马克斯·亚伯拉罕Max Abraham

马克斯·亚伯拉罕出生于一个作为商人赚了大量钱财的犹太家庭。他在柏林大学师从马克斯·普朗克学习，于1897年写了他的博士学位论文。此后，他在柏林大学度过了三年，担任马克斯·普朗克的助手。

1900年，亚伯拉罕被任命为哥廷根的Privatdozent。他在哥廷根作为私人讲师授课直到1909年，这对任何人来说担任这种无薪讲师职位的时间都异常长。在此期间他未能获得永久大学职位的原因不是由于他的能力，而是由于他的个性。Goldberg在[1]中写道：-

……他对那些他认为是愚蠢或不合逻辑的论证毫无耐心。亚伯拉罕 有爱批评的倾向，并且毫不犹豫地公开斥责他的同事，无论他们的级别或职位如何。他敏锐的机智与同样敏锐的言辞相匹配，结果他在哥廷根做了九年的私人讲师。

1909年，亚伯拉罕 接受了美国伊利诺伊大学的一个职位。由于不喜欢伊利诺伊大学的小型大学氛围，他在几个月内回到了哥廷根，接着应 图利奥·列维-齐维塔 的邀请前往意大利。亚伯拉罕 在1914年之前一直是米兰大学的理性力学教授。在此期间，亚伯拉罕 和 阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦 在 [3] 和 [4] 中讨论的通信中强烈不同意相对论。阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦 也在与 图利奥·列维-齐维塔 的通信中争论相对论，而 亚伯拉罕 在这场争论中也发挥了作用，例如参见 [4]。

在第一次世界大战开始时被迫返回德国，亚伯拉罕 从事无线电传输理论的工作。战后无法返回米兰，他在斯图加特工作到1921年，替代技术学院的物理学教授，当时他接受了亚琛的一个讲席。他在前往亚琛的路上生病，被诊断出脑瘤。他再也没有康复，[2]：-

……正如他的生活遭受痛苦一样，他的结局充满了痛苦。

亚伯拉罕 的工作几乎都与 詹姆斯·克拉克·麦克斯韦 的理论有关，他写了一本在德国长期作为电动力学标准著作的教科书。Goldberg 在 [1] 中写道：-

他对矢量的持续使用是德国迅速接受矢量符号的一个重要因素。但该教科书最值得注意的特点之一是，在每一新版中，亚伯拉罕 认为合适不仅包括最新的实验工作，还包括最新的理论贡献，即使这些贡献存在争议。此外，他在阐述一个问题双方之后，毫不犹豫地利用这本书来论证自己的观点。

他的电子理论是在1902年提出的，并在他的著作中进行了强有力的论证，但在1904年，亨德里克·洛伦兹和阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦提出了不同的理论。亚伯拉罕对电子的结构和性质的研究使他产生了电子质量具有电磁性质的想法，并由此得出电磁波在引力场中速度的依赖性。起初，他的想法得到了实验的支持，特别是Wilhelm Kaufmann进行的工作，但后来的工作却倾向于支持亨德里克·洛伦兹和阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦发展的理论。

亚伯拉罕一生都反对相对论。起初他既反对相对论所基于的公设，也反对他认为实验证据不支持该理论的事实。到1912年，亚伯拉罕，尽管有反对意见，却是最理解相对论理论的人之一，准备接受该理论在逻辑上是合理的。然而，他仍然不接受该理论准确地描述了物理世界。

亚伯拉罕一直坚信以太的存在，并且认为电子是一个完全刚性的球体，电荷均匀分布在其表面。他不会轻易放弃这些信念，特别是因为他觉得自己的观点是基于常识的。他希望进一步的天文数据能支持以太理论，并表明相对论实际上并不是对真实世界的良好描述。正如马克斯·玻恩和von Laue在[2]中所写：-

他热爱他的绝对以太、他的场方程、他的刚性电子，就像一个青年热爱他的初恋一样，其记忆是后来的任何经历都无法抹去的。

许多人仍然会同意亚伯拉罕的观点，即他对世界的描述更符合常识。然而，20世纪的数学和物理学表明，当我们考察大尺度结构和小尺度结构时，我们所居住的世界与“常识”并不一致。

Max Abraham was born into a Jewish family who had made considerable amounts of money as merchants. He studied at the University of Berlin under Planck, writing his doctoral dissertation in 1897. After this he spent three years at the University of Berlin working as Planck's assistant.

In 1900 Abraham was appointed as a Privatdozent at Göttingen. He lectured at Göttingen as a Privatdozent until 1909 which is an unusual length of time for anyone to hold such an unpaid lecturing position. The reason for his failure to obtain a permanent university position during this period was not due to his ability but rather was a result of his personality. Goldberg writes in [1]:-

... he had no patience with what he considered to be silly or illogical argumentation. Abraham had a penchant for being critical and had no hesitation in publicly chastising his colleagues, regardless of their rank or position. His sharp wit was matched by an equally sharp tongue, and as a result he remained a Privatdozent at Göttingen for nine years.

In 1909 Abraham accepted a post at the University of Illinois in the United States. Disliking the small university atmosphere of Illinois, he returned within a few months to Göttingen, going next to Italy at the invitation of Levi-Civita. Abraham was professor of rational mechanics at the University of Milan until 1914. During this time Abraham and Einstein disagreed strongly about the theory of relativity in a correspondence discussed in [3] and [4]. Einstein also argued about relativity in a correspondence with Levi-Civita and Abraham played a role in this argument too, see for example [4].

Forced to return to Germany at the start of World War I, Abraham worked on the theory of radio transmission. Unable to return to Milan after the War he worked at Stuttgart until 1921, substituting for the professor of physics at the Technische Hochschule, when he accepted a chair in Aachen. He took ill on the way to Aachen and a brain tumour was diagnosed. He never recovered and [2]:-

... just as his life was suffering, his end was full of agony.

Abraham's work is almost all related to Maxwell's theory and he wrote a text which was the standard work on electrodynamics in Germany for a long time. Goldberg writes in [1]:-

His consistent use of vectors was a significant factor in the rapid acceptance of vector notation in Germany. But one of the most noteworthy features of the text was that in each new edition Abraham saw fit to include not only the latest experimental work but also the latest theoretical contributions, even if these contributions were in dispute. Furthermore, he had no hesitation, after explicating both sides of a question, in using the book to argue his own point of view.

His theory of the electron was developed in 1902, and its case strongly argued in his text, but in 1904 Lorentz and Einstein produced a different theory. Abraham's study of the structure and nature of the electron led him to the idea of the electromagnetic nature of its mass, and consequently to the dependence of the velocity of electromagnetic waves in a gravitational field. At first his ideas were supported by experiment, particularly work carried out by Wilhelm Kaufmann, but later work was to favour the theory developed by Lorentz and Einstein.

Abraham was opposed to relativity all his life. At first he objected both to the postulates on which relativity was based and also to the fact that he felt that the experimental evidence did not support the theory. By 1912 Abraham, who despite his objections was one of those who best understood relativity theory, was prepared to accept that the theory was logically sound. However, he still did not accept that the theory accurately described the physical world.

Abraham had been a strong believer in the existence of the aether and that an electron was a perfectly rigid sphere with a charge distributed evenly over its surface. He was not going to give up these beliefs easily particularly since he felt that his views were based on common sense. He hoped that further astronomical data would support the aether theory and show that relativity was not in fact a good description of the real world. As Born and von Laue write in [2]:-

He loved his absolute aether, his field equations, his rigid electron just as a youth loves his first flame, whose memory no later experience can extinguish.

Many would still agree with Abraham that his version of the world was more in line with common sense. However, mathematics and physics over the 20th century has shown that the world we inhabit is at variance with "common sense" when we examine the large scale structure and the small scale structure.