'Subtle is the Lord - ' : the science and the life of Albert Einstein / Abraham Pais.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pais, Abraham, 1918-2000, author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955.

Einstein, Albert.

Physicists--Germany--Biography.

Physicists.

Physics--History.

Physics.

Physical Description:

xx, 552 p. : ill.

Edition:

New [edition].

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2023.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

'Subtle Is The Lord' is widely recognized as the definitive scientific biography of Einstein. The late Abraham Pais was a distinguished physicist turned historian who knew Einstein both professionally & personally in the last 20 years of his life. His biography combines an understanding of Einstein's work with personal recollections.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

I: INTRODUCTORY

1. Purpose and plan

2. Relativity theory and quantum theory

(a) Orderly transitions and revolutionary periods

(b) A time capsule

3. Portrait of the physicist as a young man

An addendum on Einstein biographies

II: STATISTICAL PHYSICS

4. Entropy and probability

(a) Einstein's contributions at a glance

(b) Maxwell and Boltzmann

(c) Preludes to 1905

(d) Einstein and Boltzmann's principle

5. The reality of molecules

(a) About the nineteenth century, briefly

(b) The pots of Pfeffer and the laws of van't Hoff

(c) The doctoral thesis

(d) Eleven days later: Brownian motion

(e) Einstein and Smoluchowski

critical opalescence

III: RELATIVITY, THE SPECIAL THEORY

6. 'Subtle is the Lord ...'

(a) The Michelson-Morley experiment

(b) The precursors

(c) Poincaré in 1905

(d) Einstein before 1905

7. The new kinematics

(a) June 1905: special relativity defined, Lorentz transformations derived

(b) September 1905

about E = mc[sup(2)]

(c) Early responses

(d) Einstein and the special theory after 1905

(e) Electromagnetic mass: the first century

8. The edge of history

IV: RELATIVITY, THE GENERAL THEORY

9. 'The happiest thought of my life'

10. Herr Professor Einstein

(a) From Bern to Zurich

(b) Three and a half years of silence

11. The Prague papers

(a) From Zurich to Prague

(b) 1911. The bending of light is detectable

(c) 1912. Einstein in no man's land

12. The Einstein-Grossmann collaboration

(a) From Prague to Zürich

(b) From scalar to tensor

(c) The collaboration

(d) The stumbling block

(e) The aftermath

13. Field theories of gravitation: the first fifty years

(a) Einstein in Vienna

(b) The Einstein-Fokker paper

14. The field equations of gravitation

(a) From Zürich to Berlin.

(b) Interlude. Rotation by magnetization

(c) The final steps

(d). Einstein and Hilbert

15. The new dynamics

(a) From 1915 to 1980

(b) The three successes

(c) Energy and momentum conservation

the Bianchi identities

(d) Gravitational waves

(e) Cosmology

(f) Singularities

the problem of motion

(g) What else was new at GR9?

V: THE LATER JOURNEY

16. 'The suddenly famous Doctor Einstein'

(a) Illness. Remarriage. Death of Mother

(b) Einstein canonized

(c) The birth of the legend

(d) Einstein and Germany

(e) The later writings

17. Unified Field Theory

(a) Particles and fields around 1920

(b) Another decade of gestation

(c) The fifth dimension

(d) Relativity and post-Riemannian differential geometry

(e) The later journey: a scientific chronology

(f) A postcript to unification, a prelude to quantum theory

VI: THE QUANTUM THEORY

18. Preliminaries

(a) An outline of Einstein's contributions

(b) Particle physics: the first fifty years

(c) The quantum theory: lines of influence

19. The light quantum

(a) From Kirchhoff to Plank

(b) Einstein on Planck: 1905. The Rayleigh-Einstein-Jeans law

(c) The light-quantum hypothesis and the heuristic principle

(d) Einstein on Planck: 1906

(e) The photo-electric effect: the second coming of h

(f) Reactions to the light-quantum hypothesis

20. Einstein and specific heats

(a) Specific heats in the nineteenth century

(b) Einstein

(c) Nernsf: Solvay I

21. The photon

(a) The fusion of particles and waves and Einstein's destiny

(b) Spontaneous and induced radiative transitions

(c) The completion of the particle picture

(d) Earliest Unbehagen about chance

(e) An aside: quantum conditions for non-separable classical motion

(f) The Compton effect

22. Interlude: The BKS proposal.

23. A loss of identity: the birth of quantum statistics

(a) From Boltzmann to Dirac

(b) Bose

(c) Einstein

(d) Postscript on Bose-Einstein condensation

24. Einstein as a transitional figure: the birth of wave mechanics

(a) From Einstein to de Broglie

(b) From de Broglie to Einstein

(c) From de Broglie and Einstein to Schroedinger

25. Einstein's response to the new dynamics

(a) 1925-1931. The debate begins

(b) Einstein in Princeton

(c) Einstein on objective reality

26. Einstein's vision

(a) Einstein, Newton and success

(b) Relativity theory and quantum theory

(c) 'Überkausalität'

VII: JOURNEY'S END

27. The final decade

28. Epilogue

VIII: APPENDICES

29. Of tensors and a hearing aid and many other things: Einstein's collaborators

30. How Einstein got the Nobel prize

31. Einstein's proposals for the Nobel prize

32. An Einstein chronology

Name Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

Subject Index

Q

X

Z.

Notes:

Previous edition: Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.

Previously issued in print: 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Derived record based on print version record and publisher information.

ISBN:

1-383-00286-X

1-280-75319-6

0-19-152402-6

OCLC:

609832051