The Impact Of World War I On Relativity: Part III, The Aftermath

TL;DR

This paper examines the post-World War I developments in Einstein's theory of general relativity, including scientific, political, and cultural impacts, and how these influenced its acceptance and further research.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the scientific, political, and cultural aftermath of WWI on general relativity and Einstein's scientific career, highlighting less-studied historical details.

Findings

The 1919 eclipse expedition confirmed Einstein's predictions.

Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for the photoelectric effect.

Post-war books and travels influenced the global acceptance of relativity.

Abstract

Neither the world nor science came to an end when the gunfire stopped on 11 November 1918 (close to 11 AM in some time zone), but neither would ever be the same again. Part I of this inquiry (Observatory 138, 46-58, April 2018) looked at the development of general relativity under the Rubric of Gerald Holton's "Only Einstein, only there, only then." Part II (Observatory 138, 98 116, June, 2018) addressed the activities, relativistic, classical, and otherwise of many (mostly) physicists who were interacting with Einstein, working on relativistic gravity, or, sometimes, against it, and leaving tracks that can still be followed. Part III considers some of what happened to Einstein, his theory of gravity, and related science after the war and, perhaps, because of it. A subset of the items will probably be familiar -- the 1919 eclipse expedition and the founding of the International Astronomical Union the same year, Einsteins 1921 Nobel Prize (for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect). Others perhaps less so, including a flood of books about GR (pro and con) with the end of paper rationing surely playing a role, AE's 1922 trip to Paris, and the gory details, swings and roundabouts of gravitational radiation/waves and the cosmological constant. It is left as an exercise for the reader to decide which items are primarily scientific and which primarily political. The long-range issues of "is general relativity the right theory of gravity?" and "do we have better wars?" come at the end. And I am going to start in a slightly improbable place.