Einstein's real importance to relativity theory

[student85]

Hi guys,
I hope this is the right place to post this, given it's not a technical question, but it certainly is related to science.
Lately I've been interested in knowing about the history of relativity, how both the special and the general theory came to be, what was Einstein's real input into it. I've heard and read a lot saying that special relativity wasn't really Einstein's idea and that he is given more credit for it than he deserves. I've read that Lorentz and Poincaré had the ideas of special relativity before him. I found this quote on wikipedia: "A few years before his death Einstein commented on Poincaré as being one of the pioneers of relativity, saying 'Lorentz had already recognised that the transformation named after him is essential for the analysis of Maxwell's equations, and Poincaré deepened this insight still further...' " What do you guys think/know about all this?
Anyway, I've heard that Einstein's real gem is his general theory of relativity. Did he receive much help for the development of this theory too, or was this more of an individual work of his own?
Thanks for your input and sharing,
Cheers.

 

[Al68]

Hi guys,
I hope this is the right place to post this, given it's not a technical question, but it certainly is related to science.
Lately I've been interested in knowing about the history of relativity, how both the special and the general theory came to be, what was Einstein's real input into it. I've heard and read a lot saying that special relativity wasn't really Einstein's idea and that he is given more credit for it than he deserves. I've read that Lorentz and Poincaré had the ideas of special relativity before him. I found this quote on wikipedia: "A few years before his death Einstein commented on Poincaré as being one of the pioneers of relativity, saying 'Lorentz had already recognised that the transformation named after him is essential for the analysis of Maxwell's equations, and Poincaré deepened this insight still further...' " What do you guys think/know about all this?
Anyway, I've heard that Einstein's real gem is his general theory of relativity. Did he receive much help for the development of this theory too, or was this more of an individual work of his own?
Thanks for your input and sharing,
Cheers.

Try wikipedia. Lots of info about the history of relativity.

Al

 

[granpa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity

 

[Naty1]

It's true that especially in special relativity Einstein put many exisitng pieces together...I've read Lorentz already had concocked length contraction to possibly account for Michaelson Morely experiments...he liked the aether theory apparently. His particular genius, I think, was combining Maxwell's theories with the ones you cite and recognizing that time was not invariant as everybody else took for granted.

Likewise, General relativity was made possible when Einstein realized accelerationwas like gravity...that gave him the insight and foundation to formulate his theory. But he did not know what math to use! His friend Grossman searched and found the necessary mass for curved spaces had been developed and lay dormant...Riemann mathematics!

In contrast Einstein failed to unite gravity with the other forces, in part because so little was known about the atomic forces during much of his work...QCD (strong force) came into its own I think in the 1970's, maybe 1980's...and in part because even when strong/weak/electromagnetic were developed and unified nobody ever did figure out how to include gravity...

 

[George Jones]

The American Journal of Physics article "Dismissing renewed attempts to deny Einstein the discovery of special relativity" offers a defence of Einstein. For general relativity, no defence is needed; Hilbert and Grossman notwithstanding, general relativity is almost entirely the work of one person.

This article was published in the American Journal of Physics (AJP), a peer-reviewed journal on pedagogical matters that is read widely within the physics community. Before publication, articles submitted to this journal undergo intense scrutiny. In 2000, AJP was looking for a new editor, and, in the March issue, the outgoing editor wrote about what the job entailed, and what the new editor would have to be and do: "For one reason or another, AJP turns down 75% of the manuscripts received, and this unfortunately means that you will have to say "No" with some frequency."

Below, I have appended the Conclusions of the article.

It is doubtful whether the current attempt by a few to establish prior rights for Poincaré constitutes a real issue as far as Poincaré himself was concerned. The importance of his ideas on the principle of relativity and on the measures of space and time is well known. The mathematician Emile Borel, one of the founders of the modern theory of probability, stressed in the preface to a 1921 French edition of Einstein’s book on a popular exposition of relativity that Lorentz and Poincaré had “discerned significant fragments” of the special theory. They were forerunners of relativity, yet remained, in the words of Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat, “pre-relativists.” On the other hand, Poincaré’s mathematical methods and results were undoubtedly important for further elaboration of the theory, in particular by Hermann Minkowski.

Poincaré was also a forerunner in the field of dynamical systems. Seventy years before the recent interest in deterministic chaos, he discovered that certain mechanical Hamiltonian systems can display chaotic behavior. For this reason alone he is assured of a place in physics comparable to that to which his work in pure mathematics entitles him.

The young Einstein of 1905 was, for his part, fully aware of the need to reformulate entire areas of physics and prepared to take up the challenge. For him, the universe had to be “comprehensible.” The fundamental questions, which carry the imprint of his personal approach to problems, and his results to which they led him in 1905, constitute a coherent whole. The creation of special relativity resulted from an exceptional set of circumstances, to which a physicist of exceptional stature was able to give shape. It entailed overturning our conception of the universe. The creation by Einstein of the general theory of relativity led to a new upheaval.

The method used to support the alleged prior rights consists of exaggerating the results obtained by Poincaré, results from which it would have been possible to infer special relativity. To do so, however, would have required doing what Einstein did - recognizing the physical nature of the connection that the principle of relativity brings about between space and time, and establishing this connection as a general law for all natural phenomena. Disregarding these necessary steps, which constitute the essence of relativity, makes it possible for the discovery of special relativity to be ascribed, as it were, virtually to Poincaré or to Lorentz and Poincaré.

 

[Naty1]

An amendment to my post #4: I believe Fitzgerald actually formulated length contraction, shortly thereafter Lorentz did the same for time dilation...so Einstein had both concepts sitting there but not yet unified. In addition, Einsteins' friend Grossman researched math and found Reimann formulations for curvature from maybe 20 years earlier had been sitting around...Einstein also adopted that to descibe gravitational curvature in general relativity.