Relativity, Gravitation and World-structure (The International series of Monographs on Physics)

First edition, first impression.  viii, [2], 366pp, with plate frontispiece and numerous figures and diagrams in text. Original blue cloth boards,  panels framed with blind rules and titles in gilt on the spine.  Boards very slightly brushed and cloth slightly pushed in at spine ends.  Upper text block edge dust dulled, remaining edges lightly toned.  Internally there are some light pencil annotations (previous bookseller’s pricing and stock numbers) on the front free endpaper  else neat, clean, bright and tight.  It is original paper dust wrapper, unevenly faded and toned to brittle in places, chipped and rubbed on edges and folds but generally clean and complete, price clipped.

Edward Arthur Milne   (1896-1959) was a brilliant astrophysicist and mathematician who developed an alternative to Einstein’s general relativity based on kinematics.   Sometimes described as nonrelativistic cosmology, his theory met with much opposition but inspired many solid state theorists including Hermann Bondi and Fred Hoyle.  ‘Relativity, Gravitation and World-Structure was his major work: it was controversial as he injected curved spacetime, proposing in contrast to Einstein, that gravity and expanding universe principles could be explained using Special Relativity principles, kinematic descriptions and  a universal cosmological theory.   His theories were further developed in a publication some thirteen years later under the title Kinematic Relativity: A Sequel to Relativity, Gravitation and World-structure.