"A four dimensional continuum described by the co ordinates x1, x2, x3, x4, was called "world" by Minkowski, who also termed a point-event a "world point." From a "happening" in three-dimensional space, physics becomes, as it were, an "existence" in the four-dimensional world. This four dimensional "world" bears a close similarity to the three-dimensional "space" of Euclidean analytical geometry. ...We can regard Minkowski's "world" in a formal manner as a four-dimensional Euclidean space (with imaginary time co-ordinate); the Lorentz transformation corresponds to a "rotation" of the co-ordinate system in the four-dimensional world."
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Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1920)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski
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Hermann Minkowski
1864 – 1909
deutscher Mathematiker und Physiker
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