EINSTEIN’S SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Einstein’s third major paper in 1905, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” contained what became known as the special theory of relativity . Since the time of the English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, natural philosophers (as physicists and chemists were known) had been trying to understand the nature of matter and radiation, and how they interacted in some unified world picture. The position that mechanical laws are fundamental has become known as the mechanical world view, and the position that electrical laws are fundamental has become known as the electromagnetic world view. Neither approach, however, is capable of providing a consistent explanation for the way radiation (light, for example) and matter interact when viewed from different inertial frames of reference, that is, an interaction viewed simultaneously by an observer at rest and an observer moving at uniform speed. In the spring of 1905, after considering these problems for ten years, Einstein realiz...