|HPS 0410||Einstein for Everyone| Back to main course page John
D. Norton Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh Background reading: J. Schwartz and M.
McGuinness, Einstein for Beginners. New York: Pantheon.. pp. 1 -
82. We have now reviewed the developments in the physics of
moving bodies, of light, of electricity and magnetism that
brought the physics that Einstein found when he began to think
about ether, electricity, magnetism and motion. It was pondering
these developments that led Einstein to discover the special
theory of relativity in 1905. The discovery was not momentary.
The theory was the outcome of, in Einstein's own reckoning,
seven and more years of work. He even places one of his early
landmarks in a thought experiment he had at the age of 16, in
1896, nine years before the year of miracles of 1905.
Unfortunately we have only fragmentary sources to document the
years of this struggle. Below I identify a few of the major
ones. The story of Einstein's discovery o