The Theory of Relativity

The theory of relativity was first introduced in a publication by Albert Einstein in the year 1905. Einstein was 26 years old at the time and was employed at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland. In spite of the fact that he had little formal training in theoretical physics, Einstein had been working to understand certain conceptual problems having to do with the properties of electromagnetic fields and the propagation of electromagnetic waves. This work eventually led to the relativity theory. Let us begin by reviewing some of the historical background. The question “what is light” goes back many centuries. One inportant clue to the nature of light is the law of refraction, discovered in 1620 by Snell,