THREE BOOKS ON RELATIVITY American （三本书在相对论的美国人）.pdfVIP

1924.] THREE BOOKS ON RELATIVITY 71 THREE BOOKS ON RELATIVITY The Mathematical Theory of Relativity. By A. S. Eddington . Cam- bridge, University Press, 1923. VI + 247 pp . The Meaning of Relativity. By Albert Einstein . Translated into English by E . P . Adams. Princeton University Press, 1923. 123 pp . The Theory of General Relativity and Gravitation. By L. Silberstein. New York, Van Nostrand, 1922. IV + 14 1 pp . In attempting a combined review of these three books, I do not wish to give the impression that each does not merit extensive consideration. However, there are necessarily many points of similarity, and by pointing these out and emphasizing the differences I may be able to give an idea of the character of each book. Eddingtons book is by far the most comprehensive and contains practically all of the mathematical treatment appearing in the other books, but the latter contain many helpful and stimulating observations and interpretations . Einstein recalls in his first lecture some of the more fundamental ideas and equations of pre-relativity physics, and converts them into tensor form. In the second lecture the equations for the same physical concepts as interpreted in special relativity are given tensor form. This should be particularly helpful to those, who, not being entirely familiar with mathematical processes, have tried to acquire a knowledge of tensor analysis from the general treatments, such as was given by Einst