EINSTEIN, Albert (1879–1955)

On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation

Offprint from: Scientific American (April 1950)

Physical description

The rare offprint form of Einstein’s famous late popular essay on Unified Field Theory – his last attempt to synthesise a half-century of revolutionary insight.

Here Einstein attempts to render his programme for a unified description of gravitation and electromagnetism intelligible to a wider audience. The essay presents his conviction that the apparently separate forces of gravitation and electromagnetism might ultimately emerge as different aspects of a single underlying field structure, extending the geometrical conception that had proved so powerful in general relativity. Einstein’s guiding ideal was one of economy and logical unity: the possibility that the fundamental properties of matter and the laws governing physical phenomena might be derived from a small number of general principles, rather than introduced as independent assumptions.

The essay belongs to the final phase of a quest that had occupied Einstein for decades. By the late 1940s and early 1950s he had moved increasingly far from the prevailing direction of theoretical physics, particularly the quantum-mechanical conception of nature, and continued instead to seek a deterministic, continuous field theory capable of encompassing all physical phenomena. His later formulations introduced increasingly sophisticated mathematical structures, but Einstein remained candid about the unresolved physical difficulties: in 1953 he acknowledged that he did not know whether the theory contained physical truth, while his final published discussions recognised the profound tension between a continuous field description and the discrete phenomena of quantum physics.

Very good condition: two flattened creases and a slight ripple to the cover; otherwise near fine.