What Are the Must-Read Einstein Papers on General Relativity and Beyond?

[Histspec]

I'm wondering what are in people's opinions the "must read" papers of Einstein. I concentrate more on general relativity but also other stuff. Reviews by Einstein and maybe other important contemporary papers would also be welcome, as well as maybe modern commentary on them.

You may be interested in the “Annus mirabilis papers” from 1905 on quantum theory, Brownian motion, special relativity. You find them freely accessible in the Vol. 2 of Einstein's collected papers (Documents 14,15,16,23):
German: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol2-doc/ ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol2-trans/

His writings on general relativity can be found in Vol. 6:
German:https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-doc/ ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/
and Vol. 7:
German: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-doc/ ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/

In particular his overview on general relativity from 1916:
German: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-doc/311 ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/158

All papers include modern commentary, and many have extensive historical introductions as well.

 

[robphy]

Although probably not as detailed as the work of John Stachel et al above,
here are two other possibly useful resources. I haven't look at them in detail.

• Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics
  Albert Einstein
  (Edited by John Stachel, Foreword by Roger Penrose)
  https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691122281/einsteins-miraculous-year
  introduction by Stachel: https://www.bu.edu/cphs/files/2015/04/2005_Intro_to_E_s_M_Year.pdf
• A Student's Guide to Einstein's Major Papers (1st Edition)
  by Robert E Kennedy
  https://www.amazon.com/Students-Guide-Einsteins-Major-Papers/dp/0199694036/?tag=pfamazon01-20
  
  "A Student's Guide to Einstein's Major Papers focuses on Einstein's contributions, setting his major works into their historical context, and then takes the reader through the details of each paper, including the mathematics.
  
  This book helps the reader appreciate the simplicity and insightfulness of Einstein's ideas and how revolutionary his work was, and locate it in the evolution of scientific thought begun by the ancient Greek natural philosophers."

 

[Bosko]

...
For an overview of why I consider it so great, see:
https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0504201
...

I agree. Reading now. Great.

 

[vanhees71]

I haven't followed the discussion closely, but I think it's very bad advice to tell students, not to read the original papers, because they are old and may not be the didactically "best way" to express their content. First of all what's the didactically best way to be taught about a subject is very subjective. In my opinion Einstein's papers are among the best written ones in the history of physics.

The question, which is the "greatest" is harder to answer and for sure also depends on the taste of the reader too. My favorite is the longer paper on general relativity:

A. Einstein, Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie, Ann. Phys. 49, 218 (1916)
https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.2005517S151

An English translation can be found here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Foundation_of_the_Generalised_Theory_of_Relativity

As stressed by others, I'd not recommend to learn GR for the first time from the original sources, but to read the paper after having a good grasp of the theory from a modern textbook, always helps to understand the theory better.

 

[Orodruin]

A. Einstein, Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie, Ann. Phys. 49, 218 (1916)
https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.2005517S151

... interesting placement of the ' for the primed quantities

As stressed by others, I'd not recommend to learn GR for the first time from the original sources, but to read the paper after having a good grasp of the theory from a modern textbook, always helps to understand the theory better.

Although, as I mentioned above, many of these also require at least a passable level of German - unless you can find a translated version.

 

[vanhees71]

... interesting placement of the ' for the primed quantities

What do you mean by that? If you mean the placement of the primes on the index, I admit it's a very bad practice, which can easily lead to confusion. Nevertheless it's perpetuated even in some modern textbooks.

Although, as I mentioned above, many of these also require at least a passable level of German - unless you can find a translated version.

I gave a link to an English translation. I've not checked, how well it does in comparison to the original German paper, but usually translations of scientific papers are pretty good:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Foundation_of_the_Generalised_Theory_of_Relativity

 

[Orodruin]

What do you mean by that? If you mean the placement of the primes on the index, I admit it's a very bad practice, which can easily lead to confusion. Nevertheless it's perpetuated even in some modern textbooks.

I disagree and I think it is the natural place where the primes should go. I believe we already had this discussion several times before. It is only prone to confusion if you are in the bad habit of naming your indices the same in different coordinate systems. However, using primed numbers in general for primed indices (0’, 1’, etc) removes this risk. Furthermore, typical coordinates that we tend to use use special letters rather than numbers to denote indices (eg, $r\theta\phi$ for spherical coordinates). The problem with priming the symbol representing the tensor is the implication that the tensor itself is coordinate dependent when it is a coordinate independent object.

But this is not even what is going on here. Albert is treating the entire object $A_{\mu\nu}$ as what is being primed. That he is not priming the indices is clear from expressions like ${A_{\mu\nu}}’$.

 

[AndreasC]

As stressed by others, I'd not recommend to learn GR for the first time from the original sources, but to read the paper after having a good grasp of the theory from a modern textbook, always helps to understand the theory better.

Right, I already know basic GR. I had a course in undergrad and I've read a little bit extra fron Wald, Hawking-Ellis, and Dirac's book. But original papers sometimes really help to give some context and insights, and they often get to the interesting part faster than some textbooks. It's happened to me a couple times to not understand at all something until I read an original source. For instance I was very confused by natural transformations as presented in various math textbooks until I read the 1945 paper by Eilenberg and MacLane. The original stuff on path integrals, Wilson's renormalization group and Shannon's entropy are really good. Schwarz's stuff on distributions is also helpful, someone should really translate it to English eventually. Thanks for the suggestions!

Also, don't worry, I read German.

 

[zepkid5678]

I recently read some of his papers. I started with some works around 1905. It was interesting to see the development (and simplification) of his ideas from when he first introduced special relativity and explained the ultraviolet catastrophe (photons as discrete wave packets / energy quanta) to when he was giving symposia and clarifying explanations. Also, in his General Relativity papers, you can see his first attempts and modification including the Ricci scalar.

I can’t speak to the whether reading them is “the best way to learn” but I found it to be interesting and rewarding.

I’m sorry my answer doesn’t provide specific papers, but my suggestion would be to browse around starting in 1905 and look for the papers where he made significant findings (I believe you can Wikipedia “miracle year” and find the names). Mostly I want to encourage you by sharing that I found it rewarding.

Also FloatHeadPhysics on YouTube has a video that gives a very good summary of his discovery of “E = mc2” to go along with the paper.

 

[zepkid5678]

SciClicEnglish on YouTube has a great intro series on General Relativity mathematics, and EigenChris has a relativity playlist that goes deeper into the mathematics for a full explanation. I took a grad course on Differential Geometry and came away with a better understanding of the Christoffel Symbols from those two YouTube series than from my course :)

 

[sbrothy]

You may be interested in the “Annus mirabilis papers” from 1905 on quantum theory, Brownian motion, special relativity. You find them freely accessible in the Vol. 2 of Einstein's collected papers (Documents 14,15,16,23):
German: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol2-doc/ ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol2-trans/

His writings on general relativity can be found in Vol. 6:
German:https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-doc/ ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/
and Vol. 7:
German: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-doc/ ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/

In particular his overview on general relativity from 1916:
German: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-doc/311 ; English: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol6-trans/158

All papers include modern commentary, and many have extensive historical introductions as well.

Inbthe spirit of the OP's question I was about to mention the Annus Mirabilis papers too. Especially the one about the photoelectric effect. Wasn't this more orless the one that earned him the Nobel?

 

[Orodruin]

Wasn't this more orless the one that earned him the Nobel?

A matter of interpretation:

"for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect"

The motivation indicates his works in general, but particularly highlights the photoelectric effect.