Year: 2003
The Age of Einstein, is a brief introduction to Einstein's Theories of Special and General Relativity. It is a book for the inquisitive general reader who wishes to gain an understanding of the key ideas put forward by the greatest scientist of the 20th-century. No more than a modest grasp of High School Mathematics is required to follow the arguments.
This book had its origin in a one-year course that I taught at Yale throughout the decade of the 1970’s. The course was for non-science majors who were interested in learning about the major branches of Physics. In the first semester, emphasis was placed on Newtonian and Einsteinian Relativity. The recent popularity of the Einstein exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, prompted me to look again at my fading lecture notes. I found that they contained material that might be of interest to today’s readers. I have therefore reproduced them with some additions, mostly of a graphical nature. I recall the books that were most influential in my approach to the subject at that time; they were Max Born’s The Special Theory of Relativity, Robert Adair’s Concepts of Physics, and Casper and Noer’s Revolutions in Physics. These three books were written with the non-scientist in mind, and they showed what could be achieved in this important area of teaching and learning; I am greatly indebted to these authors.
