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"On Einstein's Theory of gravitation." By Prof. H. A. Lorentz.

I.

(Communicated in the meeting of February 26, 1916).


§ 1. In pursuance of his important researches on gravitation Einstein has recently attained the aim which he had constantly kept in view; he has succeeded in establishing equations whose form is not changed by an arbitrarily chosen change of the system of coordinates[1]. Shortly afterwards, working out an idea that had been expressed already in one of Einstein's papers, Hilbert[2] has shown the use that may be made of a variation law that may be regarded as Hamilton's principle in a suitably generalized form. By these results the "general theory of relativity" may be said to have taken a definitive form, though much remains still to be done in further

  1. A. Einstein, Zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie, Berliner Sitzungsberichte 1915, pp. 778 799; Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation, ibid. 1915, p. 844.
  2. D. Hilbert, Die Grundlagen der Physik I, Göttinger Nachrichten, Math.-phys. Klasse, Nov. 1915.