Milestones of Science Books

PLANCK, Max.

Das Prinzip der Relativität und die Grundgleichungen der Mechanik. Offprint from: Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (K.Scheel, editor), 1906, vol. 8, no. 7, pp. 136-141.

Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1906.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. Item #004081

Braunschweig: F. Vieweg und Sohn, 1906. 8vo (230 x 156 mm). Original printed wrappers (wrappers slightly darkened at extremities). Text little age-toned, but a fine copy averall. ----

EXCEPTIONALLY RARE FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT ISSUE, of the first public defence of Einsteins theory of special relativity delivered by Max Planck on March 23, 1906. Shortly after Einstein's groundbreaking work in 1905, Planck defended the principle of relativity in his treatise and examined its effects on mechanics. He corrected the values for the longitudinal and transverse mass by correcting a small error in Einstein's 1905 formulation and ultimately concluded that objections to the principle of relativity were "insufficient to impede further investigation. The relativity principle appears to embody a physical idea of such 'simplicity and generality' that it deserves thorough examination: 'and there is no better way to do this than by examining the consequences it leads to'" (Giovanelli). Planck's enthusiasm was shared by his student Max von Laue, who wrote the first authoritative monograph on the theory of relativity in 1911 and helped collect contributions from a group of physicists, including Arnold Sommerfeld, Max Born, and Paul Ehrenfest, who laid the foundations for Einstein's later development of the general theory of relativity.
References: M. Giovanelli, The practice of principles: Planck's vision of a relativistic general dynamics. In: Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 78, pp. 305-360 (2024). - Visit our website to see more images!

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