MINKOWSKI, H. (HERMANN). - THE UNIFICATION OF SPACE AND TIME (PMM 401).

Raum und Zeit. (Space and Time). Vortrag von der 80. Naturforscherversammlung zu Köln.

Leipzig, S. Hirzel, (1909). 4to. Bound with orig. printed wrappers in fine later hmorocco. (Bound by Anker Kyster Eftf. 1968). Titlelabel in leather with gilt lettering on frontcover. Offprint (Sonderabdruck) from "Physikalische Zeitschrift", 10. Jahrgang. No. 3. Seite 104-111, here paginated as offprint pp. 1-8 and with textfigs. Clean and fine.

First edition - in the scarce offprint-issue - of this milestone paper where Minkowski was the first to conceive that the relativity principle formulated by Lorentz and Einstein led to the abandonment of the concept of space and time as separate entities and to their replacement by a fourdimensional "space-time", THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM. In the opening passage Minkowski declared: "Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade
away in the shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."
The work was simultaneously published in "Jahresberichte der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung". Leipzig 1909, in "Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte". Leipzig, 1909 (a shorter version) and as here.
The paper was read 20th of September 1908 at a Conference in Cologne only a few months before his death. Here "he introduced the notion that made possible the expansion of the Relativity Theory of Einstein from its specific to its general form. The technical description of Minkowski's hypothesis is the four-dimensional Space-time continuum.... Minkowski's space-time hypothesis was in effect a restatement of Einstein's basic principle in a form that greatly enchanced its plausability and also introduced importent new developments. Hitherto natural phenomena had been thought to occur in a space of three dimensions and to flow uniformly through time. Minkowski maintained that the separation of space and time is a false conception; thet time is itself a dimension, comparable to lenght, breadth and height: and that therefore the true conception of reality was constituted by a space-time continuum possessing these four dimensions. This strongly reinforced Einstein's objections to absolute concepts and supported his view of the relativity of events in nature." (PMM No. 401).

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