The Meaning of Relativity.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945. Second edition, first printing. Publisher's full beige cloth, top edge stained red, in dust jacket ($2.00). [vi], 135. 8" x 5.5" Tiny spot of wear spine head, fine in near fine dust jacket with mildly toned spine and edges, short closed tear front flap fold, tiny puncture rear panel, small spots of soiling, in mylar cover. Overall an extremely tight and clean copy. Item #242627
THE NEW COLUMBUS OF SCIENCE
Forever changing our understanding of the physical world with his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein brought the physics and mathematics of general relativity down to a reader level in The Meaning of Relativity. First published in 1922 (the year he received the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics), this volume consists of Einstein's Stafford Little Lectures given the year before at Princeton University, translated by physicist Edwin Plimpton Adams. To account for advances in the field of relativity since the 1920s, this second edition expands Einstein's original lectures in the form of an appendix, translated by Ernst G. Strausfellow —mathematician and Einstein’s assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Einstein’s May 1921 visit to deliver the Stafford Little Lectures was part of his first American tour, undertaken largely to raise funds for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the visit Princeton awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree, the citation of which described him as a "new Columbus of science, voyaging through strange seas of thought alone." This clause being an allusion to Wordsworth's lines in The Prelude about the statue of Isaac Newton at Cambridge: "a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone." Poetically linking Einstein to the man whose theories had been superseded by his theory of general relativity, experimentally proven only 18 months prior.
Presented here is a collector-quality copy of the expanded second edition.
Price: $550.00