The Net Advance of Physics:
History and Philosophy: Ebenezer Cunningham

• Interview, Cambridge, England, June 19, 1963 by John L. Heilbron [Niels Bohr Library]

• WORKS:
  • On the Electromagnetic Mass of a Moving Electron by Ebenezer Cunningham [Philosophical Magazine (Series 6) 14, 538 (1907)
  • The Principle of Relativity by Ebenezer Cunningham [Cambridge, 1914] An advanced text of remarkable sophistication, especially for one of the first book-length accounts of special relativity in English. Cunningham is both a scientific conservative and a defender of Einstein. He points out that not every form of æther is ruled out by relativity but only the "unnecessarily restricted rigid" one of the later Victorians; he makes an early attempt at relativistic thermodynamics; he discusses the vexing question of defining probability in Minkowski's spacetime.
  • Relativity and the Electron Theory by Ebenezer Cunningham [London: Longmans, Green, 1915] Following up on his Principle of Relativity, Cunningham continues his attempt to describe special relativity as a theory of æther.
  • Relativity, the Electron Theory, and Gravitation by Ebenezer Cunningham [London: Longmans, Green, 1921] Includes general relativity. Much closer to the usual Twentieth-Century account of relativity than Cunningham's earlier works.

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