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Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was proposed a little over a hundred years back. It remained a bedrock of twentieth century physics right up to Quantum Field Theory. However, the failure over several decades to provide a unified…
Section 7 of Einstein's 1905 electrodynamics paper gives frequency-shift and aberration formulae that together describe an elongated ellipsoidal wavefront. A Lorentz contraction of this ellipsoid solves most (but not all) of the associated…
I discuss Einstein's path-breaking November 1915 General Relativity papers. I show that Einstein's field equations of November 25, 1915 with an additional term on the right hand side involving the trace of the energy-momentum tensor appear…
This paper deals with four topics: The first subject is Abraham's spherical electron, Lorentz's contracted electron and B\"ucherer's electron. The second topic is Einstein's 1905 relativity theory of the motion of an electron. Einstein…
All of the experiments supporting Einstein's Special Relativity Theory are also supportive of the Lorentz ether theory, or many other ether theories. However, a growing number of experiments show deviations from Einstein's Special…
The first direct experimental test of Einstein's theory of general relativity involved a pair of expeditions to measure the bending of light at a total solar eclipse that took place one hundred years ago, on 29 May 1919. So famous is this…
This note examines an apparently unpublished manuscript on special relativity written by Conrad Habicht in 1914 and made available online by the ETH-Bibliothek Z\"urich in December 2024. To the best of my knowledge, no study of its content…
Einstein regarded as one of the triumphs of his 1915 theory of gravity --- the general theory of relativity --- that it vindicated the action--reaction principle, while Newtonian mechanics as well as his 1905 special theory of relativity…
Jean-Marc Ginoux's recent book, "Poincar\'e, Einstein and the Discovery of Special Relativity: An End to the Controversy" (2024), seeks to close the debate over the respective roles of Poincar\'e and Einstein. Yet what is presented as an…
Experiments may not reveal their full import at the time that they are performed. The scientists who perform them usually are testing a specific hypothesis and quite often have specific expectations limiting the possible inferences that can…
A century ago, Einstein formulated his elegant and elaborate theory of General Relativity, which has so far withstood a multitude of empirical tests with remarkable success. Notwithstanding the triumphs of Einstein's theory, the tenacious…
In 1905 the well-known physicist Max Planck was coeditor of the Annalen der Physik, and he accepted Einstein's paper on light quanta for publication, even though he disliked the idea of "light quanta". Einstein's relativity paper was…
In 1927 Einstein sent two brief communications to the Prussian Academy of Sciences on Kaluza's five-dimensional theory. In his Einstein biography, Abraham Pais asserted that he could not understand the reasons that pushed Einstein to…
In a comparison of the principles of special relativity and of quantum mechanics, the former theory is marked by its relative economy and apparent explanatory simplicity. A number of theorists have thus been led to search for a small number…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level. All the basic structures of…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level or better. All the basic structures…
The confrontation between General Relativity and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. The agreement between experiment and theory is numerically very impressive. However, some…
In the history of physics 1905 can be considered as the year of Einstein's proclamation of independence of events. Indeed the concept of independent events occupies a essential place in the three main 1905 Einstein's papers (quanta of…
We review the physics at the end of the nineteenth century and summarize the process of the establishment of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein in brief. Following in the giant's footsteps, we outline the scientific method which helps to…
We review the experimental evidence for Einstein's special and general relativity. A variety of high precision null experiments verify the weak equivalence principle and local Lorentz invariance, while gravitational redshift and other clock…