Professor Albert Einstein, of Berlin, delivered yesterday afternoon the Adamson lecture in the University of Manchester. This was his first lecture in this country. Sir Henry Miers, the Vice Chancellor, was in the chair. The subject of Professor EinsteinÕs lecture was the theory of ÒRelativity.Ó
It was perhaps as a tribute to the intellectual independence of Manchester that Professor Einstein assumed, to all appearance, that the audience he was facing had its doubts about Relativity. He limited himself to demonstrating, by a close and strictly scientific argument, that Relativity was a true conception. Not in a single sentence did he allow himself to touch on the philosophical implications of his discovery, though that would, no doubt, have been appreciated by his audience.
Dr. Einstein began by explaining how the relation of geometry to physics had been modified by the development of the theory of Relativity. The first stone in the structure of that relationship was the fact that from the accepted propositions relating to the conduct of solid bodies in space certain other propositions could logically be deduced. The definition of this relationship almost reached finality with Euclid. Henceforward geometry had to work almost exclusively with propositions not capable of demonstration by experiment. The truth of the axioms which we had inherited from Euclid rested for a long time solely upon what Dr. Einstein called manÕs Ònecessity to think.Ó They had become purely formal propositions, and the basis of a complex logical structure.
The whole development of physics had been founded upon the acceptance of these axioms, but already the ÒspecialÓ theory of Relativity ÑÑ the original hypothesis from which Dr. Einstein had developed his theory in its general application Ñ had led to results which differed from the accepted axioms concerning the conduct of solids. That theory showed that length could not be an inherent property of matter, but that it had significance only in relation to a given observer.
The ÒgeneralÓ theory of Relativity which had gradually been evolved, as Dr. Einstein explained, in the course of the last ten years, went more deeply into the conceptions of space and time. Both these conceptions were found to be incompatible, if taken as absolute, with the actual phenomena of the physical world. ÒThere is no sense in asking of a space whether it is finite or infinite, except in relation to some object.Ó Having thus explained the steps which had led him to his revolutionary theory, Professor Einstein modestly concluded his lecture. He stopped short of pointing out the scientific consequences of his discovery.