Quantum Gravity in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

A Sourcebook

Preface

Acknowledgements

Dimensions and Domains

1 Quantum Theory Meets Gravitation: First Encounters
Dean Rickles

2 Albert Einstein (1916): Näherungsweise Integration der Feldgleichungen der Gravitation

3 Arthur Stanley Eddington (1918): Gravitation and the Principle of Relativity II

4 George B. Jeffery (1921): The Field of an Electron on Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation

Shifting Boundaries between Quantum Theory and Relativity

5 Where to Start? First Interactions between Wave Mechanics and General Relativity
Alexander Blum

6 Théophile de Donder and Frans Henri van den Dungen (1926): La quantification déduite de la Gravifique einsteinienne

7 Théophile de Donder (1926): Application de la quantification déduite de la Gravifique einsteinienne

8 Oskar Klein (1926): Quantentheorie und fünfdimensionale Relativitätstheorie

9 Oskar Klein (1927): Zur fünfdimensionalen Darstellung der Relativitätstheorie

10 Hugo Tetrode (1928): Allgemein-relativistische Quantentheorie des Elektrons

11 Vladimir Fock (1929): Geometrisierung der Diracschen Theorie des Elektrons

12 Hermann Weyl (1929): Elektron und Gravitation

13 Erwin Schrödinger (1932): Diracsches Elektron im Schwerefeld I

14 Leopold Infeld and Bartel van der Waerden (1933): Die Wellengleichung des Elektrons in der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie

15 Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld and Banesh Hoffmann (1938): The Gravitational Equations and the Problem of Motion

16 Erwin Schrödinger (1940): The General Theory of Relativity and Wave Mechanics

The Quantization of Gravity

17 Without New Difficulties: Quantum Gravity and the Crisis of the Quantum Field Theory Program
Alexander Blum

18 Léon Rosenfeld (1930): Zur Quantelung der Wellenfelder

19 Léon Rosenfeld (1930): Über die Gravitationswirkungen des Lichts

20 Matvei Bronstein (1936): Quantentheorie schwacher Gravitationsfelder

21 Jacques Solomon (1938): Gravitation et Quanta

22 Paul Weiss (1938): On the Hamilton-Jacobi Theory and Quantization of a Dynamical Continuum

23 Markus Fierz and Wolfgang Pauli (1939): On Relativistic Wave Equations for Particles of Arbitrary Spin in an Electromagnetic Field

Discreteness and Divergences

24 The Emergence of Quantum Geometry
Dean Rickles

25 Victor Ambarzumian and Dmitri Iwanenko (1930): Zur Frage nach Vermeidung der unendlichen Selbstrückwirkung des Elektrons

26 Werner Heisenberg (1938): Über die in der Theorie der Elementarteilchen auftretende universelle Länge

27 Hartland S. Snyder (1946): Quantized Space-Time

28 Chen-Ning Yang (1947): On Quantized Space-Time

29 Nathan Rosen (1947): Statistical Geometry and Fundamental Particles

30 Alfred Schild (1948): Discrete Space-Time and Integral Lorentz Transformations

Gauge and Constraints

31 The Genesis of Canonical Quantum Gravity
Alexander Blum, Donald Salisbury

32 Peter G. Bergmann (1949): Non-Linear Field Theories

33 Peter G. Bergmann and Johanna H. M. Brunings (1949): Non-Linear Field Theories II: Canonical Equations and Quantization

34 P. A. M. Dirac (1950): Generalized Hamiltonian Dynamics

35 Felix Pirani and Alfred Schild (1950): On the Quantization of the Gravitational Field Equations