0000000000424837
AUTHOR
Tobias Schütz
Einstein's Washington Manuscript on Unified Field Theory
In this note, we point attention to and briefly discuss a curious manuscript of Einstein, composed in 1938 and entitled "Unified Field Theory," the only such writing, published or unpublished, carrying this title without any further specification. Apparently never intended for publication, the manuscript sheds light both on Einstein's modus operandi as well as on the public role of Einstein's later work on a unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism.
Exploring Gravitational Lensing
In this article, we discuss the idea of gravitational lensing, from a systematic, historical and didactic point of view. We show how the basic lensing equation together with the concepts of geometrical optics opens a space of implications that can be explored along different dimensions. We argue that Einstein explored the idea along different pathways in this space of implication, and that these explorations are documented by different calculational manuscripts. The conceptualization of the idea of gravitational lensing as a space of exploration also shows the feasibility of discussing the idea in the classroom using some of Einstein's manuscripts.