Centennaries are worth celebrating, especially when they involve people whose work advanced our understanding of reality. A big one comes up in 2008, about which this clue:

“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”

The speaker is Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909), the German scientist and mathematician who didn’t survive the 1908 presentation he began with these words by more than a few months (he died of appendicitis the following January). The talk, entitled Raum und Zeit, contains Minkowski’s view that time and space must be understood together as a four dimensional concept called spacetime.

That idea played a material role in furthering Einstein’s later development of General Relativity. Indeed, Einstein would later write of Minkowski’s views that “Without them…the General Theory of Relativity would probably have remained stuck in its swaddling-clothes.”

Honoring the centennary will be Third International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime, to be held in June of 2008 in Montreal. Its purpose: “…to bring together physicists and philosophers and to provide a forum where different aspects of the nature and ontology of spacetime can be discussed.” The call for papers remains open until November. Papers on Minkowski’s legacy are especially sought.