One of the great achievements in science, Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity was set forth in two papers published in the Leipzig physics journal Annalen der Physik in 1905. The German text was translated into English in 1923 by W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffrey, and this is the version, with some later corrections, that is presented in this book. The Einstein papers are annotated by Richard Muller, who has also provided a foreword and afterword. His commentary is clear and comprehensible to the general reader. This book will appeal not only to those interested in the history of science but to all who are intrigued by the ideas that have framed the modern world. It can be the perfect gift for scientists and for those with broad interests and wide-ranging curiosity.

The foreword gives a general overview of the problems Einstein addressed against the background of nineteenth-century physics. The afterword carries the story from the miraculous year of 1905, when Einstein was only twenty-six, through the effects of the theory on twentieth-century science. Muller conjectures on the progress of physics had Einstein not appeared and considers his career as a whole, its last thirty-five years devoted mainly to an unsuccessful attempt to create a unified field theory. (Einstein died fifty years ago, in 1955 at the age of seventy-six.) Muller suspects that "we would not yet have discovered general relativity. The idea that mass-energy could alter the curvature of space-time is likely to have been missed. Without Einstein, we might not even now be engaged in discussions of whether the Universe is finite or whether time will go on forever. Einstein may have been a full century ahead of his time."

Professor Richard A. Muller is a distinguished physicist and author, widely known for his measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation and for his invention of accelerator mass spectrometry. He is the principal author of the Nemesis theory on the extinction of the dinosaurs. His recent discovery of a sixty-two-million-year cycle in fossil diversity was announced in the March 2005 issue of Nature magazine. He is on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley. Muller has received many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship. His forthcoming textbook, Physics for Future Presidents, is based on his popular course at Berkeley.