Beschreibung:

EINSTEIN, ALBERT. 1879-1955. The Meaning of Relativity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.
Publisher's beige cloth, spine blocked in black and lettered in gilt, label removed from lower spine.
Provenance: Yandall Clark Woodfin (1929-2014, noted Baptist minister and theologian).
RARE INSCRIBED COPY OF THE MEANING OF RELATIVITY, THE THIRD EDITION INCLUDING THE FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION OF HIS "GENERALIZED THEORY OF GRAVITATION, his "definitive exposition of his special and general theories of relativity" (Gutfreund and Renn, The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein's Princeton Lectures, 2017). Based on a series of lectures at Princeton in 1921, The Meaning of Relativity was published first in German in 1922, followed in the same year by an English edition in London.
According to Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn in their 2017 exposition of the lectures and their significance, "Neither before nor afterward did he offer a similarly comprehensive exposition that included not only the theory's technical apparatus but also detailed explanations making his achievement accessible to readers with a certain mathematical knowledge but no familiarity with relativity theory." They argue that The Meaning of Relativity transcends his original theory published in 1917, and "includes new formulations of the basic principles and ideas and a change of emphasis on specific issues. It represents a significantly more advanced stage in the development of general relativity, in the understanding of its implications, and in the reception of the theory by the scientific community."
Einstein's "Generalized Theory of Gravitation," here published in a book for the first time, was Einstein's attempt to unify both gravitational and electromagnetic forces into a single Unified Field Theory. The theory was the result of more than 30 years of sustained research and exploration, encompassing his greatest scientific thought in the 2nd half of his life.
Yandall Clark Woodfin III earned his Masters in Theology from the Princeton University Seminary in 1953, the year Einstein inscribed this book to him. He went on to become an influential Baptist minister and theologian.
Signed copies of Einstein's definitive work on relativity, his greatest contribution to human thought, are rare, and even moreso inscribed.