Introduction

Two of the most remarkable revolutions in the history of science took place in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. One began in 1905, when Einstein formulated the special theory of relativity. This is based on two principles, namely, that the same basic physical laws apply in all inertial reference frames and that the velocity of light in a vacuum is constant. Einstein’s theory imposed modifications on the Newtonian concepts of space and time, and these modifications led to a radically new and unified interpretation of the classical physics of Newton and Maxwell. In this sense, the special theory of relativity can be regarded as the crowning glory of classical physics.