The road to Relativity The History and meaning of Einstein's "The Foundation of general relativity" by Hanoch Gutfreund & Jurgen Renn

The road to Relativity The History and meaning of Einstein's "The Foundation of general relativity" by Hanoch Gutfreund & Jurgen Renn is a book you'll treasure forever.  If you are in love for manuscripts and sensational discoveries like the one of Albert Einstein this book is for you.
Principally that's why I requested this book at Princeton University Press.
The book is physically stunning, superb and warm.
Big, the cover is dreaming if a scientist can pass me this enthusiastic expression. Orange, a page of the manuscript of Einstein's relativity impressed on it and a pic of a meditative Einstein  in the left part of the cover.

We won't find an explanation of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in this book: no. This book is something else because we will directly read from the manuscript of Albert Einstein what it meant step by step, thought after thought what it meant the creation of the general relativity.

It will be relative ;-) it you won't understand everything or most of it or nothing because you are not into physics, the important will be and you will discover it, the passion put by this scientist for give a new meaning at the world and Universe as past scientists like Galileo and Newton did in their times, "updating" their thoughts.

We will follow his hand-written words, his thoughts, and if you know it, his language. In the left you find the pages written by Einstein, in the right after a first introduction, foreword, the explanation of the pages taken in consideration. At the end in another chapter a list of physicists, mathematicians philosophers relevant to Einstein's thinking and a translation in english of Einstein's paper.

It's a great emotion and I found this editorial project creative and original.

102 years ago the big discovery of general relativity this book was published for celebrating this moment.

I am not a physics, I have high school notions and this book is not a joke although it is very friendly and funny with wonderful illustrations and pictures.

I have always been interested at the general theory of relativity because of the new notion of space and time.

Page after page the theory of relativity will take corporeality. A theory this one born in three suggestive, beautiful and remarkable cities, Prague, Zurich and Berlin from a beautiful, original and creative mind.

Which were the principal revolutionary ideas of Einstein?

First of all let's say that everything we see is part of physics. A static body, a ball in movement, the tea we add in a cup.

The light is a wave, atoms exists, space and time are intersected and mass is energy.

There is also to add that last Febr 10 2016 it was proved thanks to an instrument built by the California Institute of Technology and the MIT that the gravitational waves exist. The discovery of gravitational waves represent to astronomers the soundtrack of the Universe and a new way to explore the sky.

This one an article of the Boston Globe regarding the discovery of gravitational waves. 

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2016/02/11/scientists-detect-gravitational-waves-years-after-einstein-prediction/k75UUsuZOV51rQ5QJEhurK/story.html




Highly recommended if you treasure old-written important documents, if you of course  are a physicist, (I shouldn't add this, it should be implied)  and if you are interested to discovering the general theory of Relativity or if you are a student searching for a very good book for preparing your thesis about this topic. It goes straight to the point. Trust me! You won't lose your time. You go directly at the main source: the creator of the general relativity. You can't fail! ;-)

I thank Princeton University Press for the physical copy of this wonderful book!


Anna Maria Polidori