Abstract
Two new physical theories changed twentieth century physics in a dramatic way: quantum theory and the theory of relativity.
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References
Einstein, A.: Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper. Ann. Phys. 17, 891–921 (1905) Einstein’s first paper on the theory of relativity. An English translation of this paper (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies). http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf. See also [5]
Einstein, A.: Relativity. The Special and the General Theory. Henry Holt and Company 1921. https://ia700305.us.archive.org/2/items/cu31924011804774/cu31924011804774.pdf
Einstein, A., Lorentz, H.A., Weyl, H., Minkowski, H.: The Principle of Relativity. A collection of original papers on the special and general theory of relativity. Translated from the 1913 German edition, Dover 1952. All these pioneering papers are very readable. A treasure for the history of relativity theory
Minkowski, H.: Raum und Zeit. Teubner Verlag 1909 This is the text of the talk Minkowski gave in 1908. He died suddenly shortly before it was published. For an English translation, see [5]
Walter, S.: Minkowski, Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Theory of Relativity. In: The Expanding World of General Relativity. H. Goenner, J, Renn, J. Ritter, T. Sauer (eds.) Birkhäuser 1999. http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/DepPhilo/walter/papers/einstd7.pdf
Dirac, P.A.M.: The quantum theory of the electron. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 117, 610–624 (1928). http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/117/778/610.full.pdf
Dirac, P.A.M.: A theory of electrons and protons. R. Soc. Lond. A 126, 360–365 (1930). http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/126/801/360.full.pdf (These two papers are among Dirac’s greatest contributions to theoretical physics.)
French, A.P.: Special Relativity. Norton 1968. Note finally that a few physics textbooks contain useful reviews of relativistic quantum mechanics, for instance the book by Messiah
Messiah, A.: Quantum Mechanics. Volume I and II. Translated from the French. North-Holland 1961. Reissued in one volume in 1999 by Dover. The North-Holland edition is available at: https://ia601206.us.archive.org/23/items/QuantumMechanicsVolumeI/Messiah-QuantumMechanicsVolumeI.pdf, and https://ia601605.us.archive.org/0/items/QuantumMechanicsVolumeIi/Messiah-QuantumMechanicsVolumeIi.pdf
Rindler, W.: Introduction to Special Relativity, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1991)
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Bongaarts, P. (2015). Towards Relativistic Quantum Theory. In: Quantum Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09561-5_15
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