Annus Mirabilis papers
Einstein's special-relativity paper is received for publication
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The paper that abolished absolute simultaneity opened with a magnet and a wire — an everyday object whose observed current had two incompatible explanations.
30 June 1905: a journal receipt date
Annalen der Physik recorded 30 June 1905 as the receipt date of Albert Einstein's manuscript 'Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper' — 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.' The printed article, 31 pages running from page 891, carries that date on its face.
'Submitted' is a reasonable rendering of the journal's receipt notation, but the surviving evidence does not establish how or at what hour the manuscript arrived.
What was in the 31 pages
Einstein began from the relativity principle and the postulate that light in empty space propagates at a speed independent of the motion of its source. He gave operational definitions of simultaneity using synchronized clocks and derived the transformation between inertial coordinate systems now called the Lorentz transformation.
From those foundations came the relativity of simultaneity, length contraction, time dilation, velocity addition, and the transformations of electromagnetic quantities and light frequency. The motivating example was mundane: a magnet and a conductor in relative motion, whose single observed current had two incompatible conventional explanations.
What the paper did not contain
It carried neither the name 'special relativity' nor the four-dimensional spacetime formalism that Hermann Minkowski supplied later. It also lacked the mass–energy relation: Einstein treated that implication in a separate manuscript received on 27 September 1905.
Nor did the receipt date make the ideas scientific consensus. Annalen der Physik accepted the manuscript into its publication process; circulation and response from physicists such as Max Planck followed afterward.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes
How this was checked
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What the sources leave uncertain
- The printed article itself securely states that it was received on 30 June 1905.
- “Submitted” is a reasonable rendering of the journal’s receipt notation, but surviving evidence does not establish the precise delivery mechanism or hour. Accounts saying Einstein personally “presented” it at the journal office go beyond the record.