Classical unified field theories a survey of classical relativistic field theories of gravitation that have been motivated by theoretical concerns other than unification, see Classical theories of gravitation. For a survey of current work toward creating a quantum theory of gravitation, see quantum gravity. The early attempts at creating a unified field theory began with the Riemannian geometry of general relativity, and attempted to incorporate electromagnetic fields into a more general geometry, since ordinary Riemannian geometry seemed incapable of expressing the properties of the electromagnetic field. Einstein was not alone in his attempts to unify electromagnetism and gravity; a large number of mathematicians and
Field (physics) of jet manifolds (covariant classical field theory). In modern physics, the most often studied fields are those that model the four fundamental forces which one day may lead to the Unified Field Theory. A convenient way of classifying a field (classical or quantum) is by the symmetries it possesses. Physical symmetries are usually of two types: Fields are often classified by their behaviour under transformations of spacetime. The terms used in this classification are: Fields may have internal symmetries in addition to spacetime symmetries. In many situations, one needs fields which are a list of space-time scalars: (φ, φ, ...