HILBERT, David. Die Grundlagen der Physik.
Berlin: Julius Springer, 1924. First edition.

Offprint of this important paper in the history of general relativity. Hilbert declared himself that this paper was essentially just a reprint, with minor editorial notes, of his two earlier papers under the same title from 1915-16, in which he presented the field equations of general relativity before Einstein did. However, as several Hilbert biographers have pointed out, the 1924 version of his theory contains “major conceptual adjustments and a recognition of its deductive structure” (Renn & Stachel: The Genesis of General Relativity, p.930). “... it was Hilbert’s aim to give not just a theory of gravitation but an axiomatic theory of the world. This lends an exalted quality to his paper, from the title, ‘Die Grundlagen der Physik’, The Foundations of Physics, to the concluding paragraph, in which he expressed his conviction that his fundamental equations would eventually solve the riddles of atomic structure” (Pais: Subtle is the Lord, pp. 257-258). On 21 November 1915 Hilbert submitted a paper to the Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Göttingen which contained the correct field equations of gravitation; Einstein submitted a paper to the Prussian Academy five days later containing the same equations. Hilbert derived the equations from a variational principle, which he was the first to state correctly. His paper also contains the statement, but not the proof, of what is now known as Noether’s theorem (proved by Emmy Noether in 1918). This theorem implies the existence of four identities which Hilbert believed incorrectly were the four electromagnetic equations, and hence that electromagnetism was essentially a gravitational phenomenon (it was later understood that the identities are the energy-momentum conservation laws). “These and other errors are expurgated in an article Hilbert wrote in 1924 [the present paper]. It is again entitled ‘Die Grundlagen der Physik’ and contains a synopsis of his 1915 paper and a sequel to it written a year later. Hilbert’s collected works, each volume of which contains a preface by Hilbert himself, does not include these two early papers, but only the one of 1924” (Pais, p.258). See pp. 399-403 of ‘David Hilbert and the Axiomatization of Physics’ by Leo Corry for a detailed account of the “remarkable differences between the early printed versions of the communications and the 1924 article”.

Offprint from: Mathematische Annalen, Band 92, Heft 1/2, 1924, pp.1-32. Original printed wrappers; small scratch to rear wrapper, otherwise fine and clean. Rare in offprint issue.