The attraction of gravitation: new studies in the history of general relativity (Q1900828)

The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually. This fifth volume of the Einstein Studies series presents the proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History and Philosophy of General Relativity held at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1991. The papers have been grouped in five sections, the first of which deals with disputes between Einstein and other prominent figures in general relativity. \textit{John D. Norton} investigates the exchange between Einstein and Nordström and the influence it had on the development of Einstein's theory. \textit{Don Howard} and \textit{John D. Norton} report on Einstein's resolution of the ``hole argument'' in the last stages of the development of his theory and the role that Paul Hertz, David Hilbert and Joseph Petzoldt played in it. The debate over the correct formulation of conservation laws in general relativity is the subject of a paper by \textit{Carlo Cattani} and \textit{Michelangelo De Maria}. \textit{Peter Havas} describes the controversy between Einstein and Ludwik Silberstein on the two-body-problem in general relativity. In the second section, ``The empirical basis of general relativity'', \textit{John Earman} and \textit{Michel Janssen} present a detailed analysis of Einstein's 1915 paper on the precession of Mercury's perihelion, and \textit{A. J. Kox} reports on Pieter Zeeman's little-known experiments on the equality of inertial and experimental mass. The third section deals with variational principles in general relativity. \textit{S. Kichenassamy} gives an account of early variational derivations of Einstein's field equations, whereas \textit{Carlo Cattani} analyses Levi-Civita's influence on the work of Attilio Palatini. The fourth and largest section of this volume is concerned with the reception and development of general relativity. \textit{Karin Reich} examines the reception in America in connection with the theory of differential invariants. \textit{Hubert Goenner} dissects the denunciation of Einstein's theory which was published in the German book ``100 Autoren gegen Einstein'' from 1931. \textit{Silvio Berga} surveys the various attempts at formulating unified field theories from 1919 to 1955. \textit{Gennady Gorelik} presents an interesting account of the work and personality of Vladimir Fock, and \textit{Kameshwar C. Wali} gives an overview of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's contributions to general relativity. In the final section on relativistic cosmology, \textit{Jean Eisenstaedt} examines the importance of Georges Lemaître's work from the early 1930's for development of the modern interpretation of the Schwarzschild solution. \textit{John Urani} and \textit{George Gale} try to correct the unjust (lack of) perception of Edward A. Milne's kinematic relativity analysing his importance for shaping the debate about the nature of cosmology as a science and the role he played in the development of the Robertson-Walker metric.