The Curious History of Relativity:

[Dave Monroe]

The Curious History of Relativity:
How Einstein's Theory of Gravity Was Lost and Found
Again

Jean Eisenstaedt

Cloth | 2006 | $29.95 / £18.95 | ISBN: 0-691-11865-5
384 pp. | 6 x 9 | 29 halftones. 22 line illus.

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Introduction [HTML] or [PDF format]

Black holes may obliterate most things that come near
them, but they saved the theory of general relativity.
Einstein's theory was quickly accepted as the true
theory of gravity after its publication in 1915, but
soon took a back seat in physics to quantum mechanics
and languished for decades on the blackboards of
mathematicians. Not until the existence of black holes
by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose in the 1960s,
after Einstein's death, was the theory revived.

Almost one hundred years after general relativity
replaced Newton's theory of gravitation, The Curious
History of Relativity tells the story of both events
surrounding general relativity and the techniques
employed by Einstein and the relativists to construct,
develop, and understand his almost impenetrable
theory. Jean Eisenstaedt, one of the world's leading
experts on the subject, also discusses the theory's
place in the evolution of twentieth-century physics.
He describes the main stages in the development of
general relativity: its beginnings, its strange
crossing of the desert during Einstein's lifetime
while under heated criticism, and its new life from
the 1960s on, when it became vital to the
understanding of black holes and the observation of
exotic objects, and, eventually, to the discovery of
the accelerating universe. We witness Einstein's
construction of his theory, as well as the work of his
fascinated, discouraged, and enthusiastic
colleagues--physicists, mathematicians, and
astronomers.

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/8251.html

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