Relativity The Special and the General Theory

When Relativity was published in German in 1916, Albert Einstein's name was scarcely known outside the physics institutes. With the general theory of relativity Einstein provided the physics community a brand-new theory of gravity, a new understanding of the properties of velocity and light, and promised a new perspective on the cosmos as a whole. At the time, World War I was raging and English-speaking countries scorned all things German, so it wasn't until British astronomers observed several stars shifting in the sky that Einstein's theory was proven to the greater public, leading even more readers to this accessible overview of his groundbreaking theory of light, space, and time. Book jacket.

Albert Einstein (1879-û1955), one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, was born in Ulm, Germany, to German-Jewish parents. He published his first great theories in Switzerland in the early 1900s while working as a patent clerk.

Nigel Calder, educated as a physicist at Cambridge University, began his full-time writing career on the original staff of New Scientist magazine. His most recent book is the bestselling Einstein-'s Universe.