Alfred Robb

Alfred Arthur Robb or Alfred A. Robb (born January 18, 1873 in Belfast , † December 14, 1936 in Castlereagh ) was an English physicist .

Robb studied at Queen's College in Belfast, at St John's College in Cambridge , and briefly at the University of Göttingen , where he was influenced by Woldemar Voigt . He then worked with Joseph John Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory . He was awarded the Croix de guerre and in 1921 he became a member of the Royal Society .

He became known through his work on the special theory of relativity , where he tried (1911, 1914) to derive the entire space-time formalism of the theory in an axiomatic-geometric way. Robb was therefore also called the " Euclid of Relativity". Using non-Euclidean geometry, Robb introduced terms such as rapidity as a formal alternative to the relativistic addition of speed . However, contrary to popular belief, he himself believed that the work of Joseph Larmor and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was more important for the theory of relativity than the work of Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski .

Publications

• Alfred Robb: Optical geometry of motion, a new view of the theory of relativity . Heffner & Sons, Cambridge 1911.
• Alfred Robb: A theory of time and space . University Press, Cambridge 1914.
• Alfred Robb: The absolute relations of time and space . University Press, Cambridge 1921.
• Alfred Robb: Geometry Of Time And Space . University Press, Cambridge 1936.

See also

• History of the special theory of relativity

swell

1. ↑ Joseph Larmor, Alfred Arthur Robb , Obituary Notices Royal Society, 1936–1938, vol 2, pp. 315-321
2. ^ José M. Sanchez-Ron: The reception of special relativity in Great Britain . In: TF Glick (Ed.): The Comparative Reception of Relativity . Springer, Berlin 1987, ISBN 9027724989 , pp. 27-58.
3. ^ Scott A. Walter: The non-Euclidean style of Minkowskian relativity . In: J. Gray (Ed.): The Symbolic Universe: Geometry and Physics . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999b, ISBN 0198500882 , pp. 91-127.
4. ↑ Sanchez-Ron, pp. 46-49