In a world overabundant in information, a subject is defined by its iconography. Physics is the falling apple, the planetary atom, the laser, the mushroom cloud and the image of the later Einstein - images that represent, respectively, gravity, atomic theory, quantum theory, mass-energy and the scientist who had a hand in all four. It is therefore appropriate that World Year of Physics is called Einstein Year in the UK.
Of course one can argue that progress in science depends on the contributions of many people; that there are other geniuses in physics, even some colourful personalities. Nevertheless there are fundamental reasons why Einstein's early achievements stand out even in their company.
When at last the thought came to him that 'time itself was suspect', Einstein had found a new insight into the nature of the physical universe. It is this: that the universal properties of material objects tell us about the nature of space and time, and it is through these properties, not philosophical logic or common sense, that we discover the structure of spacetime. The later Einstein turned this successful formula on its head and sought to use the properties of spacetime to define those of material objects, thereby seeking to abolish matter entirely in favour of geometry.
Before I introduce this special feature of European Journal of Physics I will say a few words about what is not here. Like all great geniuses Einstein can be seen as the climax of what went before him and the initiation of what was to follow. Looking back we can see the influence of Mach's positivism, according to which the role of science is to relate observations to other observations; hence only observations can tell us what is 'real'. But Einstein also grew up with the family electromechanical businesses, which testifies to the reality of the Maxwellian electromagnetic fields: thus only theory can tell us what is real!
As is well known, Einstein himself refused to accept the full consequences of this pivotal insight into the role of theory when it came to quantum mechanics. Much has been written about this and we do not add to it in this collection. Quantum theory is a consistent description of nature whatever Einstein may think of 'god' for making it so. Many of us would side with Einstein in hoping it will yet turn out not to be a complete description. This will not happen, as Einstein hoped throughout his later work, from a return to classical field theory. But quantum behaviour is a universal property of matter and may therefore be expected, according to Einstein's way of thought, to have a geometrical origin. The advent of non-commutative quantum geometries may turn out to be a step in this direction.
My own introduction to Einstein's physics was through what has come to be known as Mach's principle. My research supervisor, Dennis Sciama, in what he always claimed was probably Einstein's last significant scientific conversation, talked with him on this subject, during which Einstein explained that he had abandoned the idea of Mach's principle. This principle had been a guiding thought in the development of general relativity, but superfluous to its final exposition. It can be interpreted variously as the determination of the local compass of inertia by the distant stars, the non-rotation of the Universe or, more restrictedly, as requiring a critical density universe (to generate the right amount of inertia). This last formulation amounts to Gρτ2 ≈ 1, where ρ is the density of the Universe at time τ. This appears to be a classical expression, which would probably be sufficient to relegate Mach's principle to mere historical interest along with the classical unified field theories. It is also usually considered to be accounted for by inflation, which drives the Universe to Ω=1. However, we can also think of the expression as saying that the Universe has a Planck mass in a Planck volume at the Planck time:
G=(hc / G)1/2(c3 / Gh)3/2(Gh / c5)=1.
This suggests that Mach's principle may yet have a surprising role in expressing the fact that the Universe contains sufficient matter to exist as a classical system: that is, that it contains sufficient material degrees of freedom to allow quantum decoherence to occur. It would at least be a nice irony if Mach's principle turned out to be a necessary quantum condition for the existence of a classical universe!
Coming now to the papers in this special feature, these include several that treat historical aspects of relativity. Brown offers us a novel insight into Einstein's ambivalence about the status of special relativity in providing a mechanism for the contraction hypothesis. Trainer looks at the way in which Einstein presented a brief account of relativity in a lecture that he gave in Glasgow in 1933. Galvangno and Giribet look at Einstein's approach to the representation of particles within general relativity, or variants thereof, while Battimelli provides an account of attempts at unification of electromagnetism and relativity from the point of view of the origin of mass.
In their contribution, Guerra and de Abreu look again at the relationship between the constancy of the speed of light and the nature of time that was central to Einstein's thinking.
Next we come to a group of papers that look at educational issues. Einstein's equation E = mc2 is now iconic even if general knowledge quizzes that ask what the c stands for miss the entire point of the equation! Thomas starts from the way in which perceptions of relativity still focus on this equation as the essential ingredient of nuclear power and the need to disabuse even students of physics of this notion. He also looks at how we can in fact demonstrate the significance of the equation to a lay audience. I have added a short note on friction, another topic that confuses teachers and students alike, that throws up problems to which the solutions are contained in Einstein's Brownian motion paper. The Open University in the UK has been teaching relativity to distance-learners for forty years; Lambourne writes about the experience that has been gained.
Finally, I have always been intrigued by the opprobrium that Einstein seems to attract from crank authors. I no longer regularly receive such nonsense to referee, I assume because the internet is now awash with 'publication' opportunities for anti-Einstein articles. I do believe however that the work of these authors throws light on the way science works and I have tried to illustrate this thesis briefly in the final paper of this collection.
