Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years Later

This volume is dedicated to the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Hermann Minkowski's paper "Space and Time" in 1909. His work on the spacetime representation of special relativity had a huge impact on the twentieth century physics to the extent that modern physics would be impossible without the notion of spacetime. While there is consensus on the mathematical significance of spacetime in theoretical physics, for a hundred years there has been no consensus on the nature of spacetime itself. We owe Minkowski a clear answer to the question of the nature of spacetime -- whether it is only a mathematical space or represents a real four-dimensional world. A century after its publication the original Minkowski paper still represents an enrichment to the physicists, especially the relativists, who read it with the intent to fully investigate the depth of Minkowski's ideas on space and time and the physical meaning of special relativity.

The volume begins with an excellent retranslation of Minkowski's paper by Dennis Lehmkuhl, accompanied by the original German version of the article. The fourteen contributions are divided into three parts entitled "The Impact of Minkowski Spacetime on the Twentieth Century Physics from a Historical Perspective", "Implications of Minkowski Spacetime for Theoretical Physics", and "Conceptual and Philosophical Issues of Minkowski Spacetime."

• Gravity
• Minkowski space
• Philosophy of Science
• Quantum mechanics
• Relativity
• Special relativity
• general theory of relativity

From the reviews:

“This book celebrates the 100th anniversary of Minkowski’s work on four-dimensional spacetime … . In this work Minkowski introduces spacetime as a new fundamental concept from which space and time can be derived. … All in all this is a very impressive work, not only because of the groundbreaking new ideas and the great impact it has had. It is also nicely written and the language is a very pleasant contrast to the dry style most publications use nowadays.” (Michael Keyl, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1220, 2011)

“Vesselin Petkov, the editor of the volume, has succeeded in assembling a number of interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking papers, all of them authored by competent experts in their fields, which illuminate various aspects of the concept of Minkowski spacetime. The collection transcends the disciplinary boundaries of theoretical physics, history of science, and philosophical reflection in a most productive way.” (Tilman Sauer, Metascience, February, 2013)

• Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

  Vesselin Petkov

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