MG11 
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The Einstein-Vari\'cak correspondence on relativistic rigid rotation

The problem of the rigidly rotating disk has long been recognized as a crucial `missing link' in our historical reconstruction of his path toward General Relativity, in a seminal paper by J. Stachel (1980) and in further work by G. Maltese and L. Orlando (1995). The problem of relativistic rigid rotation combines several different but related problems: the issue of a Lorentz-covariant definition of rigid motion, the number of degrees of freedom of a rigid body, the reality of length contraction, Ehrenfest's paradox, and the introduction of non-Euclidean geometric concepts into the theory of relativity. I will review the historical significance of these issues in light of recently found correspondence between Einstein and the mathematician Vladimir Vari\'cak from the years 1909 to 1913.