Paper detail

On first attempts to reconcile quantum principles with gravity

In his 1916's first paper on gravitational waves Einstein began to speculate on interactions between the principles of the old quantum theory and his theory of gravitation. With this contribution Einstein has stimulated a lot of similar speculations, during the dawn and the development of Quantum Mechanics. These speculations have culminated with the first attempt to quantize the gravitational field, that was provided by Rosenfeld in 1930. In this paper we briefly explain why this period (1916-1930) should be inserted into the history of Quantum Gravity and then we focus on Klein's approach to the problem of reconciling Wave Mechanics with gravity, during the two-years period 1926-1927. His attempt should be looked as the prehistory of Quantum Field Theory in a curved background.