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When looking at the early development of relativity theory, one finds an astonishing number of contributions by mathematicians, some of which deeply influenced the work of leading theoretical physicists. Within the context of special relativity, Hermann Minkowski's writings come immediately to mind (Walter 2008). Klein and Hilbert followed Minkowski's ideas from their infancy, and both pursued some of their consequences after the latter's premature death in January 1909. Two other figures with close ties to Göttingen, Max Born and Arnold Sommerfeld, were both instrumental in elaborating Minkowski's 4-dimensional approach for physicists (Walter 2007). Born had been Minkowski's assistant for a brief time, and so he was given the task of publishing his mentor's final uncompleted work on electrodynamics (Staley 2008). Sommerfeld was since 1906 the head of a leading school for theoretical physics in Munich, where he afterward played a key role in promoting special relativity theory in Germany, including mathematical aspects of the theory (Eckert 2013).

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-67819-1_17

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