Alfred Robb

Alfred Arthur Robb or Alfred A. Robb ( born January 18, 1873 in Belfast, † December 14, 1936 in Castlereagh ) was an English physicist.

Robb studied at Queen's College in Belfast, at St John 's College, Cambridge, and in the short term at the University of Göttingen, where he was influenced by Woldemar Voigt. After that, he was employed by Joseph John Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and 1921 he was a member of the Royal Society.

He became famous for his work on the theory of special relativity, where he tried (1911, 1914) to derive the entire space-time formalism of the theory of axiomatic- geometric way. Robb was therefore also called the " Euclid of relativity ". Robb led while using the non-Euclidean geometry concepts such rapidity as a formal alternative to the relativistic velocity addition one. He believed, however, contrary to common belief that the work of Joseph Larmor and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was more important for the theory of relativity as the work of Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski.

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Publications

• Alfred Robb: Optical geometry of motion, a new view of the theory of relativity. Heffner & Sons, Cambridge, 1911.
• Alfred Robb: A theory of time and space. University Press, Cambridge, 1914.
• Alfred Robb: The absolute relations of time and space. University Press, Cambridge, 1921.
• Alfred Robb: Geometry Of Time And Space. University Press, Cambridge, 1936.