Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70318 in Books
• Published on: 1962-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

Synopsis
A Nobel Prize-winning physicist explains the historical background and scientific principles of Einstein's famous theory.

Customer Reviews

Best one yet
Born does one of the best jobs of anyone of explaining relativity to the interested person. The first half deals primarily with Newtonian mechanics and he later applies this under more extreme circumstances to bring out Einstein's theory. Born also addresses this subject very well mathematically (which is good, because otherwise no one could understand the subject), although his variables may be confusing initially as he uses letters which are not convention.

All in all it was probably the best book on relativity that I've read, and that's pretty good.

Historical importance of Born on Relativity
The original German edition of this book dates from 1920, the English translation dating from 1924 (the red-covered Dover edition). It's a decidedly original piece that made a real attempt to come to grips with the ambivalence of the subject, and in particular introduces the idea that e/m wave crests are events that observers in relative motion can agree about. This isn't true, bur it isn't obvious it isn't true, and the whole idea seems to have been fruitful in provoking thinking about anti-realism in Born's assistants - first Pauli who produced his own book on relativity in 1921 and unlike Born did not feel he had to revise it; then Heisenberg in another direction. Unfortunately when it became time to reprint it in 1962 Born refused to sanction it in its original form so the current edition is perfectly respectable and correct but in my view has lost some of the verve and interest of the original; like most books on relativity you don't feel quite satisfied but you're not quite sure why. It's good, though: Born was a protean figure with the gift of attracting brilliant assistants and seeing them given the maximum credit for their contributions, to the extent that his own role tends to be forgotten, and some of this generosity affects the quality of his writing. But like others I feel there would be a place for a new publisher (maybe Folkestone books?) to republish Dover books that have gone out of print; one thinks of O'Rahilly's highly original (and surely wrong?) take on e/m theory. Where can one get it now? It's disappeared like Born's red edition.

An excellent review of classical physics and relativity
Born spends the first half of the book developing an historical perspective of the time at which Einstein was grappling with Relativity. He leads us through all the major domains of Physics and arrives at Einstein's point of departure.

In the second half of the book, a full and complete review of Relativity is given.

Extensive use of physics equations is made throughout the book however for the reader looking purely for the historical perspective these can be safely assumed.