Einstein's Unified Field Theory with Teleparallelism
A translation by A. Unzicker and T. Case
Einstein's later publications have been translated to many languages, but not to English yet (Maybe because there are people who get paid for doing that work slowly). The following translation was performed by Alexander Unzicker and Timothy Case as a voluntary school project of the Pestalozzi-Gymnasium in 2005.
Below you find the original and the translation of two reports 'Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse', and the paper in 'Mathematische Annalen' that summarizes the content of the reports. We added one precursor report from 1925, which does not deal with teleparallelism explicitly. Since the torsion tensor appears already, this early work may be useful for the historically interested reader. The German original of three later reports are further added. The translated papers are published at the e-print server arxiv.org under physics/0503046. Everybody may use, copy, modify and distribute this translation for non-commercial purposes. The help of the online dictionary leo.org is acknowledged.
These papers will not be easy to read for the beginner. You may consider further writings on my page on Differential Geometry and Dislocations and try to understand what torsion means or have a look at some Literature on torsion and differential geometry related to Einstein's attempt.
Today a majority of physicits thinks that Einstein's Unified Field Theory was a completely wrong way that is contradiction to Quantum Mechanics. However, progress in science needs insight rather than majority decisions. Download and get your own opinion !
| paper | English title | German title | *.dvi | *.ps (postscript) | zipped bitmap of German original | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| session report from June 7th, 1928, pp. 217-221 | Riemannian Geometry with Maintaining the Notion of Distant Parallelism | Riemann-Geometrie unter Aufrechterhaltung des Begriffes des Fernparallelismus | rep1.pdf | rep1.dvi | rep1.ps | rep1.zip (407k) |
| session report from June 14th, 1928, pp. 224-227 | New possibility for a Unified Field Theory of Gravitation and Electricity | Neue Möglichkeit für eine einheitliche Theorie von Gravitation und Elektrizität | rep2.pdf | rep2.dvi | rep2.ps | rep2.zip (287k) |
| paper in Math. Annal. 102 (1930) pp.685-697 | Unified Field Theory based on Riemannian Metrics and Distant Parallelism | Auf die Riemann-Metrik und den Fernparallelismus gegründete einheitliche Feldtheorie | einst.pdf | einst.dvi | einst.ps | einst.zip (768k) |
| session report from July 25th, 1925, pp. 414-419 | Unified Field Theory of Gravitation and Electricity | Einheitliche Feldtheorie von Gravitation und Elektrizität | rep0.pdf | rep0.dvi | rep0.ps | rep0.zip (568k) |
| session report from January 10th, 1929, pp. 2-7 | About the Unified Field Theory | Zur einheitlichen Feldtheorie | rep3.zip (521k) | |||
| session report from March 29th, 1929, pp. 156-159 | Unified Field Theory and Hamiltonian Principle | Einheitliche Feldtheorie und Hamiltonsches Prinzip | rep4.zip (274k) | |||
| session report from December 12th, 1929, pp. 18-23 | The Compatibility of the Field Equations in the Unified Field Theory | Kompatibilität der Feldgleichungen in der Einheitliche Feldtheorie | rep5.zip (546k) |
If you suspect errors in the equations or other discrepancies between the translation and the German original please email me.
Historical Background Mathematical remark by Cartan