JF Ptak Science Books Reference Tool series
Jakob Laub--the first collaborator of Albert Einstein--wrote one of the earliest histories/retrospectives of relativity theory for the Jahrbuch der Radioaktivitat und Electronik in volume 7 for 1910: "Uber die experimentellen Grundlagen des Relativitatsprinzips", pp 405-463. (It seems that I don't often see/notice references on this level citing the first German edition of an integral work in another language, which Laub does here for example in two articles by Fizeau that he found in Annalen when their original publication took place in the Comptes Rendus.) (See the reference for Laub in Physics Before and After Einstein edited by M. Mamone Cap; also The Scientist as Philosopher: Philosophical Consequences of Great Scientific ...by F. Weinert.
This paper also contains a 127-item bibliography, which I cannot find online and which I reproduce below.
On Laub, from the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, volume 17:
"Laub attended gymnasium in Rzeszόw. In 1902, after studying briefly at the universities of Cracow and Vienna, he entered the University of Göttingen as a student of mathematics and physics. There, taking courses and seminars with David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski, he became interested in the electron theory. He turned to experiment, and in 1905 he decided to work with Wilhelm Wien at Würzburg. Laub’s doctoral dissertation (1907) concerned secondary cathode-ray emission. At his oral defense (1906), he introduced Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which Wien had recommended to him in September 1905. For the next several years Laub remained at Würzburg and concentrated on extending Einstein’s ideas."
"Although by early 1908 Einstein was attracting notice from distinguished physicists, he had not yet received a university appointment. It was an unusual step, then, when in February 1908 Laub wrote to Einstein to ask if he could visit Bern to study relativity with him. Laub became Einstein’s first scientific collaborator. Together they published articles criticizing Minkowski’s notion of electromagnetic force and suggesting an experiment to decide between Einstein’s special relativity and Hendrik Lorentz’s electron theory."
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