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In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The subject of this note has been a small historical thread in the long and complex story of the status of energy conservation in General Relativity, concerning two related claims made by Klein and Hilbert: that the energy conservation law is an identity in generally covariant theories, and that this marks a contrast with other (earlier) theories. Both these claims were disputed by Einstein. We have seen how three theorems proved by Noether and Klein can be brought to bear on this disagreement, showing that:

This article argues that the influence Kaluza’s theory had on Einstein was mainly epistemological. The resulting profound change, between 1919 and 1921, in Einstein’s epistemology led him to regard geometrized unified field theories as the most promising route toward progress in theoretical physics. Thus his program in unified field theory emerged. His new epistemology was based on the concept of mathematical simplicity, a pivotal criterion in the construction of physical theories. Its purpose is to secure agreement between theory and experience.

Above and beyond the epistemological components, Einstein considered Kaluza’s theory a serious contender for achieving real physical unification of electromagnetism and gravitation. In this conviction, he labored on constructing theories based on Kaluza’s model until 1943. Einstein’s main objection to Kaluza’s unifying concept seems to have been the nonexistence of a fifth dimension—an objection which, owing to the continuing impossibility of empirical proof, still stands today.

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The subject of this note has been a small historical thread in the long and complex story of the status of energy conservation in General Relativity, concerning two related claims made by Klein and Hilbert: that the energy conservation law is an identity in generally covariant theories, and that this marks a contrast with other (earlier) theories. Both these claims were disputed by Einstein. We have seen how three theorems proved by Noether and Klein can be brought to bear on this disagreement, showing that:

In mid-century, General Relativity was largely in the doldrums. Though at the time I was completely unaware of it, there were perhaps only four or five active groups around the world working in GR; Hamburg (Jordan), London (Bondi), Princeton (Wheeler), Warsaw (Infeld) and Syracuse (Bergmann). I had the privilege and pleasure of being a member of the Syracuse group working under Peter G. Bergmann. I would like to describe some of the things that took place there, who were the active participants, who we interacted with, what was accomplished and finally conjecture what role we played in the revitalization of relativity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.