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EINSTEIN AND THE CREATION OF MODERN COSMOLOGY.EINSTEIN, ALBERT. 1879-1955. "Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" ["Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity"], OFFPRINT FROM: Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, VI, pp 142-152, Berlin, 1917. 4to (252 x 180 mm). Publisher's orange wrappers, small pencil notation to upper corner "10949," light creasing along fore-edge. FINE BRIGHT COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT ISSUE, OF EINSTEIN'S LANDMARK PAPER CONTAIN THE FIRST FORMULATION OF A RELATIVISTIC COSMOLOGY. Called the "beginning of modern cosmology," Einstein's "Cosmological Considerations" was written less than two years after the breakthrough publication of his gravitational field equations and general relativity. The publication of the 1917 paper marked the first application of the field equations to the broader vision of the universe, and the first attempt at a relativistic global depiction of the universe in its entirety. Einstein wrote to his friend Paul Ehrenreich days before the paper's publication that his new idea "exposes me to the danger of being confined in a madhouse." Einstein posited a universe that was both finite and unbounded, in which the curvature of four-dimensional space-time curves completely in upon itself without edge or end. Throughout 1916, Einstein had worked to rectify Mach's principle with his own field equations in order to offer a wholistic view of a stable universe. However, he kept finding that the equations indicated a universe that had to be either expanding or contracting. Rather than trust the equations, he posited the inclusion of a Cosmological Constant which would satisfy the equations for a stable universe. Max Born has said of Einstein's conception, "This suggestion of a finite but unbounded space is one of the greatest ideas about the nature of the worlds which has ever been conceived." However, Einstein would reportedly call his adherence to the concept of a static universe in the face of his own equations his "greatest blunder," and soon Edwin Hubble would discover that has Einstein's original equations suggested, the universe was indeed expanding. In 1932, Einstein would propose a model of a continuously expanding universe that effectively nullified any need for the cosmological constant. However, modern physicists continue to work with the concept, and they now see in it the futuristic possibility of connecting "dark matter" to Einstein's gravity equations. Perhaps most importantly, Einstein's formulation of a unified conceptual model of the universe based on his field equations inspired other scientists to explore models incorporating Einstein's new gravitational framework. Everything we understand about our current picture of the universe, including the big bang theory, in a sense derives from Einstein's application of his theory in this paper. Einstein's important "Cosmological Considerations" is rare in any format. Published during World War I, the Prussian Academy's Sitzungsberichte periodical had a very limited distribution, and the offprint issue is exceedingly rare.