What lead me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field.

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Probable attribution

A source trail connects this quotation to Albert Einstein and Letter to the Michelson Commemorative Meeting of the Cleveland Physics Society (1952), as quoted by R.S.Shankland, Am J Phys 32, 16 (1964), p35, republished in A P French, Special Relativity, ISBN 0177710756, but the exact English wording has not been confirmed in a primary text. The attribution is therefore probable rather than definitive.

Likely origin: Letter to the Michelson Commemorative Meeting of the Cleveland Physics Society (1952), as quoted by R.S.Shankland, Am J Phys 32, 16 (1964), p35, republished in A P French, Special Relativity, ISBN 0177710756

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This page records the wording "What lead me more or less directly to the special…," which centers on directly, special, theory. A concrete trail points toward Einstein, but the exact English form remains unconfirmed; the page therefore labels it as attributed to him while preserving its science and wisdom context.

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