Abstract

In 1949, Gödel published a paper on a new type of relativistic world models, namely the rotating Gödel universes. One remarkable feature of such models is the existence of closed time-like curves which means that they admit travelling in time. The question which I want to address is by which source Gödel might have been inspired when assuming a rotating universe. Although it is unlikely that he was influenced by predecessors like Anaxagoras, Descartes, Kant or Lambert or by the undoubtedly important work of the Austrian physicist Thirring, there is overwhelming evidence that Einstein himself inspired Gödel's work on the rotating universe. Still adhering to Mach's principle at that time Einstein would not have proposed the idea of rotation of the universe himself. But, in September 1946, Gamov had written to Einstein about a possible rotation of the entire universe which might explain the rotation of individual galaxies. Gamov thought about accounting for this rotation by searching for a homogeneous but anisotropic solution of Einstein's field equations. I guess that Einstein told Gödel about Gamovs letter not knowing that he thereby was preparing the ground for Gödel's cosmological solution.