papers and the context in which they were written. This is happily a case where I got much more than I had expected.

I highly recommend this book to those interested in Einstein, the history of science and the development of his physics. A reader will find some prior understanding of physics to be very helpful, but there is enough general historical material to make the book interesting to those without such a background.

Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics
What a pleasure to read the original papers on Special Relatvity with eactly the content provided by Einstein. In our physics classes we we studied this original material in conjunction with later material added by Lorentz and Minkowski.. The original material is fascinating in its simplicity. The rest of the book is other work done by Einstein in 1905, incuding hs dissertation onthe size of molecules, Brownian Motion, and the quantum hypothesis. We find out things we have never heard in John Stachel's interesting introductions to the papers. For example, the only comment that his thesis advisor had on Einstein's dissertation was that it was too short. Einstein then added a single sentence and the paper was accepted. If any grad student ever deserved a PhD, he must surely be Einstein. This book is an invaluable reference to anyone studying the history of modern physics.

Einstein's Miraculous Year is edited by John Stachel. The genius of Einstein is presented with clarity in these translations. Surprisingly,
I find the special relativity theory presented in his paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" unconvincing.
If we don't accept Einstein's definition of time,special relativity is invalidated. His definition on page 126 is deliberately inadequate and only proper for a system at absolute rest. On page 129, he tacitly acknowledges this, when he describes the time it takes for a light ray to
make a round-trip journey in a moving system. The formulas in the middle of page 132 attempt to reconcile his inadequate definition with the behavior of a light ray in a moving system. Scrutiny reveals the formulas
are hoaxes. A calculus textbook such as Calculus and its Applications with
its chapter on partial derivatives,which explains "total differential", is
helpful.
Ambiguously,on page 130,Einstein states, "Let there be two coordinate systems, i.e. two systems of three mutually perpendicular rigid material
lines originating from one point. Let the X-axes of the two systems coincide...." If the two coordinate systems are made of rigid material lines, it is impossible for the X-axes to coincide.

I do not find this work leading me to an understanding of relativity, which was my goal. The author states that Paper 4 leads to demonstrating E=MC2, but it is not there to my eye. I have in the past seen a succinct derivation.