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After an initial burst of excitement about its extraordinary implications for our concept of space and time, the theory of general relativity underwent a thirty-year period of stagnation, during which only a few specialists worked on it, achieving little progress. In the aftermath of World War II, however, general relativity gradually re-entered the mainstream of physics, attracting an increasing number of practitioners and becoming the basis for the current standard theory of gravitation and cosmology-a process Clifford Will baptized the Renaissance of General Relativity. The recent detection of gravitational radiation by the LIGO experiment can be seen as one of the most outstanding achievements in this long-lasting historical process. In the paper, we present a new multifaceted historical perspective on the causes and characteristics of the Renaissance of General Relativity, focusing in particular on the case of gravitational radiation in order to illustrate this complex and far-reaching process.The year 2015 marked the centenary of Einstein's final formulation of the gravitational equation that bears his name, the cornerstone of the general theory of relativity. Almost exactly one hundred years after the theory's inception, the direct detection of gravitational waves through a large-scale experiment operated by the multinational LIGO Collaboration has confirmed one of its most elusive predictions. With this momentous achievement, general relativity has once again strengthened its position as the standard theory of gravitational phenomena and the basis of cosmological models, in spite of the still unresolved difficulties in reconciling Einstein's theory with quantum mechanics.The central position the theory continues to hold in our description of the physical world might not seem all that surprising, given its immediate spectacular confirmation (Eddington's solar eclipse expedition of 1919) and Einstein's subsequent rise to scientific superstardom. However, historical investigations have revealed that matters appeared quite different after the initial hype and before the current age of spectacular experimental and observational confirmations. In the early years after its formulation, the epistemic status of general relativity theory was highly uncertain in many respects, from the understanding of its physical implications to the interpretation of the impact of a choice of coordinate system on the result obtained. A perfect example of the uncertainty concerning the epistemic status of the theory is the early debate on the nature and existence of gravitational waves within the framework of general relativity. The 1916 correspondence between Einstein and the astronomers Karl Schwarzschild and Willem de Sitter reveals how confused the connections between the theory and its physical consequences were in the months following the formulation of the theory. Thanks to these epistolary exchanges, Einstein passed from believing that his gravitational theory implied the non-existence of gravitational waves to demonstrati...

Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Springer Briefs in History of Science and Technology, 2017, xiv + 168 pp. ISBN: 9783319546544 The detection of gravitational waves produced by the merger of a pair of inspiralling black holes in 2015 by the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations is a remarkable confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity (1915). It is also, in the circumstances, a vindication of "Big Science," inasmuch as these collaborations involve over 1000 scientists from 133 institutions and long-term international funding. One may wonder, then, how it is that Einstein's theory of general relativity became Big Science? Similarly, one may wonder how the scientific investigation of general relativity and gravitation became a community endeavour? It is the latter question that Roberto Lalli addresses in the book under review.Albert Einstein's first paper on what he called his "general theory of relativity" appeared a few months after the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Few scientists were interested in Einstein's quest to capture gravitational phenomena in a dynamic theory of curved spacetime. Some of those who studied the theory, like Willem de Sitter and Erich Kretschmann, convinced Einstein to modify his field equations and reformulate their philosophical foundations.With the confirmation of an extraordinary consequence of the field equations-the deviation of starlight in the vicinity of the sun-Arthur S. Eddington announced Einstein's theory as the successor to Newton's, and Einstein became an international celebrity. Soon, hundreds of scientists engaged with Einstein's theory which, as a direct result, branched out in directions unforeseen by its creator, including big-bang cosmology, the unification of gravitation and electrodynamics, and, by the end of the 1930s, relativistic astrophysics.The period from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s has been described as the "low-water mark" of general relativity by Jean Eisenstaedt, an image meant to convey the resentment expressed by several scientists engaged with Einstein's theory during this period, over its marginal status in the scheme of institutional physics. 1 In fact, as Lalli's bibliometric study shows quite clearly, annual publication of papers on general relativity and gravitation first passed the 100 mark in 1955, such that it would be more accurate to speak of a rise, or as Clifford Will put it, a "renaissance" of general relativity in the late 1950s. 2The rise in annual publications was steady and substantial, such that in 1975 they passed the 600 mark. What was the driving force behind this surge in research effort? According to Will, the turning point was a series of experimental, observational and theoretical results that kicked off the 1960s, including the Pound-Rebka measurement of gravitational redshift, radar ranging of planets in the Solar System, the discovery of quasars, and spinor techniques.