The Einstein Hoax?

[Jono]

Could anyone here give quick answer to:

*"Was Einstein was the first to postulate that the laws of Nature should appear the same to all freely moving observers - the foundation of the theory of relativity? Also, Einstein's citation for the Nobel Prize in 1921 was for a relatively minor work carried out in 1905. Why did Einstein recieve the Prize that year?"

And;

*"In 1907, Einstein was aware of a problem with Absolute or Universal Time which relativity had abolished; in favour of personal or relativistic time. Yet, he didn't begin to address the difficulty or think seriously about it until he was at University in Prague in 1911, where he (seemingly) 'suddenly' realised there was a close relationship between acceleration and a gravitational field."

 

[Art Vandelay]

The who/whom distinction is rapidly obsolescing. In the context of message boards, there is no need to observe it.[/quote[Yeah, I was mostly being pedantic.

The rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition was an invention of 18th century grammarians who sought to improve English by making it conform to Latin grammar. Fortunately for everyone concerned, this artificial and unnatural restriction has fallen into disrepute.

The fact of the matter is that while an argument can be made that there are situations where a preposition can legitimately end a sentence, it often is a problem, and it should be a red flag. Having a preposition at the end of a sentence should at the very least make one question whether it is incorrect. In this case, having "from" at the end of the sentence is incorrect.

My Webster's New Universal Unabridged lists plagiarize as both transitive and intransitive.

How is that relevant?

Prepositions are notoriously fluid in English. There is no more reason to disallow "plagiarize from [someone]" because one may also say "plagiarize research" than there is to disallow "steal from [someone]" because one may also say "steal a chicken".

But that's not why I have a problem with it.

 

[epepke]

Could anyone here give quick answer to:

"Was Einstein was the first to postulate that the laws of Nature should appear the same to all freely moving observers - the foundation of the theory of relativity?"

Apart from the grammatical problems of "Was Einstein was," which don't even make sense,

No, of course not. The first person that we know of who came up with the principle of relativity was Galileo Galileii. Maybe someone before that came up with it, but we don't have records.

You may have heard of Galileo. I'm not convinced that the idiots that you are quoting ever did.

Also, Einstein's citation for the Nobel Prize in 1921 was for a relatively minor work carried out in 1905. Why did Einstein recieve the Prize that year?

Because people were impressed with relativity but were not quite sure of it. So they did the politically correct thing.

In 1907, Einstein was aware of a problem with Absolute or Universal Time which relativity had abolished; in favour of personal or relativistic time. Yet, he didn't begin to address the difficulty or think seriously about it until he was at University in Prague in 1911, where he (seemingly) 'suddenly' realised there was a close relationship between acceleration and a gravitational field.

It's true. But the people you are quoting are too dimwitted and ignorant to know anything about what was going on. By the middle of the 18th century, there were two things that seemed to indicate that the Galilean idea of relativity was wrong. One was light, which was dealt with over many years, as the result of efforts by many people (who are duly noted and given credit by people in the field, and if they aren't given credit generally, that is not the fault of physicists). Another was acceleration. Which Einstein (with help from Hilbert and Noether and others) dealt with in General Relativity.

 

[Yllanes]

*"Was Einstein was the first to postulate that the laws of Nature should appear the same to all freely moving observers - the foundation of the theory of relativity? Also, Einstein's citation for the Nobel Prize in 1921 was for a relatively minor work carried out in 1905. Why did Einstein recieve the Prize that year?"

This claim is silly for several reasons. First of all, Special Relativity was also presented in 1905 (Einstein's Annus Mirabilis, whose centenary we celebrated last year, with the World Year of Physics), as was his paper on Brownian Motion. His Nobel prize was for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, not what I would call 'minor'. And, as epepke said, relativity was not as accepted then as it is now. Also note that Planck actively sponsored Einstein for the Nobel Prize, already since 1905. Funny, if it were true that Einstein plagiarised him.

Nobel prizes are frequently awarded many years after the initial work has been carried out. For example, Roy Glauber, winner of one half the of the prize in 2005, had published his most important research in 1963, more than 40 years before...

 

[epepke]

His Nobel prize was for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, not what I would call 'minor'.

Not at all, considering that every television and digital camera on the planet depends on it.

 

[Dr Adequate]

*"Was Einstein was the first to postulate that the laws of Nature should appear the same to all freely moving observers - the foundation of the theory of relativity?

No, that was Galileo.

Also, Einstein's citation for the Nobel Prize in 1921 was for a relatively minor work carried out in 1905. Why did Einstein recieve the Prize that year?"

Well, either

(a) The Nobel committee were complete blithering idiots
(b) he'd earned it.

"In 1907, Einstein was aware of a problem with Absolute or Universal Time which relativity had abolished; in favour of personal or relativistic time. Yet, he didn't begin to address the difficulty or think seriously about it until he was at University in Prague in 1911, where he (seemingly) 'suddenly' realised there was a close relationship between acceleration and a gravitational field."

Is this a problem? He thought of one thing. Then he thought of another.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Who invented tensor calculus?

Did Einstein ever go to Italy?

Who taught Einstein tensor calculus?

Where did he get the ideas of tensor calculus?

What do you call a person who uses somebody else's ideas to support another idea and not give a citation?

This is sheer blithering idiocy.

The idea seems to be that Einstein should have given credit in his paper to Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro for inventing tensor calculus and Marcel Grossmann for teaching it to him, or face charges of "plagiarism".

This is absurd. If a student hands in homework on, say, differential calculus and neglects to mention Newton, Leibnitz, or Mr Jones his maths teacher, this is not "plagiarism".

Plagiarism involves passing off someone's work as your own. Einstein in no way pretended to have invented tensor calculus.

As for the idea that it is "plagiarism" to learn an existing mathematical technique from someone else instead of inventing it from scratch, that makes every scientist a "plagiarist". Everyone is educated by someone.

 

[Jono]

Thanks for the replies and thus the info everyone, will bob-back shortly if I encounter any additional diatribes of the same proportions.

 

[Piggy]

The fact of the matter is that while an argument can be made that there are situations where a preposition can legitimately end a sentence, it often is a problem, and it should be a red flag. Having a preposition at the end of a sentence should at the very least make one question whether it is incorrect. In this case, having "from" at the end of the sentence is incorrect.

How is that relevant?

But that's not why I have a problem with it.

Sorry, AV, but you're pushing my buttons here. There is no need to "make an argument" for placing a preposition at the end of a sentence. English grammar allows it. Some dialects frown on it, but that's merely a matter of fashion. Having "from" at the end of this sentence is not incorrect. The fact that "plagiarize" may be used transitively or intransitively is relevant to your post because you have stated that it takes a direct object -- it doesn't have to. But now I see that this isn't relevant to your point, after all. My mistake. Your objection to the construction "Einstein plagiarized from others" (removing the interrogative construction may help) seems to be based on your belief that one should (your word, "should") say instead "Einstein plagiarized others". But given the plasticity of prepositions in English, I see no grounds for this, except (again) as a preference, a matter of fashion. You're right, the "steal" example was a bad one. Here are others: "He copied from another student's test" and "He copied another student's test". "He borrowed from others' work" and "He borrowed others' work". "They sampled other artists' records" and "They sampled from other artists' records". There is no error here. Btw, you shoudn't say "situations where". Situations aren't places. You should say "situations in which". NB: I don't actually believe that last paragraph. Just thought you'd appreciate a little school-marmishness on a Sunday morning.

 

[Jono]

Is this supposed to be an argument against the actuality of the "sacred laws" of physics, on Einsteins proof?

Saw someone use it in a discussion with the wording, "what about this then?".

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/4/7/8

One of the most sacred laws of physics is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. But this speed limit has been smashed in a recent experiment in which a laser pulse travels at more than 300 times the speed of light (L J Wang et al. 2000 Nature 406 277). However, the laws of physics remain intact because Lijun Wang and colleagues at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton in the US are able to explain the results of their experiment in terms of the classical theory of wave propagation.

 

[Yllanes]

Is this supposed to be an argument against the actuality of the "sacred laws" of physics, on Einsteins proof?

Saw someone use it in a discussion with the wording, "what about this then?".

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/4/7/8

With EM waves, phase velocity is usually greater than c, but phase speed is not a speed in the SR sense, so it doesn't matter.

However, group velocity is usually less than c, because it is the speed of the wave packets and usually the speed at which energy travels.

In experiments like that one, it is not easy to see at which speed energy travels. It is a complicated set up where most of the assumptions commonly made when studying EM waves don't work. So group velocity doesn't have the same meaning as with a normal wave packet.

In short: when talking about waves, we use several concepts of 'speed'. But not all of them are a 'speed' in the SR sense, so they are not constrained by the speed of light. They have to carry information/energy.

 

[Art Vandelay]

There is no need to "make an argument" for placing a preposition at the end of a sentence. English grammar allows it.

That seems like argument by assertion to me.

Your objection to the construction "Einstein plagiarized from others" (removing the interrogative construction may help) seems to be based on your belief that one should (your word, "should") say instead "Einstein plagiarized others".

Shouldn't the non-interrogative version be "Others Einstein plagarized from" or "Einstein plagarized others from"?

There is no error here.

I concede it is merely a matter of opinion. "Einstein plagarized from Lorentz", much like "Einstein robbed from Lorentz" or "Einsteain sought for Lorentz", strike me as being wrong. Part of the problem is that placing the indirect object, rather than the direct object, nexzt to the verb has been accepted. For instance, rather than saying "Einstein plagrized this idea from Lorentz", people say "Einstein plagarized from Lorentz this idea", and that gets shortened to "Einstein plagarized from Lorentz". This leads to such linguistic monstrosities as "Banks market customers products".

 

[Ladewig]

Thanks for the replies and thus the info everyone, will bob-back shortly if I encounter any additional diatribes of the same proportions.

Are you debating these folks online or in person?

 

[Jono]

Are you debating these folks online or in person?

Not so much for myself online though I do participate in debates on these matters at times, currently looking at some issues/claims on it made by WN's (White Nationalists).

A different kind of woo in a sense.

 

[joe87]

I'm surprised that these Einstein debunkers didn't mention his first wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian gentile who was trained as a physicist. There was some controversy a couple of years ago about whether Meric had contributed to Einstein's early work, but I think that there is little evidence to show that she had.

 

[Yllanes]

I'm surprised that these Einstein debunkers didn't mention his first wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian gentile who was trained as a physicist. There was some controversy a couple of years ago about whether Meric had contributed to Einstein's early work, but I think that there is little evidence to show that she had.

Yes, there are some people who maintain that Einstein didn't know anything about mathematics and that she helped him quite a bit. But Einstein's 1905 papers are quite simple mathematically, and his later and more sophisticated work was carried out after that marriage was over.

 

[Jono]

I'm surprised that these Einstein debunkers didn't mention his first wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian gentile who was trained as a physicist. There was some controversy a couple of years ago about whether Meric had contributed to Einstein's early work, but I think that there is little evidence to show that she had.

It will probably show up soon, it seems to pop-up every now and then.

However, to my knowledge, the evidence for this is purely anecdotal and also, Mileva didn't do anything of her own after the divorce.

It's a bit tough to swallow right off the bat so to speak.
Still... what man has not his wife to thank for many things

 

[epepke]

I'm surprised that these Einstein debunkers didn't mention his first wife, Mileva Maric, a Serbian gentile who was trained as a physicist. There was some controversy a couple of years ago about whether Meric had contributed to Einstein's early work, but I think that there is little evidence to show that she had.

I don't think it was a controversy as much as someone deciding to construct a Shakespeare's Sister myth around it. The trouble is that the genius in the SR paper is the insight, and once you have that, all you need is the Pythagorean Theorem to work out the Lorentz/Fitzgerald transformations. It's easily within the capabilities of a reasonably bright high-school student.

The irony is that, if for ideological reasons you want a woman to give credit to, there really was one. Emmy Noether contributed to one of the sticky problems in GR. Einstein himself wrote rather gushingly about Noether's abilities. And the names of everybody who contributed, not just to relativity but to the other work with which Einstein was associated, are duly remembered and honored by those in the field.

Einstein also became a general public celebrity, but it isn't his fault that the public can't be arsed to remember the names of important scientists and mathematicians the way they do baseball players, actors, and singers.

 

[Yllanes]

The irony is that, if for ideological reasons you want a woman to give credit to, there really was one. Emmy Noether contributed to one of the sticky problems in GR. Einstein himself wrote rather gushingly about Noether's abilities. And the names of everybody who contributed, not just to relativity but to the other work with which Einstein was associated, are duly remembered and honored by those in the field.

A good point. Noether is one of those scientists who are not known at all by the general public, but their contributions are incredibly important. Noether's theorem is the bread and butter of theoretical mechanics and, even more so, of the theory of fields. But how many laymen have heard of it, or what it roughly says? Another example could be Gibbs (but know he is on a 2005 US stamp).

 

[gnome]

Here is a photograph of Planck, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and Lorentz not pointing out to the Fifth Solvay Conference that Einstein had plagiarized their work. The other guy front center is Lorentz.

This is the most effective example I've ever seen of proving a negative by showing a photograph of something not happening. What's usually said in sarcasm actually works here. Bravo.