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This volume collects the earliest contributions to what is now known as quantum gravity research: the attempt to bring together quantum theory and the general theory of relativity. Covering the period from 1916-1950, it shows the beginnings of an unsolved problem that still remains as such today. The original sources are interspersed with historical essays, which together provide the first scholarly historical overview of quantum gravity in the first half of the twentieth Century. The combination of historical analysis and original sources make this a volume of interest to historians, philosophers, and physicists alike. - Edition Open Sources (EOS) pioneers a new paradigm in publishing, devoted to open access and high-quality peer review. This collaborative scholarly endeavor publishes academic editions of primary sources in the history of science in online, digital, and print formats. EOS publications present new editions of original sources with facsimile reproductions, in part also with translations, and with an introduction to the authors and the context in which they worked. The sources are typically historical books, manuscripts, documents or other material that is otherwise difficult to access. EOS a collaboration be-tween the University of Oklahoma Libraries, the Department for the History of Science of the University of Oklahoma and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Dimensions and Domains
Quantum Theory Meets Gravitation: First Encounters (Dean Rickles)
Albert Einstein (1916): Näherungsweise Integration der Feldgleichungen der Gravitation
Arthur Stanley Eddington (1918): Gravitation and the Principle of Relativity II
George B. Jeffery (1921): The Field of an Electron on Einstein's Theory of Gravitation
Shifting Boundaries between Quantum Theory and Relativity
Where to Start? First Interactions between Wave Mechanics and General Relativity (Alexander Blum)
Théophile de Donder and Frans Henri van den Dungen (1926): La quantification déduite de la Gravifique einsteinienne
Théophile de Donder (1926): Application de la quantification déduite de la Gravifique einsteinienne
Oskar Klein (1926): Quantentheorie und fünfdimensionale Relativitätstheorie
Oskar Klein (1927): Zur fünfdimensionalen Darstellung der Relativitätstheorie
Hugo Tetrode (1928): Allgemein-relativistische Quantentheorie des Elektrons
Vladimir Fock (1929): Geometrisierung der Diracschen Theorie des Elektrons
Hermann Weyl (1929): Elektron und Gravitation
Erwin Schrödinger (1932): Diracsches Elektron im Schwerefeld I
Leopold Infeld and Bartel van der Waerden (1933): Die Wellengleichung des Elektrons in der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie
Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld and Banesh Hoffmann (1938): The Gravitational Equations and the Problem of Motion
Erwin Schrödinger (1940): The General Theory of Relativity and Wave Mechanics
The Quantization of Gravity
Without New Difficulties: Quantum Gravity and the Crisis of the Quantum Field Theory Program (Alexander Blum)
Léon Rosenfeld (1930): Zur Quantelung der Wellenfelder
Léon Rosenfeld (1930): Über die Gravitationswirkungen des Lichts
Matvei Bronstein (1936): Quantentheorie schwacher Gravitationsfelder
Jacques Solomon (1938): Gravitation et Quanta
Paul Weiss (1938): On the Hamilton-Jacobi Theory and Quantization of a Dynamical Continuum
Markus Fierz and Wolfgang Pauli (1939): On Relativistic Wave Equations for Particles of Arbitrary Spin in an Electromagnetic Field
Discreteness and Divergences
The Emergence of Quantum Geometry (Dean Rickles)
Victor Ambarzumian and Dmitri Iwanenko (1930): Zur Frage nach Vermeidung der unendlichen Selbstrückwirkung des Elektrons
Werner Heisenberg (1938): Über die in der Theorie der Elementarteilchen auftretende universelle Länge
Hartland S. Snyder (1946): Quantized Space-Time
Chen-Ning Yang (1947): On Quantized Space-Time
Nathan Rosen (1947): Statistical Geometry and Fundamental Particles
Alfred Schild (1948): Discrete Space-Time and Integral Lorentz Transformations
Gauge and Constraints
The Genesis of Canonical Quantum Gravity (Alexander Blum and Donald Salisbury)
Peter G. Bergmann (1949): Non-Linear Field Theories
Peter G. Bergmann and Johanna H. M. Brunings (1949): Non-Linear Field Theories II: Canonical Equations and Quantization
P. A. M. Dirac (1950): Generalized Hamiltonian Dynamics
Felix Pirani and Alfred Schild (1950): On the Quantization of the Gravitational Field Equations
