Relativity : the Special and General Theory

About this book

Einstein wrote this little book in 1916 for readers who know school mathematics but not the advanced kind, to explain his two theories in his own words. He begins with simple questions, such as what it means to say that two lightning strikes far apart along a railway happen at the same moment. Using trains, embankments and a chest pulled through empty space, he shows why time and distance depend on the motion of the observer, why nothing can outrun light, and how gravity reshapes space and time.

Context and significance

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a patent clerk in Bern when he published special relativity in 1905; general relativity followed in 1915, and its prediction that light bends near the Sun was confirmed during an eclipse in 1919, which made him world famous. His Nobel Prize, for 1921, was given not for relativity but for his work on the photoelectric effect.

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