History of special relativity History of special relativity The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others. Although Isaac Newton based his physics on absolute time and space, he also adhered to the principle of relativity of Galileo Galilei restating it precisely for mechanical systems . This can be stated as: as far as the laws of mechanics are concerned, all observers in inertial motion are equally
History of special relativity Kaufmann other physicists, like Alfred Bucherer (1908) and Günther Neumann (1914), also examined the velocity-dependence of mass and this time it was thought that the "Lorentz-Einstein theory" and the relativity principle were confirmed, and Abraham's theory disproved. However, it was later pointed out that the Kaufmann–Bucherer–Neumann experiments only showed a qualitative mass increase of moving electrons, but they were not precise enough to distinguish between the models of Lorentz-Einstein and Abraham. So it continued until 1940, when experiments of this kind were repeated with sufficient accuracy for confirming the Lorentz-Einstein formula. However, this problem occurred only with this kind of