Genesis of general relativity — A concise exposition

Abstract

This short exposition starts with a brief discussion of situation before the completion of special relativity (Le Verrier’s discovery of the Mercury perihelion advance anomaly, Michelson–Morley experiment, Eötvös experiment, Newcomb’s improved observation of Mercury perihelion advance, the proposals of various new gravity theories and the development of tensor analysis and differential geometry) and accounts for the main conceptual developments leading to the completion of the general relativity (CGR): gravity has finite velocity of propagation; energy also gravitates; Einstein proposed his equivalence principle and deduced the gravitational redshift; Minkowski formulated the special relativity in four-dimentional spacetime and derived the four-dimensional electromagnetic stress–energy tensor; Einstein derived the gravitational deflection from his equivalence principle; Laue extended Minkowski’s method of constructing electromagnetic stress-energy tensor to stressed bodies, dust and relativistic fluids; Abraham, Einstein, and Nordström proposed their versions of scalar theories of gravity in 1911–13; Einstein and Grossmann first used metric as the basic gravitational entity and proposed a “tensor” theory of gravity (the “Entwurf” theory, 1913); Einstein proposed a theory of gravity with Ricci tensor proportional to stress–energy tensor (1915); Einstein, based on 1913 Besso–Einstein collaboration, correctly derived the relativistic perihelion advance formula of his new theory which agreed with observation (1915); Hilbert discovered the Lagrangian for electromagnetic stress–energy tensor and the Lagrangian for the gravitational field (1915), and stated the Hilbert variational principle; Einstein equation of GR was proposed (1915); Einstein published his foundation paper (1916). Subsequent developments and applications in the next two years included Schwarzschild solution (1916), gravitational waves and the quadrupole formula of gravitational radiation (1916, 1918), cosmology and the proposal of cosmological constant (1917), de Sitter solution (1917), Lense–Thirring effect (1918).