Origin of Relativity

HPS 0410
Einstein for Everyone

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Einstein's Pathway to General Relativity

John D. Norton
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh
The Starting Point
Adjusting Newton's Theory of Gravitation
"The Happiest Thought of My Life"
The Principle of Equivalence
Relativity of Inertia ("Mach's Principle")
Learning About Gravitation
Gravitational Slowing of Clocks
Gravitational Bending of Light
The Rotating Disk
Assembling the Pieces
What You Should Know
We have followed a simple pathway to the main ideas of the

general theory of relativity. We started with the geometrical notion
of the curvature of space and saw how that geometrical notion
can be extended from space to spacetime. We then found the
resulting theory of curved spacetime not just to cover a curved
geometry of space, but gravitational phenomena as well.
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This pathway to the theory was not Einstein's. His was more
indirect, more inspired, more tortured and more fallible. The final
theory emerged after Einstein struggled for seven years with
many things: strong hunches about what the theory should say
physically, vivid thought experiments to support the hunches,
lengthy explorations into new mathematics, errors and confusions
that thoroughly derailed him and a final insight that rescued him
from exhaustion and desperation.
The seven years of work divides loosely into two phases. The
earlier phase of his work was governed by powerful physical
intuitions that seemed as much rationally as instinctively based. He
felt a compelling need to generalize the principle of relativity from
inertial motion to accelerated motion. He was transfixed by the
ability of acceleration to mimic gravity and by the idea that inertia is
a gravitational effect. As Einstein struggled to incorporate these
ideas into a new physical theory, he was drawn to use the
mathematics of curvature as a means of formulating the new
theory.
As the mathematics of curvature took a more controlling position
in the later phase, his work began to change. The theorizing
was governed increasingly by notions a mathematical simplicity
and naturalness. When the theory was completed, Einstein's
starting point was quite distant. It remains a matter of controversy
today whether Einstein succeeded in realizing his original
ambitions.
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It is impractical in this chapter to review all these considerations.

Einstein's intricate mathematical struggles in the later years cannot
easily be described in informal terms. However some of his earlier
physical reflections are so famous and so characteristic of
Einstein, that they must be mentioned. You should treat these as
interesting reports on Einstein's intellectual biography. You may
well find it hard to connect some of the ideas to be laid out with
the final theory.
The Starting Point

Einstein's first concrete steps on his pathway to general relativity
came in 1907 when he was commissioned by Johannes Stark to
write a review article on relativity theory for Stark's journal
Jahrbuch der Radioaktivitaet und Electronik. The exercise was,
apparently, quite straightforward. In his 1905 theory, Einstein had
offered a new account of space and time. Since the theories of
physics were all set in space and time, physicists needed to be
assured that these theories could be maintained; or, if not, shown
how they should be adjusted to fit with Einstein's new theory.
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The exercise proceeded well. Electrodynamics actually needed

no adjustment. Einstein's 1905 theory of relativity had been
created to fit with the existing theory. The mechanics of bodies
required adjustments to the notions of energy, momentum and
mass. The most prominent of these was the famous equivalence
E=mc2. Einstein also sketched a relativistic treatment of
thermodynamics, the theory of heat and work.
Then came gravity. Newton's celebrated theory of gravitation
presumed instantaneous action at a distance. The sun now exerts
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a gravitational force on the earth now with a magnitude set by

Newton's inverse square law. The key part was the "now." If the
sun were to move slightly, the resulting alteration in the force it
exerts on the earth would be felt by us instantaneously according
to Newtonian theory.
That means that Newton's theory depends upon a notion of

absolute simultaneity. A change there is felt here at the same
moment. However Einstein's 1905 theory had banished absolute
simultaneity from physics. Different observers would judge
different pairs of events to be simultaneous. Newton's theory had
to be adjusted to accommodate this new relativity.
Adjusting Newton's Theory of

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Gravitation
The change needed was, apparently, straightforward. In the
revised theory, a change in the sun should not be felt here on
earth instantly, but only after a time lag of around 8 1/3 minutes,
the approximate time light takes to propagate from the sun to the
earth. Then absolute simultaneity would no longer be needed in
the theory.
This meant that Newton's theory needed to be adjusted to look
more like electrodynamics. In the latter theory, effects do not
propagate instantly in the electromagnetic field; they propagate in
waves at the speed of light. There were many ways to make the
adjustments Newton's theory needed. All of them produced very
small changes in the predictions of the theory. While one might
not be sure precisely which of the many adjustments was the right
one to pick, there didn't seem to be any major problem. Rather the
issue was a surfeit of good solutions. Or so believed other
leading thinkers of Einstein's time, such as the great French
mathematician, Henri Poincar, and the inventor of spacetime,
Hermann Minkowski.
Einstein, however, did not see it that way. He examined gravitation
theories, modified to allow for a finite time of propagation of
effects, and found a result that aroused great suspicions in him.
In the modified theories, the distance fallen by a body varies
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according to its sideways motion. In the simplest case, the body

would fall a shorter distance if it has some sideways velocity.
The differences in the distances fallen were very small and not
likely to be detectable in an experiment. Nonetheless they
bothered Einstein. They contradicted the exact correctness of
Galileo's old observation that all bodies fall alike, even though the
differences were far too small to be detectable by the methods
available to Galileo.
Other physicists of the time were aware of this effect, but
discounted it as too small to be of any concern. Einstein did not. It
meant that the way a body fell would depend on the energy of the
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body. We can only guess now why that bothered Einstein so

much. It might be that Einstein imagined that a hot body,
consisting of many small atoms in thermal motion, might fall
differently from a cold one according to these theories.
Einstein was still a clerk in the Bern patent office in 1907. Yet he
came to the extraordinary conclusion that an adequate theory of
gravitation could not be devised within the confines of his
existing theory of relativity.
"The Happiest Thought of My

Life"
It was while pondering this problem that Einstein hit upon what he
later described as "the happiest thought of my life." If began when
he suddenly saw new significance in a commonplace of
Newtonian gravity. A body in free fall in Newtonian gravity does
not feel its own weight. This effect is very familiar to us now.
We have all watched space-walkers floating weightlessly outside
their capsules. They are in free fall above the earth, orbiting with
their space stations and that free fall cancels their weight.
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This effect came about from an apparently accidental agreement of two quantities
in Newtonian theory: the inertial mass of a body happens to equal its gravitational
mass exactly. Einstein now believed that this equality could be no accident. He
needed to find a gravitation theory in which this equality is a necessity.
The inertial mass of

a body measures its
resistance to
acceleration when a
force is applied to it.
The gravitation mass
of body measures
how it responds to a
gravitational field.
For more, see this.
The immediate outcome of this reflection was Einstein's

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"principle of equivalence." It formed the basis of the concluding

Part V of his 1907 Jahrbuch article. There he suggested that
gravitation required an extension of special relativity based on the
principle of equivalence.
The Principle of Equivalence

There are very many formulations of the principle of
equivalence in the literature. Most of them pick up directly on the
idea of weightlessness in free fall. They assert that free fall
transforms away a gravitational field in some tiny volume of space.
While this is a common formulation of the principle in text books, it
is troubled. Free fall transforms away gross effects of gravitation.
But, in Einstein's final theory, it does not transform away the
effects of spacetime curvature. In that sense, free fall does not
transform away gravity in the final theory.
Einstein later complained about this version of the principle,
objecting that one could not in general transform away an arbitrary
gravitational field over an extended region of space. His original
formulation and the one to which he adhered for his entire life
proceeded differently. He turned around the original idea of
free fall eradicating gravitation. Acceleration can also produce a
For more, see John D. Norton,"What was

Einstein's Principle of Equivalence?" Studies
in History and Philosophy of Science, 16
(1985) , pp. 203-246; reprinted in D. Howard
and J. Stachel (eds.), Einstein and the History
of General Relativity: Einstein Studies Vol. I,
Boston: Birkhauser, 1989, pp.5-47.
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More specifically, Einstein took the case of special relativity
without gravitation. He now imagined a uniformly accelerated
observer, in relation to whom all free objects would accelerate.
That state of space found by the observer, Einstein asserted in his
principle of equivalence, is a homogeneous gravitational field.
In this case, uniform acceleration and homogeneous gravitation
are equivalent.
Einstein developed the idea in one of his best known thought
experiments. He asked us to imagine a physicist who awakens in
a box. Unknown to the physicist, the box is in a distant part of the
space of special relativity and is being accelerated uniformly in
one direction by the tug some agent. If the physicist were to
release objects in the box, they would be left behind by the
accelerating box; they would move inertially, while the box
accelerated. This figure shows this for two bodies of different
mass at rest and a third body that has a horizontal inertial motion.
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The physicist inside the box would find that the released masses
to accelerate in a direction opposite to the box's acceleration. The
physicist would judge there to be a field inside the box pulling on
all free bodies.
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Now comes the key point. All bodies released by the physicist
would fall exactly alike, no matter what their mass or composition.
So the field found by the physicist inside the box would manifest
the signature property of a gravitational field: it would accelerate
all bodies exactly alike.
One might be tempted to say that the field inside the box is just an
"inertial field," some sort of fake gravitational field. Einstein's
assertion was otherwise. The field created by motion in the box
just is a full-blown, authentic homogeneous gravitational field.
Principle of Equivalence
The inertial effects inside a uniformly accelerated box in
gravitation free space are equivalent to those of a
homogeneous gravitational field; more tersely, uniform
acceleration creates a homogeneous gravitational field.
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The equivalence just asserted may seem benign. It seems just to

codify an equivalence in the way bodies fall in two cases. In fact
the assertion is strong, for it asserts that the equivalence applies
to all processes, not just fall the bodies. That means that it
applies also to all processes involving fields, such as electric and
magnetic fields.
You will see why Einstein found this principle attractive. His
efforts to produce a relativistic theory of gravity had failed since he
could find no theory in which all bodies fell alike, no matter what
their mass or composition. The gravitational field delivered by the
principle of equivalence was assured to have this property. In
particular, the sideways motion of a body would have no effect on
its rate of fall. The field generated in this thought experiment did
not have the defect of the earlier theories.
Relativity of Inertia ("Mach's

Principle")
What also attracted Einstein in this analysis was that it promised to
remedy a defect he perceived in both Newton's physics and in
special relativity. In both, you will recall, it is just a brute fact that
certain motions are distinguished as inertial. This, in Einstein's
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view, was worrisome. It was no better than the original idea that
there is an ether state of absolute rest. There seemed to Einstein
no good reason for why one state should be the absolute rest
state rather than another. Correspondingly, Einstein saw no good
reason for why some motions should be singled out as inertial and
others as accelerating.
In 1916, Einstein formulated this worry in a thought experiment.
He imagined two fluid bodies in a distant part of space. These
bodies, the reader quickly infers, are like stars or planets, which
form roughly spherical shapes under their own gravity. Einstein
further imagines that there is relative rotation between the two
bodies about the axis that joins them. This relative rotation is
verifiable by observers on each body, who can trace out the
motion of the other body. Each would judge the other to be
rotating.
It can happen in ordinary Newtonian physics that one of these

bodies is not rotating with respect to an inertial frame and the other
one is. In that case, the second rotating body will bulge. This
effect arises on the earth. It rotates about the axis of its north and
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south poles. It bulges slightly at the equator as a result of

centrifugal forces that seek to fling the matter of earth away from
this axis.
It would be entirely unacceptable, Einstein now asserted, were this
to happen to two spheres in an otherwise empty space. For there
is no difference in the observable relations between the two
spheres. Each rotates with respect to the other. So why should
just one bulge? The supposition of Newton's absolute space or of
inertial systems, Einstein protested, was an inadequate
explanation. Einstein demanded something observable to make
the difference.
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Einstein was an avid reader of the

physicist-philosopher Ernst Mach.
In Mach's writings, Einstein had
found what seemed to be a
solution to the problem. Mach
seemed to be proposing, Einstein
thought, that the privileging of
certain states of motion is due to
the distribution of matter in the
universe. Why is our frame of
reference inertial? It is because
the stars are at rest in our frame.
Why is my wording so careful

here? it is not clear that what
Einstein reported Mach as
saying is what Mach actually
said. For more, see John D.
Norton, "Mach's Principle
before Einstein." in J. Barbour
and H. Pfister, eds., Mach's
Principle: From Newton's
Bucket to Quantum Gravity:
Einstein Studies, Vol. 6.
Boston: Birkhuser, 1995,
pp.9-57. Download.
When we try to accelerate, we feel inertial forces. These are the

forces that make us dizzy when we spin in a fun fair; or they are
the forces that throw our coffee in the air when our airplane hits an
air pocket.
These forces, Einstein understood Mach to assert, arise from an
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interaction between the mass of our body (and our coffee) and all
the other masses of the universe, distributed in the stars. Einstein
first called this idea the "relativity of inertia" and later, in 1918,
"Mach's Principle."
In the case of Einstein's two fluid spheres, the bulge of one of
them would now be explained by the fact that this bulging sphere
was rotating with respect to all the other masses of the universe,
whereas the other sphere was not. That would be the observable
difference between the two fluid bodies.
This analysis was clearly inspired by Mach's famous account of

Newton's bucket experiment. Newton had noted that water in a
spinning bucket adopts a concave surface, as a result, Newton
urged, of its rotation with respect to absolute space. No, Mach had
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responded several hundred years later, all one has in the case of
Newton's bucket in rotation with respect to the stars. We cannot
know more than what our direct observations tell us. All they tell us
is that these inertial forces arise when we accelerate relative to the
stars.
The weakness of this analysis is that there is no account of how
rotation with respect to distant masses could produce these
inertial forces. In 1907, Einstein hoped that his emerging theory
of gravity would provide the mechanism. It could then satisfy
Mach's Principle and, through it, generalize the principle of
relativity to acceleration. For in a theory that satisfies Mach's
Principle, no state of motion is intrinsically inertial or accelerating.
When we see something accelerating, it is not accelerating
absolutely in such a theory; it is merely accelerating with respect to
the stars. Preferred inertial motions need not enter into the
account any more. All motion, accelerated or inertial, would be
relative.
To deliver this sort of account of inertial forces, Einstein's theory
would need to break down the strict division between inertial and
accelerated motion of his special theory of relativity. The
principle of equivalence promised to weaken this division.
According to it, whether the physicist in the box was to be judged
accelerating or not depended on your point of view. An inertial
observer would judge the physicist to be accelerating uniformly in
a gravitation free space. The physicist would judge him or herself
to be unaccelerated in a gravitational field. It was a first step
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towards generalizing the principle of relativity to acceleration,

Einstein believed.
Learning About Gravitation

By his own later judgment, Einstein did not, in the end, find a
theory that fully satisfied Mach's Principle. The immediate benefit
of his new principle of equivalence, however, was that it let
Einstein learn a lot about gravitation. For the principle delivered to
Einstein one special case of a gravitational field that, he believed,
conformed with relativity theory and in which all bodies truly fell
alike. Einstein's program of research on gravity in the five years
following 1907 was simply to examine the properties of this one
special case and to try to generalize them to recover a full theory.
His early hope was that the generalization of the principle of
relativity would somehow emerge in the course of those
investigations.
Gravitational Slowing of Clocks

Two properties of this special case of the gravitational field were
noteworthy. First, Einstein recognized that clocks run at different
rates in the box of his thought experiment according to their
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location. A clock placed lower in the created field runs slower.
Einstein immediately generalized that effect to all gravitational

fields. Clocks deeper in a gravitational field run slower. A clock in
the sun would run slower than one on earth--if only we could have
a clock in the sun without it being destroyed by the heat of the sun.
It turns out we can find clocks in the sun. Radiating atoms radiate
in very definite frequencies of light according to which element
they are. That means that they behave like little clocks. Their
running slower is manifested in a slight reddening of the light they
emit. Einstein computed an effect on the wavelength of sunlight of
one part in two million.
While Einstein did not use spacetime diagrams in 1907, they
provide an easy way to see that clocks run at different rates
according to their position when they accelerate in a Minkowski
spacetime. The effect is driven almost entirely by the relativity of
simultaneity.
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The spacetime diagram shows two clocks

A and B accelerating together towards the
right in a Minkowski spacetime. The
numbers show the proper time elapsed
along each clock's worldline and thus the
time each clock reads. The hypersurfaces
of simultaneity are those of the inertial
observer on the left of the figure.
According to that inertial observer, the two
clocks run at the same speed, at least for
the initial portion of their acceleration.
Why don't the two clocks run at exactly the same speed? This is an artifact of
how uniform acceleration arises in a Minkowski spacetime. Observers on the
clocks judge the distance between them to stay the same. Therefore an inertial
observer will judge this distance to contract. As a result, the inertial observer
will judge the two clocks to accelerate at slightly different rates; the
difference will be just enough to give the length contraction effect. This means
that, in the same time, the A clock will achieve a greater speed than the B
clock, according to the inertial observer's judgments of simultaneity. Hence the
inertial observer will judge the A clock's reading to start to lag slightly behind
that of the B clock. This effect is shown in the figure, which has been drawn
carefully to scale.
If you really have to see more details, see uniform acceleration in a Minkowski
spacetime.
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Now consider an observer who accelerates with the rightmost "B"

clock, that is, the clock higher up in the created field. As the clock
changes speed, that observer's hypersurfaces of simultaneity
will tilt so that the B observer will judge the A clock to be lagging
successively more behind. When B's clock reads 2, B will judge
the A clock to read 1; when B's clock reads 4, B will judge the A
clock to read 2. Overall, B will judge A's clock to be running at half
the B clock's speed. The effect, the figure shows, is entirely due
to the relativity of simultaneity.
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The geometry of uniform acceleration in a Minkowski spacetime

turns out to be especially simple. The hypersurfaces of
simultaneity of an observer accelerating with the B clock turn out to
coincide with the hypersurfaces of simultaneity of an observer
accelerating with the A clock. Hence the observer moving with
clock A will agree that the A clock is running slower and the B
clock faster. When the A observer's clock reads 1, A will judge B's
clock to read 2. When the A observer's clock reads 2, A will judge
B's clock to read 4.
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Gravitational Bending of Light

The second important effect pertained to light. An unaccelerated
observer finds that light propagates in a straight line in Minkowski
spacetime. Here, for example, is such a light flash propagating
across the box of Einstein's thought experiment.
For the physicist accelerating with the box, however, the light will
be judged to fall, just like everything else in the box. As a result,
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the physicist will find the light's path to be bent downward by the
Einstein generalized this result to arbitrary gravitational fields. This

generalization enabled him to make one of the most celebrated
predictions of his theory. A ray of starlight grazing the sun
would be bent as the light fell into the sun's gravitational field. This
bending would be manifested as a displacement of the star's
apparent position in the sky and this displacement would be
visible at the time of solar eclipse.
In 1907, Einstein had predicted the gravitational bending of light.
But he did not realize that it might actually be tested at the time of
a solar eclipse. After his 1907 Jahrbuch article, Einstein's efforts
were redirected towards the puzzle of the quantum. In 1911,
however, he returned to theorize about gravity. He realized then
that his prediction of the gravitational bending of light could be
tested at a solar eclipse. He wrote another paper developing
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this idea and also other aspects of his theory.

Einstein was keen to see this test undertaken. The greatest
difficulty was that it required a solar eclipse and that meant that
astronomers must place themselves precisely in its path. In 1913,
Einstein wrote to the American astronomer G. E. Hale asking
whether the test could be undertaken without an eclipse.
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Hale responded that it could not. The brightness of the sky near an
uneclipsed sun is just too great.
In August 1914, there was a promising eclipse of the sun that
would be visible from the Crimea. Einstein's colleague, the
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astronomer Erwin Freundlich, mounted an expedition to the

Crimea to observe and photograph the eclipse.
Unfortunately for Freundlich, the First World War broke out.

Since he was German, the Russians interned him and confiscated
his equipment.
Fortunately for Einstein, no measurement was taken. Einstein's

theory of 1914 was not yet the complete general theory of
relativity. In his earlier theory, there was no curvature of ordinary
space in the vicinity of the sun. As a result, as we saw in another
chapter, his theory predicted the same deflection as Newtonian
gravitation theory (assuming light consists of massive corpuscles).
It was half the deflection predicted by the final theory. Had the test
been carried out successfully, it would have produced a result that
contradicted Einstein's earlier theory.
Gravitational Slowing of Light

In 1907, Einstein had also concluded that the speed of light, and
not just its direction, would be affected by the gravitational field.
The effect was closely connected with the gravitational slowing of
clocks and is almost entirely a consequence of the relativity of
simultaneity. One can see how it comes about with a similar set of
spacetime diagrams. The clocks A, A', B and B' all accelerate
uniformly in a Minkowski spacetime and in a way that ensures that
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the distance from A to A' remains the same as from B to B'. A light
signal propagates from A to A' and a second light signal
propagates from B to B'.
The figure shows the hypersurfaces of simultaneity of an inertial
observer. Of course the inertial observer will judge the two light
signals to propagate at the same speed. That is just familiar
special relativity.
We notice also that, initially, the four clocks A, A', B, B' run in
synchrony according to the judgments of simultaneity of the
inertial observer. Hence using the readings of these clocks
directly, we will infer that the two light signals propagate at the
same speed. In more detail, we note that the distance from A to A'
equals the distance from B to B'; and each light signal takes the
same time to traverse the distance. Both light signals leave when
the local clocks read 0 and arrive when the local clocks read 3.
Hence using these local clock readings, we infer that the two
light signals travel at the same speed.
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Now consider how these processes are judged by an observer

who accelerates with the clocks. All that changes in the analysis
that follows is that we use different judgments of simultaneity.
That leads to the judgment of differing speeds for the propagation
of light.
Let us take the observer who accelerates with clock B. That
observer's hypersurfaces of simultaneity will tilt more and more as
clock B gains speed from the acceleration. This was the effect
that led observer B to judge that the A clock was running slower
than the B clock. This same tilting will lead observer B to judge
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than the B clock. This same tilting will lead observer B to judge
that the AA' light signal propagates at roughly half the speed of
the BB' light signal. Both signals traverse the same distance.
However the the AA' signal leaves A when the B clock reads 0 and
arrives at A' then the B clock reads 4. The BB' signal leaves B
when the B clock reads 0 and arrives at B' when the B clock reads
a little over 2.
Recall that the judgments of simultaneity of accelerating

observers who move with the clocks agree, since they agree on
the hypersurfaces of simultaneity. So we can choose any one of
the accelerating observers and get the same outcome. Each of
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the accelerating observers will judge the transit time for BB' to be
roughly half that of AA'. They will agree that light propagates
slower on the left side of the figure, that is, deeper in the created
field.
Applying the principle of equivalence, we now conclude that the
same slowing manifests in a gravitational field. A light signal
deeper in the gravitational field at A propagates slower than a light
signal higher in the gravitational field at B.
The conclusion that gravity slows the speed of light caused
Einstein some trouble with unkind contemporary critics.
Einstein had first based his theory of 1905 of the striking idea of
the constancy of the speed of light, but he now seemed to be
retracting it.
By 1912, Einstein had developed all these ideas into a fairly
complete theory of static gravitational fields, that is gravitational
fields that do not vary with time and admit well defined spaces.
The most striking characteristic of the theory was that the
intensity of the gravitation field, the gravitational potential, was
given by the speed of light. So as one moved to different parts of
space, the intensity of the gravitational field would vary in concert
with the changes in the speed of light. As late as 1912, some five
years after Minkowski's work, Einstein was loath to use spacetime
methods. While I have developed the clock slowing and light
slowing effects using spacetime diagrams, Einstein did not do
this. His method of analysis was algebraic. He represented the
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processes by equations in which speeds and times appeared as

variables. He rarely if ever drew diagrams such as given above.
What Einstein now needed was a way to extend these results to
the more general case of gravitational fields that vary with time.
That, it turned out, required Einstein to move well beyond the
mathematics he knew. Another thought experiment pointed the
way.
The Rotating Disk

If one has a circular disk at rest in some inertial reference system
in special relativity, the geometry of its surface is Euclidean. It will
be useful to spell out what that means in terms of the outcomes of
measuring operations. If the disk is ten feet in diameter, then it
means that we can lay 10 foot long rulers across a diameter.
Euclidean geometry tells us that the circumference is x 10 feet,
which is about 31 feet. That means that we can traverse the full
circumference of the disk by laying 31 rulers around the outer
rim of the disk.
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What if we have a disk of the same diameter

of 10 feet but in rapid uniform rotation with
respect to the first disk? Things will go rather
differently. Assume that this rotating disk is
covered with foot long rulers that move with it.
These rulers are just like the ones that were
used to survey the non-rotating disk. (That
means that an observer moving with the rod on
the rotating disk would find it to be identical to
one of the rulers used to survey the non-rotating
disk.) What will be the outcome of surveying the
geometry of this rotating disk with those rods?
Note what was not said in this account. It did not say that we take
the first disk and set it into rotation. The reason is that it is impossible
in relativity theory to take a disk made out of stiff material and set it
into rotation. If one were to try to do this, the disk would contract in the
circumferential direction but not in the radial direction. As a result, a
disk made of stiff material would break apart. If we want a rotating disk
made of stiff material, we need to create it already rotating. Once in a
letter on the subject, Einstein remarked that a way to get a disk of stiff
material into rotation is first to melt it, set the molten material into
rotation and then allow it harden. The rotating disk problem has
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An observer who is not rotating with the disk

would judge all these rulers to have shrunk in the
direction of their motion. That means that,
according to this new observer, the surveying of
the disk would proceed differently. Ten rulers
would still be needed to span the diameter of the
disk. Since the motion of the disk is
perpendicular to the rulers laid out along a
diameter, the length of these rulers would be
unaffected by the rotation. That is not so for the
rulers laid along the circumference. They lie in
the direction of rapid motion. As a result, they
shorten. More rulers are needed to cover the
full circumference of the disk.
rotation and then allow it harden. The rotating disk problem has
created a rather large and fruitless literature that suggests some sort
of paradox is at hand. Most of it derives from a failure to recognize that
a stiff disk cannot be set into uniform rotation without destroying it.
Another little trap to avoid: While we have used the judgments of an
observer not on the disk to infer the outcome of the surveying
operations on the disk, the outcomes of those operations are
independent of the observer's state of motion. Either a diameter can be
covered with ten rods or it cannot; either the circumference can be
spanned by 31 rulers or it cannot. Once one observer has found which
is the case, we know the result for all observers.
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Thus we measure the circumference of the rotating disk to be

greater than 31 feet, the Euclidean value. In other words, we find
that the geometry of the disk is not Euclidean. The circumference
of the disk is more than the Euclidean value of times its
diameter.
The significance of this thought experiment was great for
Einstein. Through his principle of equivalence, Einstein had found
that linear acceleration produces a gravitational field. Now he
found that another sort of acceleration, rotation, produces
geometry that is not Euclidean.
Assembling the Pieces

Einstein had all this in place by the summer of 1912. He knew
that gravitation could bend light and slow clocks. He expected that
the final theory would somehow involve accelerations in a new way
and that such accelerations came with a breakdown of Euclidean
geometry. He also knew that the natural arena in which to conduct
relativity theory is Minkowski's spacetime.
To us, the
final
step
does
not
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seem
like
such a great
leap.
Assemble the
pieces
and
infer
that
gravitation is a
curvature of
spacetime! All
that is needed
is
nice
mathematical
clothing
to
dress
this
idea.
For Einstein in
1912 it was
far from easy.
He
first
needed
the
assistance of
his
mathematician
friend Marcel
Grossmann to
find his way in
the new and
Marcel Grossmann
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difficult
mathematics
the
theory
required.
Then Einstein took a series of wrong turnings and ended up with
the wrong gravitational field equations--not the celebrated Einstein
equations that appear in all the modern textbooks. It required three
years of painful work first to recognize that something had gone
wrong and then to find the final equations.
The precise causes underpinning these wrong turning remain a
point of debate in the history of general relativity literature. Two
elements, however, played a role in misleading Einstein.
First, in 1912 and 1913, Einstein had recognized the need to
employ a geometry of variable curvature in spacetime in his theory
of gravity. However he was convinced that this curvature would not
be manifested in the space-space slices of spacetime in certain
simple cases. These were the cases of a static gravitational field
and also a very weak gravitational field. Both of these are realized
in the gravitational field of the sun. Einstein expected space
around the sun to exactly Euclidean. Alas, as we have seen,
Einstein's final theory required curvature in the space-space slices
even in this simple case. That meant that Einstein could not
accept the equations of the final theory for they would entail a
curvature of space when Einstein believed there was none.
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Second, Einstein used a different style of theorizing to the one

largely used in these chapters. Here, we have used a geometrical
approach, emphasizing the picturing of gravitational effects in
geometric diagrams. Einstein, however, labeled events in
spacetime with arbitrarily coordinate numbers and expressed all
his results in terms of equations relating these coordinates.
Einstein knew that this labeling of spacetime events with
coordinates was purely arbitrary and that all his results had to be
independent of the particular coordinate system used.
However knowing this in the abstract and carrying through the
demand in all details are two different things. By his own later
admission, Einstein found it hard to purge his coordinate systems
of independent reality.
One the low points in his struggle with coordinate systems came
when Einstein used an ingenious argument--the "hole
argument"--to show that gravitational field equations like the ones
of his final theory are inadmissible on physical grounds. While the
hole argument did not warrant that conclusion, it has been
rehabilitated in recent work in philosophy of space of time, where it
now lives a good life. (See, "The Hole Argument." Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.)
For a glimpse into Einstein's private notebook to see his

calculations during the decisive phase of the discovery of general
relativity, see "A Peek into Einstein's Zurich Notebook." on my
Goodies page. Here's one page on which Einstein writes down
the Riemann curvature tensor for the first time and finds it hard to
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see how it can be used in his gravitational field equations.
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What made the last phase of this three years especially urgent
was the fact that David Hilbert, the greatest mathematician of the
era, had also become interested in the theory and had started to
formulate the gravitational field equations in a mathematically more
elegant formulation.
In November 1915, Einstein published his final version of the
theory, complete with the gravitational field equations so
distinctive of his theory. Here are those equations as he wrote
them at that time, in a 1916 review article:
Here he writes them later in the simple case of a matter free spacetime:
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What You Should Know

What first led Einstein to work on what became his general theory of relativity.
The principle of equivalence
How Einstein used it to infer the properties of gravitational fields.
The relativity of inertia.
Einstein's transition to the mathematics of spacetime curvature.
Copy right John D. Norton. February 2001; January 2, 2007, February 15, August 23, October 16, 27, 2008; February 5, 19, 2010. Minor edits February 26, 2013. December 29, 2015.
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Origin of Relativity

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Einstein for Everyone

Einstein's Pathway to General Relativity

We have followed a simple pathway to the main ideas of the

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It is impractical in this chapter to review all these considerations.

The Starting Point

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The exercise proceeded well. Electrodynamics actually needed

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a gravitational force on the earth now with a magnitude set by

That means that Newton's theory depends upon a notion of

Adjusting Newton's Theory of

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according to its sideways motion. In the simplest case, the body

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body. We can only guess now why that bothered Einstein so

"The Happiest Thought of My

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The inertial mass of

The immediate outcome of this reflection was Einstein's

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"principle of equivalence." It formed the basis of the concluding

The Principle of Equivalence

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For more, see John D. Norton,"What was

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The equivalence just asserted may seem benign. It seems just to

Relativity of Inertia ("Mach's

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It can happen in ordinary Newtonian physics that one of these

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south poles. It bulges slightly at the equator as a result of

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Einstein was an avid reader of the

Why is my wording so careful

When we try to accelerate, we feel inertial forces. These are the

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This analysis was clearly inspired by Mach's famous account of

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towards generalizing the principle of relativity to acceleration,

Learning About Gravitation

Gravitational Slowing of Clocks

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location. A clock placed lower in the created field runs slower.

Einstein immediately generalized that effect to all gravitational

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The spacetime diagram shows two clocks

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Now consider an observer who accelerates with the rightmost "B"

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The geometry of uniform acceleration in a Minkowski spacetime