Aug 30 2007
Special Relativity
It was in Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy-Content?” that he revealed E = mc2. It was a follow-up to his “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” the same year. The follow-up contains the words, in English translation, near the end: “Moreover, the difference K0 – K1, like the kinetic energy of the electron, depends on the velocity.” Then, at the very end it says: “If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies.”
Was Einstein close to figuring out gravity? The Bohr model of the atom was still a few years away, but by that time Einstein was thinking General Relativity and warped space time.
“The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.” – Albert Einstein
Reading Einstein’s 1905 papers, it seems evident to me that he was, at least in his 20’s, first and foremost a mathematician. The same could be said about Max Planck, due to the way he fixed the blackbody radiation law when the ultraviolet catastrophe was a problem.
Here is another Einstein quote which I hope proves my first point:
“The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.”