The Net Advance of Physics RETRO:
Weblog
SPACE AND TIME:
An annotated, illustrated edition of Hermann Minkowski's revolutionary essay.


2013 March 10


EDITOR'S NOTE: This blog-entry is somewhat longer than originally envisioned, and is therefore being released in twelve(!) parts over the coming fortnight.

The reader who perseveres will have read one of the most influential papers in the history of physics. The accompanying notes and illustrations should, we hope, make this foundational document of special relativity understandable to anyone with high-school level mathematics. Universal intelligibility was a major goal of the early workers in relativity: Einstein famously not only wrote several popular accounts of his ideas, but even used one such popularisation to introduce a version of his unified field-theory. Minkowski's essay given here -- the work for which he is most remembered outside the world of pure mathematics -- was first given orally to an audience composed of scientists but not primarily of physicists. We hope that this republication of it continues the tradition of making important works of natural philosophy accessible to all.


SOURCES:


TIME AND SPACE, by Hermann Minkowski


THE NET ADVANCE OF PHYSICS --- Retro --- Weblog