General relativity and cosmology

Abstract

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s 1915 landmark paper “Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation” in which the field equations of general relativity were correctly formulated for the first time, thus rendering general relativity a complete theory. Over the subsequent hundred years, physicists and astronomers have struggled with uncovering the consequences and applications of these equations. This paper, which was written as an introduction to six chapters dealing with the connection between general relativity and cosmology that will appear in the two-volume book One Hundred Years of General Relativity: From Genesis and Empirical Foundations to Gravitational Waves, Cosmology and Quantum Gravity, endeavors to provide a historical overview of the connection between general relativity and cosmology, two areas whose development has been closely intertwined.