Einstein’s Italian Mathematicians: Ricci, Levi-Civita, and the Birth of General Relativity by Judith R. Goodstein

Abstract

In the first decade of the twentieth century as Albert Einstein began formulating a revolutionary theory of gravity, the Italian mathematician Gregorio Ricci was entering the later stages of what appeared to be a productive if not particularly memorable career, devoted largely to what his colleagues regarded as the dogged development of a mathematical language he called the absolute differential calculus. In 1912, the work of these two dedicated scientists would intersect--and physics and mathematics would never be the same. Einstein's Italian Mathematicians chronicles the lives and intellectu. Cover; Title page; Copyright page; Dedicaton; Contents; Preface; The Ricci of Lugo; The making of a mathematician; Munich; Padua; Math and marriage; A promotion that wasn't; The absolute differential calculus; The alter ego; Intermezzo; The indispensable mathematical tool; "Write to me next time in Italian"; Parallel displacements; From Ricci's absolute differential calculus to Einstein's theorem for general relativity; T. Levi-Civita, "Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro"; Obituary of Tullio Levi-Civita; Selected references; Notes; Index; Other titles in this series; Back Cover