The creation and establishment of the Special Theory of Relativity have been the subject of systematic historical research. Historians of the physical sciences have explored, among other things, the following questions: What were the problems that occupied physicists at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries? How did other physicists contribute to the creation of the Special Theory of Relativity? What was Einstein's problematic that led him to formulate the theory? What philosophical, cultural, and technological influences can be discerned in Einstein's thinking? What reactions did the Special Theory of Relativity encounter and how was it established in the community of physicists? What were the peculiarities of the theory's reception in different countries?

These are the questions that this collection attempts to answer, starting with a text by the editors on the historical and historiographical issues surrounding the Special Theory of Relativity, continuing with Einstein's autobiographical text, and including the classic articles by historians of science Gerald Holton, Stanley Goldberg, and Peter Galison.