Contains articles of the historian of science Scott Walter (Universit de Nancy 2), including those on the history of special relativity, with a special focus on contributors other than Einstein (such as Poincar, and Minkowski).

Wikipedia article about the various contributors to special and general relativity, and about the contentious questions of who has priority on the different ideas and concepts involved, and in how far Einstein was influenced by his contemporaries and predecessors.

Wikipedia article about the Italian industrialist and claims that he published the famous formula E=mc two years before Einstein did.

Article tracing the history of general relativity, by the historian of science Michel Janssen (University of Minnesota).

American Scientist magazine article describes the people whose work paved the way for the special theory of relativity. By Tony Rothman; also includes link to PDF version.

Concise summary of the history of special relativity, from Maxwell and Lorentz to Einstein; from the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (University of St. Andrews).

An outline of the development of the theory, including a summary of relevant earlier work (from Aristotle to Maxwell); from the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (University of St. Andrews).

Wikipedia article on the genesis and development of special relativity and its precursors.

Wikipedia article on the development of relativity. Includes sections about observational tests and alternative theories.

Identifies the contributions made to the special theory of relativity by Poincar and argues that the theory "has been created not by A. Einstein only but even to a greater extent by Poincar." By A. A. Logunov.

About the development of general relativity, Einstein's early rejection of Lorentz-covariant theories of gravity, and Nordstrm's attempts at formulating just such a model. By J. D. Norton (University of Pittsburgh).

A discussion of the differences in perspective between Einstein and Poincar between Peter Galison (Harvard) and Graham Burnett (Princeton); main focus are the notions of time and simultaneity.

Essay by John Stachel (Boston University) which gives a concise account of Einstein's biography at the turn of the century, and attempts to reconstruct how he developed the special theory of relativity.

Website by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) presenting the seminal articles on relativity and other subjects that Einstein published in the physics journal "Annalen der Physik"; also includes four introductory essays based on recent historical studies.

Discusses the correspondence between the two, their priority dispute, and their amicable resolution of it. By Ivan T. Todorov.

New York Times article on the 1919 eclipse observations by two British expeditions, which confirmed the predictions of general relativity for light deflection near the sun.

The first presentation of the Lorentz transformations, including the crucial time dilation, belongs to Larmor (c. 1897).