GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxix The basic organization of The Collected Papers is chronological. Einstein's life has been divided into four periods. As the title The Early Years (1879- 1902) suggests, the present volume documents Einstein's youth, up to the time he began to work for the Swiss Patent Office. The later periods, The Swiss Years (1901-1914), The Berlin Years (1914-1933), and The Princeton Years (1933-1955), will each be covered by several volumes. Subsequent volumes of The Collected Papers will be separated into two series: Writings and Correspondence. The Writings will contain Einstein's books, published and unpublished articles, lecture and research notebooks, and book reviews. They will also include reliable records of his lectures, speeches, interviews, and other oral statements. The Correspondence will present all available letters written by Einstein and all nontrivial letters to him. These volumes, moreover, will include third-party letters and documents that contain important information bearing on his activities. Like the present volume, each Correspondence volume will also con- tain a chronology of Einstein's life and biographical sketches of some signif- icant figures in his life during the period covered by that volume. Each document is printed in its original language. English translations are provided for the few that are not in German, French, or English. A microform supplement to this edition, being prepared under separate editorship, will contain English translations of previously untranslated German and French documents, and references to existing translations of the others. The next sequence of volumes, The Swiss Years (1901-1914), will consist of at least two volumes of Writings and one volume of Correspondence. The latter will present exchanges with such prominent scientists as Max von Laue, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, Ernst Mach, Max Planck, and Arnold Sommer- feld. The volumes of Writings, whose publication will precede the Corre- spondence volume, will include Einstein's fundamental papers on the special and general theories of relativity, quantum theory, and statistical physics, as well as a lengthy unpublished review of the special theory of relativity and research notes on general relativity. Lecture notes prepared by Einstein for courses he taught in Zurich on analytical mechanics, statistical mechanics, and electromagnetic theory will be included, supplemented by students' notes on these and other courses he taught, including notes on special relativity.
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