Space and Time: Minkowski's papers on relativity

A hard-to-find source of Minkowski's original papers in English and excellent chapters on Minkowski's logic and studies that resulted in his published papers.An outstanding publication.

I have always had an interest in the relativity of time and the concept of time as another dimension. If you have that same interest, you will enjoy this book.

Professor Herman Minkowski was a talented, award winning and prodigious mathematician, later a Professor at Gottingen University and personal friend of Prof. David Hilbert. His particular skills were with quadratics, differential equations, number theory and group theory (and his knowledge of science and mechanics was excellent); by any account, Minkowski was going to be a force to reckon with, and was always a candidate for studying the most up-to-date topics of that time.This book contains three new translations of his original papers, "The Relativity Principle, 10 pages", "The Fundamental Equations for E-M Processes in moving bodies, 59 pages", "Space and Time, 14 pages", and an introduction to his short life, his challenges and the common prejudices that still persist out of ignorance towards his vitally proven work, compiled by Vesselin Petkov, a lecturer and author in Relativity. These papers are part of lectures given by Minkowski, right up until his death (from appendicitis of all things) in January 1909.I recommend this book to all those people interested in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics or Astronomy, and especially those people who would like to get under the skin of some of the greatest thinkers of our time; you will be surprised to find that in a given selection of names like Armour, Hilbert, Lorentz, Born, Poincare, Einstein, and then Minkowski, that you come away being by far the most interested in what Minkowski had to say! A relativity student for 40 years, I discovered Minkowski quite by accident when I had eventually understood all of the mistakes of Lorentz and Einstein, and was looking for any body who might be interested in looking at the inter-relationships between time and distance in multiple dimensions (the phallacy of time if you like [Heim space]).Briefly, each of the three papers gives details of the following;-A short but interesting summary of the relativity principle, which delves into the depth of the theory, and right from the start seems to allude to greater things; that is to say that Minkowski impresses with his span of knowledge, and that years before Einstein's 1905 paper, he was thinking about electromagnetism, and even gravity. Yes, about 30 years before Einstein (see later).In the next paper, Minkowski exposes the two compensating errors of Lorentz and Einstein used in the first published theory of relativity. And proceeds to derive the same theory in four dimensions from the Law of Conservation of Energy.Finally, Minkowski's paper on space and time is inspired. Giving a prequel to the great expression, and deriving an even more fascinating and challenging relationship between length and time. Interestingly, there are references to papers dating from 1897 and 1898 herein, regarding "principles of Absolute Energy, and movement of E-M charges" which Minkowski uses openly to quote his thought processes and formative ideas; some 12 years of literature searching, compared to 5 weeks for Einstein.Now in the fascinating introduction, the author does not attempt to discredit Einstein (far from it), but he does dispel many myths about the development of the theory of relativity. His elegant and informed rationale is truly inspiring, and informative. The truth lies somewhere between the facts that Albert Einstein was himself a precocious pupil of Professor Minkowski, but was no doubt completely ignored at his young age, and also, that later on when Minkowski should have been working with Einstein- Albert had already become pals with Lorentz, and then Poincare. Further facts are, that Minkowski would not have credited Lorentz with much at all, because he had already proved to himself that the Lorentz contraction was merely a rotation in 4-d spacetime, and secondly, that Poincare was already a re-knowned mathematician for the first idea of spacetime. Lastly, Minkowoski must have been frustrated when the spacetime theory was named "Relativity", because it was more to do with "equivalence" than anything else, not to mention that Einstein's first papers show a lack of understanding of "dt" and "dT", local and proper time...Einstein wrote in 1916 that "the generalization of the theory of relativity has been facilitated considerably by Minkowski, a mathematician who was the first one to recognize the formal equivalence of space coordinates and the time coordinate, and utilized this in the construction of the theory". Now, Poincare is still credited with this exactitude, but moreover, Einstein does not even identify Minkowksi as his professor, so we are tantalized with the possibility, that Einstein was actually trying to right a wrong here in more ways than one, evenso nebulously! You might like to ask why this particular part of the translation has always been omitted?Minkowski writes " considering two inertial frames of reference, travelling along their x-axis...the laws of physics would then have exactly the same expressions by x', y, z, t', as by means of x, y, z, t. Hereafter we would then have in the world no more the space, but an infinite number of spaces analogously as there is an infinite number of planes in three dimensional space. Three dimensional geometry becomes a chapter in four-dimensional physics." This marvellous phrase rings instantly true with all students and followers, and has been copied and re-written by the likes of Arthur Stanley Eddington, and even Einstein himself... Minkowski realizes why there is a difference between inertial and accelerated motion (and the differences between their straight or curvilinear timelike worldlines. "The concept of acceleration acquires a sharply prominent character...but not an absolute space".Shortly after Minkowski's untimely death, Einstein wrote "in conclusion, I would like also to point to the importance of the recently published paper by Frank, which by taking into account the Lorentz contraction, restores the agreement between Lorentz's treatment based on the electron theory and Minkowski's treatment of the electrodynamics of moving bodies..." (see the second translated paper).Finally, in Minkowski's four dimensional language, an electron is not a worldline, but a disintegrated worldline whose worldpoints are scattered all over the spacetime region (the wave function being non-zero). Such a model of quantum objects provides a surprising insight into probabilistic functions in spacetime, and is only now being looked at with fresh eyes to explain current phenomena. What a great pity that Minkowski is not here to have met Dirac, and shared ideas on the Dirac sea (matter-antimatter equilibrium) and the Compton Frequency of the electron.Overall, this book is great value for money, and well within the understanding of most science graduates. Strongly recommend a look. And we should look forward to a compendium version, with perhaps many more examples (perhaps using satellite clock settings, or superluminary tachyon annihilation, or even the incorrect time base calculation for the neutrons at CERN).

Minkowski war ein Mathematik-Professor von Einstein. Er nutzte die Spezielle Relativitätstheorie ("SRT"), um eine Geometrie der Raumzeit zu definieren, die Raum und Zeit in einen unauflöslichen Zusammenhang bringt, so, wie es die SRT verlangt. Seine in dem Buch zusammengefassten Veröffentlichungen zur SRT dokumentieren die Struktur der Raumzeit, unterstellt, dass die Gravitation nicht einbezogen wird. Ein Beitrag zur "klassischen" Physik, die ihn unsterblich macht.

Liked that it provided a good historic view of the physics