This month marks the publication of volume 15 of “The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein” (Princeton University Press, in collaboration with the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). This volume, for which Diana Kormos Buchwald is the general editor, includes nearly 100 writings and over 1,300 letters written between June 1925 and May 1927, the period during which modern quantum theory was becoming established.
The volume is especially fascinating because it reveals Einstein’s central place in the creation of all modern physics. The emphasis is on “all,” meaning not only relativity theory – about which there is no dispute – but also quantum mechanics, too. Einstein’s correspondence and papers from this period shed new light on his contribution to this theory of light and matter as it is nowadays taught in universities and applied in all research and development institutions. And let’s not expand the debate on relativity theory – a theory of space, time and gravity that is used today as the primary tool for understanding viewsof the universe, from the stars to black holes, the expanding universe and the Big Bang.
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