“Although the Special Theory of Relativity does not account for electromagnetic phenomena, it explains many of their properties. General Relativity, however, tells us nothing about electromagnetism. In Einstein's space-time continuum gravitational forces are absorbed in the geometry, but the electromagnetic forces are quite unaffected. Various attempts have been made to generate the geometry of space-time so as to produce a unified field theory incorporating both gravitational and electromagnetic forces.”

p, 125
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

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Gerald James Whitrow39

British mathematician 1912–2000

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“The last thirty years of Einstein's life were largely devoted to a search for a so-called unified field theory that would unify James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism with the general theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation. Einstein's attempt was not successful, and with hindsight we can now see that it was misconceived. Not only did Einstein reject quantum mechanics; the scope of his effort was too narrow. … Nevertheless Einstein's struggle is our struggle today. It is the search for a final theory.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

page 18, 2nd edition https://books.google.com/books?id=Qd0MEtsBr7oC&pg=PA18 <br class="br">Dreams of a Final Theory (1992; 2nd edition 1994)

“A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann… and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation—whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

From the Author's Preface to Third Edition (1919)
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

“Then the theory of relativity came and explained the cause of the failure. Electric action requires time to travel from one point of space to another, the simplest instance of this being the finite speed of travel of light… Thus electromagnetic action may be said to travel through space and time jointly. But by filling space and space alone [excluding time] with an ether, the pictorial representations had all supposed a clear-cut distinction between space and time.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

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“In Einstein's general theory of relativity the identity of these two coefficients, the gravitational and the inertial mass, is no longer a miracle, but a necessity, because gravitation and inertia are identical.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

“In string theory one studies strings moving in a fixed classical spacetime. …what we call a background-dependent approach. …One of the fundamental discoveries of Einstein is that there is no fixed background. The very geometry of space and time is a dynamical system that evolves in time. The experimental observations that energy leaks from binary pulsars in the form of gravitational waves—at the rate predicted by general relativity to the… accuracy of eleven decimal places—tell us that there is no more a fixed background of spacetime geometry than there are fixed crystal spheres holding the planets up.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“This fact, that all charges are integral multiples of a fundamental unit, is still one of the unexplained puzzles of fundamental physics. It does not in any way contradict electromagnetic theory, but it is not predicted by it, and until we have a more fundamental theory that explains it, we shall not feel that we really understand electromagnetic phenomena thoroughly. Presumably its explanation will not come until we understand quantum theory more thoroughly than we do at present.”

John C. Slater (1900–1976) American physicist

[John Clarke Slater, Nathaniel Herman Frank, Electromagnetism, Courier Dover Publications, 1969, 0486622630, 11]

“The color gauge theory postulates the existence of eight massless particles, sometimes called gluons, that are the carriers of the strong force just as the photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force.”

Sheldon L. Glashow (1932) American theoretical physicist

Source: The Charm of Physics (1991), p. 151

“Relativity theory forced the abandonment, in principle, of absolute space and absolute time.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 43

“In what respect… does the general theory of relativity differ…? The answer is: in its universality; the force of gravitation in the geometrical structure acts equally on all matter. There is here a close analogy between the gravitational mass M…(Sun) and the inertial mass m… (Earth) on the one hand, and the heat conduction k of the field (plate)… and the coefficient of expansion c… on the other. …The success of the general relativity theory… is attributable to the fact that the gravitational and inertial masses of any body are… rigorously proportional for all matter.”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

“In electromagnetism… the law of the inverse square had been supreme, but, as a consequence of the work of Faraday and Maxwell, it was superseded by the field. And the same change took place in the theory of gravitation. By and by the material particles, electrically charged bodies, and magnets which are the things that we actually observe come to be looked upon only as "singularities" in the field. So far this transformation from the force to the potential, from the action at a distance to the field, is only a purely mathematical operation.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

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Gerald James Whitrow39

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