Centennial books illuminate Einstein’s greatest triumph
Scholars mark general relativity anniversary with books on history, biography, science
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BRILLIANCE Four new books put Einstein’s general theory of relativity in historic and scientific context.
Ferdinand Schmutzer/Wikimedia Commons
You don’t need an anniversary as an excuse to write a book about Albert Einstein. But the centennial of his general theory of relativity has nonetheless provided an occasion for several new entries in the Einstein library. And even though general relativity — Einstein’s theory of gravity — has been thoroughly explored many times, some 2015 publications do offer new twists and insights.
Thomas Levenson’s The Hunt for Vulcan, for instance, places Einstein’s general relativity in a broader context than usual. Rich in historical detail, if not so much the science, Levenson’s book is a skillful popularization of the backstory to one of Einstein’s key accomplishments — explaining an oddity in the orbit of Mercury. That mystery had been around since the middle of the 19th century, when the French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier established that Newtonian gravity could not account for the continual shift in Mercury’s closest point to the sun, or perihelion. For decades, astronomers sought a new planet, called Vulcan, that would disturb Mercury’s orbit enough to explain the discrepancy. As Levenson recounts, Vulcan’s “discovery” was in fact reported more than once, but never confirmed. Levenson explores the human motivations and foibles that drove the drama, which was unresolved until Einstein explained that gravity alone accounted for Mercury’s orbit. It’s just that it was Einstein’s gravity, not Newton’s.