F Winterberg and Einstein?
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I don't know much about the allegations, but I can answer one point. If the theory of relativity is correct, then of course Einstein would get the same answer as other people. The statement "Yet many of Poincaré's ideas - for example, that the speed of light is a limit and that mass increases with speed - wound up in Einstein's paper" is meaningless, since the assumption of a constant speed of light leads directly to it being a limit and there being a mass increase. If they both did the workings right they would both get the same answer, whether they knew of each other's work or not.
Yes I agree.
For example with this quote:
It's obvious that this is an attempt to belittle predictions attached to an idea, and elevate a notion that there wasn't much of importance differing between Lorentz and Einstein's predictions, which is a comment far from scientific coherence.
However I know little about the claims raised in this quote, also found above:
If I'm not mistaken, Hilbert never accused Einstein, on the contrary both he and Lorentz came to make statements of great respect and appreciation for Einstein.
This belongs in the Conspiracy Theories subforum...
So the physicists created Einstein to steal money from the other sciences. This is stupid, among other things, because in 1905 Poincaré was already a 'superhero'. Attributing all of relativity to him, in addition to all the things he had already done, would have been easier...
This is the first paragraph and it is insulting enough to drop the whole article. I can't find much energy right now to address all these claims, but I'll write a few things.
The editor is Max Planck. Hardly a moron. He proposed and defended Einstein for the Nobel prize several times since 1905.
Speaking of prizes... What about the photoelectric effect? Did he plagiarise it too? Remember that his explanation of the photoelectric effect (1905) was what gave him the Nobel Prize, not the theory of Relativity.
Einstein's paper had no references and this was unusual. Nowadays it would be unthinkable. I agree that the lack of references looks a bit unprofessional, but the importance of the paper makes up for it. Einstein claimed he didn't know about the Michelson-Morley experiment and other facts that would be obvious citations. I don't know whether he really knew about this experiment. But I don't see why he would left it out, because it strongly supports his paper. Furthermore, M-M didn't include any explanation, so there was nothing to plagiarise.
Einstein's Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper starts from two postulates and develops all the kinematics of what was going to be the special theory of relativity. It is completely self contained and its mathematics are very simple, so there was less of a need for references. You can easily find it on the Internet. Anyone with little more than highschool background can follow it, at least the important bits. I may post a link to it later, together with Michelson and Morley's paper from 1887.
As for other references: Lorentz had already found the correct transformations. He had done so by examining which set of coordinate transformations left Maxwell's equations invariant. They are exactly the same ones that Einstein found from his postulates, but they followed from a strictly mathematical reasoning, without a physical justification. When Einstein heard about it, of course, he recognised Lorentz's primacy and called them Lorentz transformations, as we still do today.
I find Born's quotation misleading. It gives the impression that Born thought of Einstein as a plagiarist. In the book Principles of Optics,[1] written by him and E. Wolf, they credit Einstein with special relativity in several places, for example:
This is ridiculous:
The entire body of literature by Poincaré! Poincaré was nothing less than the most important mathematician of his time and probably the last man to understand all of his contemporary mathematics. It would be quite difficult to steal all of his work.
Hilbert had a lot to contribute to general relativity, of course, but the main author is Einstein.
___________
[1] This is the most important and best book in optics, bar none.
So the physicists created Einstein to steal money from the other sciences. This is stupid, among other things, because in 1905 Poincaré was already a 'superhero'. Attributing all of relativity to him, in addition to all the things he had already done, would have been easier...
This is the first paragraph and it is insulting enough to drop the whole article. I can't find much energy right now to address all these claims, but I'll write a few things.
The editor is Max Planck. Hardly a moron. He proposed and defended Einstein for the Nobel prize several times since 1905.
Speaking of prizes... What about the photoelectric effect? Did he plagiarise it too? Remember that his explanation of the photoelectric effect (1905) was what gave him the Nobel Prize, not the theory of Relativity.
Einstein's paper had no references and this was unusual. Nowadays it would be unthinkable. I agree that the lack of references looks a bit unprofessional, but the importance of the paper makes up for it. Einstein claimed he didn't know about the Michelson-Morley experiment and other facts that would be obvious citations. I don't know whether he really knew about this experiment. But I don't see why he would left it out, because it strongly supports his paper. Furthermore, M-M didn't include any explanation, so there was nothing to plagiarise.
Einstein's Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper starts from two postulates and develops all the kinematics of what was going to be the special theory of relativity. It is completely self contained and its mathematics are very simple, so there was less of a need for references. You can easily find it on the Internet. Anyone with little more than highschool background can follow it, at least the important bits. I may post a link to it later, together with Michelson and Morley's paper from 1887.
As for other references: Lorentz had already found the correct transformations. He had done so by examining which set of coordinate transformations left Maxwell's equations invariant. They are exactly the same ones that Einstein found from his postulates, but they followed from a strictly mathematical reasoning, without a physical justification. When Einstein heard about it, of course, he recognised Lorentz's primacy and called them Lorentz transformations, as we still do today.
I find Born's quotation misleading. It gives the impression that Born thought of Einstein as a plagiarist. In the book Principles of Optics,[1] written by him and E. Wolf, they credit Einstein with special relativity in several places, for example:
This is ridiculous:
The entire body of literature by Poincaré! Poincaré was nothing less than the most important mathematician of his time and probably the last man to understand all of his contemporary mathematics. It would be quite difficult to steal all of his work.
I'll try to comment on the Hilbert/Einstein issue later. A quotation
Hilbert had a lot to contribute to general relativity, of course, but the main author is Einstein.
___________
[1] This is the most important and best book in optics, bar none.
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Thanks Yllanes for your input.
Somehow these notions of fraud/plagiarism keeps appearing, oft forgetting that for example, Poincare didn't formulate the Principal of Relativity as it was Galileo.
No ones seems to wish to accuse Newton of plagiarizing Euclid either, heh.
Somehow these notions of fraud/plagiarism keeps appearing, oft forgetting that for example, Poincare didn't formulate the Principal of Relativity as it was Galileo.
No ones seems to wish to accuse Newton of plagiarizing Euclid either, heh.
Here you can find a brief chronology of General Relativity. We see that Hilbert arrived at several results independently and at roughly the same time (sometimes a few days earlier) than Einstein. This is not a case of plagiarism. An interesting paragraph:
This shows that contemporary physicists credited Einstein. Also, Lorentz doesn't seem to have any problem with him.
Special Relativity. Here we see that Poincaré came very close to the theory of special relativity, many of its features were alread in his papers. But the fact that the ideas are there for a 2006 reader is not the same as saying that Poincaré fully realised the full extent of the theory, or that he had presented it in a comprehensive way anywhere.
Science is filled with situations like this, when someone almost finds something but the credit goes to the one who presents a complete exposition. Sometimes this is rather unfair. A good example is the impossibility of solving the equations of degree >= 5 by radicals. The credit is always given to Abel. Ruffini, however, had already proved it. His work was ignored by contemporary mathematicians, because it was new and difficult and all the credit usually goes to Abel.[1] It is true that Abel's proof was more rigorous, but at the very least we should give equal credit to the both of them.
The case of Special Relativity is different. In the problem of the quintic, Ruffini had provided a complete proof, using original ideas (he had to develop a lot of group theoretic concepts, unknown at the time). In the case of relativity, Poincaré's ideas were disorganised, inconnected and incomplete. We didn't have a working theory until Einstein published his paper, were he deduced all the results (length contraction, Lorentz transformations and later the celebrated E = mc^2) from two simple postulates and introduced some new ideas (clock paradox). His approach was completely original, which makes him the really important character in the development of the theory.
There's a difference. Galileo's principle of relativity includes only mechanics, while Einstein's includes all of physics (excluding gravitation).
__________
[1] Ruffini's proof had a minor techical problem. But that was not uncommon for the time (1799), by today's standards many famous proofs by Euler, for example, would be invalid.
This shows that contemporary physicists credited Einstein. Also, Lorentz doesn't seem to have any problem with him.
Special Relativity. Here we see that Poincaré came very close to the theory of special relativity, many of its features were alread in his papers. But the fact that the ideas are there for a 2006 reader is not the same as saying that Poincaré fully realised the full extent of the theory, or that he had presented it in a comprehensive way anywhere.
Science is filled with situations like this, when someone almost finds something but the credit goes to the one who presents a complete exposition. Sometimes this is rather unfair. A good example is the impossibility of solving the equations of degree >= 5 by radicals. The credit is always given to Abel. Ruffini, however, had already proved it. His work was ignored by contemporary mathematicians, because it was new and difficult and all the credit usually goes to Abel.[1] It is true that Abel's proof was more rigorous, but at the very least we should give equal credit to the both of them.
The case of Special Relativity is different. In the problem of the quintic, Ruffini had provided a complete proof, using original ideas (he had to develop a lot of group theoretic concepts, unknown at the time). In the case of relativity, Poincaré's ideas were disorganised, inconnected and incomplete. We didn't have a working theory until Einstein published his paper, were he deduced all the results (length contraction, Lorentz transformations and later the celebrated E = mc^2) from two simple postulates and introduced some new ideas (clock paradox). His approach was completely original, which makes him the really important character in the development of the theory.
There's a difference. Galileo's principle of relativity includes only mechanics, while Einstein's includes all of physics (excluding gravitation).
__________
[1] Ruffini's proof had a minor techical problem. But that was not uncommon for the time (1799), by today's standards many famous proofs by Euler, for example, would be invalid.
Here's a quote from Lorentz on Einstein:
It can't be coherently claimed that Einstein plagiarized for example Lorentz while Lorentz himself had studied Einstein's work and being in some aww over Einstein's theories as obvious from above?
It can't be coherently claimed that Einstein plagiarized for example Lorentz while Lorentz himself had studied Einstein's work and being in some aww over Einstein's theories as obvious from above?
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Tez
Graduate Poster
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- Nov 29, 2001
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Whitelion the claims that Hilbert should get more credit are ridiculous.
For 10 years people knew SR was incompatible with gravity. The problem was open to any person, and many other smart people did try. Einstein struggled to understand the physical principles which would lead to reconciliation, and his struggles can be followed both in papers he published and letters he wrote over that period. He actually learned about Riemann's stuff primarily from Grossman, with whom he published a "precursor" theory to GR that wasnt quite right in 1914. In addition to things such as the equivalence principle, it took a lot of physical insight to deal with the conceptual problems (such as the hole paradox) that a generally covariant theory yields. (Arguments actually persist on this today - see the paper below) What Hilbert certainly did do first was show how Einsteins field equations could be obtained from an Action principle (now called the Einstein-Hilbert action). At around the same time Schroedinger did it too, which suggests its not that hard. The point is, once you have the correct field equations finding a suitable action is pretty much a case of trial and error.
The best papers to read on this stuff are from philosophers. To get you started here is a paper by Norton, he is discussing the controversy over the physical meaning of "general covariance" but along the way he discusses some history and cites a few papers which contain a fuller and better historical record: www.physicsnerd.com/rp930701.pdf
For 10 years people knew SR was incompatible with gravity. The problem was open to any person, and many other smart people did try. Einstein struggled to understand the physical principles which would lead to reconciliation, and his struggles can be followed both in papers he published and letters he wrote over that period. He actually learned about Riemann's stuff primarily from Grossman, with whom he published a "precursor" theory to GR that wasnt quite right in 1914. In addition to things such as the equivalence principle, it took a lot of physical insight to deal with the conceptual problems (such as the hole paradox) that a generally covariant theory yields. (Arguments actually persist on this today - see the paper below) What Hilbert certainly did do first was show how Einsteins field equations could be obtained from an Action principle (now called the Einstein-Hilbert action). At around the same time Schroedinger did it too, which suggests its not that hard. The point is, once you have the correct field equations finding a suitable action is pretty much a case of trial and error.
The best papers to read on this stuff are from philosophers. To get you started here is a paper by Norton, he is discussing the controversy over the physical meaning of "general covariance" but along the way he discusses some history and cites a few papers which contain a fuller and better historical record: www.physicsnerd.com/rp930701.pdf
Yes that was an interesting read, I appreciate the link.
Furthermore, e=mc2 isn't really the essence of relativity in this case is it? As an amusingly repeated claim would have it, that Einstein wasn't the first to write an e=mc2 formula therefor he's a fraud
Darn, something Bjerknes forgot to put in his diatribe, along with actually getting a degree.
Isn't it essentially more, the heart of it that is, out of the equation regarding his space-time metric?, the "s^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - (ct)^2" one?
As it was Einstein who revealed the coherent and thus testable physics behind his theory, unlike many other preceeding good ideas which just weren't good enough.
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Well, where can we start? That has to be the stupidest thing I have read for a long time. It is so wrong that it does not even deserve an answer. It is one thing to battle misconceptions and even deliberate frauds which look 'right' for an uninformed person. There you are educating about possible pitfalls and maybe preventing their propagation. But if anyone is fooled by this kind of hateful rant, he deserves to remained fooled.
We shouldn't go down to that level: If you wrestle with a pig, the both of you end up covered in s____. But the pig likes it.
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I agree, however I know I had saw a similar post long ago, to which I did a long post, can't find it anywhere though and I forgot where the heck I posted it.
Will try to post something, for the benifit of confused fence-sitters and for the hell of it.
His attempt of equating contemporary "dark matter" issues with the conception of "aether" that M/M had over hundred years ago is not even to compare apples and oranges.