Nordström's theory of gravitation

In theoretical physics, Nordström's theory of gravitation was a predecessor of general relativity. Strictly speaking, there were actually two distinct theories proposed by the Finnish theoretical physicist Gunnar Nordström, in 1912 and 1913 respectively. The first was quickly dismissed, but the second became the first known example of a metric theory of gravitation, in which the effects of gravitation are treated entirely in terms of the geometry of a curved spacetime.

Neither of Nordström's theories are in agreement with observation and experiment. Nonetheless, the first remains of interest insofar as it led to the second. The second remains of interest both as an important milestone on the road to the current theory of gravitation, general relativity, and as a simple example of a self-consistent relativistic theory of gravitation. As an example, this theory is particularly useful in the context of pedagogical discussions of how to derive and test the predictions of a metric theory of gravitation.

Nordström's theories arose at a time when several leading physicists, including Nordström in Helsinki, Max Abraham in Milan, Gustav Mie in Greifswald, Germany, and Albert Einstein in Prague, were all trying to create competing relativistic theories of gravitation.

All of these researchers began by trying to suitably modify the existing theory, the field theory version of Newton's theory of gravitation. In this theory, the field equation is the Poisson equation ${\displaystyle \Delta \phi =4\pi \rho }$, where ${\displaystyle \phi }$ is the gravitational potential and ${\displaystyle \rho }$ is the density of matter, augmented by an equation of motion for a test particle in an ambient gravitational field, which we can derive from Newton's force law and which states that the acceleration of the test particle is given by the gradient of the potential

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