Prof. Leo Corry (TAU, History of Science)

Date: Jun. 14, 2009

Title: Einstein, Hilbert and the Tortuous Way to General Relativity

Abstract: 

On November 25, 1915, Albert Einstein presented to the Berlin Academy
of Sciences the explicit, complete and correct, generally-covariant
field equations of gravitation, lying at the heart of his General
Theory of Relativity. This was the fourth consecutive week in which he
presented, at the weekly meetings of the Academy, what he believed to
be the culmination of many years of intense efforts to generalize his
principle of relativity so as to cover cases of relatively moving
reference systems more general than the inertial ones, and so as to
apply to gravitation. In the previous three opportunities he soon
realized that the version he had just presented was still in need of
further improvement. After his talk of November 25, Einstein was
euphoric about his achievement, which he was ever to consider the most
important one of his entire scientific career.

Five days earlier, on November 20, David Hilbert presented in
Gottingen his own version of the equations that, in the published
version that appeared in print several months later, contained the
correct and explicit equations of the theory. According to a view that
was commonly accepted for many years, Hilbert had anticipated Einstein
by five days in correctly formulating this important part of the
latter's work. Recent archival research, however, has shown that this
was not really the case, and the actual historical situation was much
more complex.

This talk addresses several historical questions related to this
important scientific milestone, and presents some of the answers that
recent research has brought to light.