Einstein wrote this book for readers who know school mathematics and want to understand what relativity actually says. He starts with a train, an embankment…
About the recording
Author
Albert Einstein
Read by
featherheadfop, Linda Leu, David Barnes and 5 other readers
Einstein wrote this book for readers who know school mathematics and want to understand what relativity actually says. He starts with a train, an embankment and two flashes of lightning to show why simultaneity depends on the observer, builds the special theory from two simple principles, and explains why mass and energy are equivalent. The second part turns to the general theory, the equivalence of gravity and acceleration, curved space and time and the bending of starlight, before a closing section on the structure of the universe as a whole.
Context and significance
Einstein wrote it in German in 1916, soon after completing the general theory, and Robert W. Lawson's English translation appeared in 1920, just after the eclipse observations of 1919 had made him famous. Eight LibriVox volunteers read it in under four hours.
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