History Incidents in the history of SR

[tade]

I'm curious about two things. Why did Einstein's 1905 paper contain no citations? Nowadays most papers have one or two pages full of citations, I don't know about back then but he must have had a few.

Secondly, Einstein willed some of his Nobel money to his wife Maric. But that was a year or two before he received the prize. Somewhat strange.

 

[Astronuc]

In his paper, "Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt", der Physik 17 (6): 132–148, Einstein cited Planck, Lenard and Stark.

In his third ("Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper", Annalen der Physik 17 (10): 891–921.) and fourth ( "Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?", Annalen der Physik 18 (13): 639–641.) papers of 1905, Einstein refers to the Maxwell-Hertz equations, and in the third refers to Lorentz's theory of electrodynamics. Perhaps since the equations were so well known to the readers, it is not necessary to provide a citation. Otherwise, the work is radically new, original and unprecedented, and there is no additional references.

Also in the third paper, Einstein acknowledges help and contribution from a colleague, M. Besso, although the specifics are not mentioned.

 

[tade]

I guess Lorentz's theories must've been pretty well-known for Einstein to mention but not cite it.

Or maybe he just forgot.

 

[ImaLooser]

I'm curious about two things. Why did Einstein's 1905 paper contain no citations? Nowadays most papers have one or two pages full of citations, I don't know about back then but he must have had a few.

Secondly, Einstein willed some of his Nobel money to his wife Maric. But that was a year or two before he received the prize. Somewhat strange.

No citations. You'd have to ask him why. Everything he discussed was pretty well known, so I guess he felt they were unnecessary.

Einstein had two children and divorced. Part of the settlement was that his wife would get the Nobel money. It was no surprise when he was awarded it.

 

[tade]

No citations. You'd have to ask him why. Everything he discussed was pretty well known, so I guess he felt they were unnecessary.

Yeah, I mentioned that in the previous post.

Einstein had two children and divorced. Part of the settlement was that his wife would get the Nobel money. It was no surprise when he was awarded it.

No surprise when he was awarded.

But he managed to predict when quite accurately. 'twas probably a close-knit phys community at that time.