2012/10/25 by Galina Weinstein, Weinstein, Galina · 1 voice
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algebraic and Geometric Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #physics.hist-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1210.6929
arxiv created 2012/10/25 · openalex publication_date 2012/10/25 · arxiv published 2012/10/25 · arxiv updated 2012/10/26 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This note is by no means a comprehensive study of Minkowski's space-time formalism of special relativity. The mathematician, Hermann Minkowski was Einstein's former mathematics professor at the Zürich Polytechnic. During his studies at the Polytechnic Einstein skipped Minkowski's classes. In 1904 Max Born arrived in the first time to Göttingen. Many years later Born wrote his recollections. In the summer of 1905, Minkowski and Hilbert led an advanced seminar on mathematical physics, on electrodynamical theory. Minkowski told Born later that it came to him as a great shock when Einstein published his paper in which the equivalence of the different local times of observers moving relative to each other was pronounced; for he had reached the same conclusions independently. He never made a priority claim and always gave Einstein his full share in the great discovery. In his famous talk, "Space and Time" Minkowski wrote that the credit of first recognizing sharply that t and t' are to be treated the same, is of A. Einstein.