Einstein's Relativity In Great Britain: From Eddington To Hawking And Penrose. A Tale Of Physicists, Astronomers, Mathematicians And Philosophers

Soon after the publication of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity in 1905 and 1915, they received attention from a wide variety of British scholars (astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and philosophers). That reaction varied from deep acceptance (as was the case of Arthur Eddington) to straightforward opposition. This book analyzes those reactions, which involved a large number of important scientists as well as philosophers, like Bertrand Russell. The study will cover from the 1910s till the 1960s, when the work of a group of relativists centered in Cambridge (Sciama and Hawking) and London (Bondi, Pirani and Penrose) made a new, fresh approach to general relativity.