Kaluza

Theodor Franz Eduard Kaluza

Born: 9 Nov 1885 in Ratibor, Germany (now Raciborz, Poland)
Died: 19 Jan 1945 in Göttingen, Germany

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Kaluza was teaching at Königsberg in April 1919 when he wrote to Einstein and told him about his ideas to unify Einstein's theory of gravity and Maxwell's theory of light. Einstein encouraged him to publish his highly original ideas which he did in 1921 in his paper on the unity problem of physics - Zum Unitätsproblem der Physik, Sitzungsberichte Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften 96 (1921), 69.

Kaluza's ideas involved the introduction of a 5th dimension and, although he has been criticised for introducing this as a purely mathematical idea, his work is important and was explored by others. He says in this paper that his theory possessed virtually unsurpassed formal unity ... which could not amount to the mere alluring play of a capricious accident.

Kaluza is remembered for this in Kaluza-Klein field theory, which involved field equations in five-dimensional space.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. P G Bergmann, An introduction to the Theory of Relativity (New York, 1942).
  3. M Kaku, Hyperspace : A scientific odessey through parallel universes, time warps, and the 10th dimension (Oxford, 1994), 99-107. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996