Testing Einstein: One Hundred Years of Experimental Relativity

A collection that confronts the reality of experimental gravity, which is different from the conventional—and overly simplistic—understanding.

Investigating just over a century of experimental relativity, the individual essays in this volume place the process of experimental relativity within its historical contexts as an interdisciplinary endeavor. Testing Einstein embraces not only the individual tests of general relativity but also the fundamental nature of experimental physics: How are experimental breakthroughs accomplished, and why do they happen when they do? An important driver of these breakthroughs is the advance (at times, the seemingly relentless advance) of experimental precision, especially in the often-neglected subfield of experimental gravity.

Ever since Newton and Einstein introduced their respective theories of gravity, the field has been associated with experimental tests of fundamental theories. The scholars in this volume, edited by Brian Odom and Daniel Kennefick, shine a light on the complex iterative exchange between theory and experiment, and how even one of the most enigmatic and esoteric fields of intellectual pursuit remains weighed down by earthly constraints, including political, social, cultural, and philosophical factors.

Brian C. Odom is currently Chief Historian at NASA. He is the coeditor of NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement—winner of the 2019 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award from the American Astronautical Society—and NASA and the American South.

Daniel Kennefick is a physicist and historian of science at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of No Shadow of a Doubt and Traveling at the Speed of Thought and a coauthor of An Einstein Encyclopedia.