List of people who understand relativity

[least_action]

Back when Einsteins theory was very new I think there was a small list of people who understood relativity. For example Freeman Dyson wasn't on it, so when he wrote a book about Einstein the publishers were skeptical and it ended up with him meeting Einstein and all went well.. and there are other accounts of this list too I suppose.

So where can I read more about this list in the historical context and what sort of events circulated around it?

 

[Doc Al]

Sounds like an 'urban legend' to me. Do you have a reference for this list?

 

[atyy]

The meeting of 6 November 1919 of the Royal Society also originated a myth that persists even today (though in a very much diluted version):' Only three persons in the world understand relativity'. Eddington explained the origin of this myth during the Christmas-recess conversation with which I began this account.

Sir J.J. Thomson, as President of the Royal Society at that time, concluded the meeting with the statement', I have to confess that no one has yet succeeded in stating in clear language what the theory of Einstein's really is'. And Eddington recalled that as the meeting was dispersing, Ludwig Silberstei (the author of one of the early books on relativity), came up to him and said,' Professor Eddington, you must be one of three persons in the world who understands general relativity'. On Eddington demuring to this statement, Silberstein responded, 'Don't be modest Eddington'. And Eddington's reply was, 'On the contrary, I am trying to think who the third person is!'

Verifying the Theory of Relativity
S. Chandrasekhar
Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jan., 1976), pp. 249-260

 

[Gokul43201]

This may be related to the famous anecdote involving Eddington. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_relativity#Sir_Arthur_Eddington

EDIT: atyy beat me to the punch.

 

[George Jones]

Today, tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of people have a quantitative understanding of general relativity.

 

[inflector]

...For example Freeman Dyson wasn't on it, so when he wrote a book about Einstein the publishers were skeptical and it ended up with him meeting Einstein and all went well..

It seems to me that this was Buckminster Fuller (though perhaps the same thing happened to Freeman Dyson):

The example that I am going to give you is my own invention, but I did include Einstein and Einstein's philosophy, and my own interpretation of how he came to develop his equation and other of his strategies, in my first book NINE CHAINS TO THE MOON, and because I had three chapters on Einstein, my publishers who were Lippincott of Philadelphia at that time, in the mid-30's, around 1935, said that they found I had three chapters on Einstein. And they were, at that time, there was a general myth that there were only 9 people in the world who could understand Einstein. They said they had looked at all the lists of the people who understood Einstein, and I was not on any of the lists in fact they didn't find me on any list, of any authority, and they felt for me to be writing three chapters on Einstein would make Lippincott be accused of being a partner to charlatanry. That I was just a faker.

And so, I was a little stunned, and still quite young, and so I simply wrote back, in a sense quite facetiously, to Lippincott, saying that Dr. Einstein has just come to America, and was in Princeton at the newly organized Institute for Advanced Study. And I suggested that they send my typescript to him that he would be the best authority. I really did not think they would take me seriously about that, and I forgot all about that. And it was about six months later, I had a telephone call from a doctor in New York, and he said my friend Dr. Albert Einstein is coming into spend the weekend with me, and he has your typescript, and he would like to talk to you about it. And, could I possibly come on Sunday evening to his apartment in New York. So, you can imagine, I didn't have any engagements that would interfere! And I had very few engagements in those days nobody wanted to talk to me. And, I did come then, to the apartment. He was a wealthy man, and he had a large living room, and in more or less dramatic kind of style, people were sitting around the walls of the room, and he was sitting pretty much in the middle. I think they might have later on played music for him. At any rate, when I came in I was brought then to this long room, up to meet him. And I really had, I don't know how much psychological was in me, but I really had the most extraordinary feeling about being in a presence of almost an aura of him.

He immediately excused himself from the company, and took me out to a little library that was just off the main hall of the apartment, and on the library table was my typescript under a light, and we sat down on either side of this desk. And he said that he had been over my typescript and that he was writing to my publishers to say that he approved of my interpretation of his thoughts, and the way I had explained his translation of philosophy. A philosophy of his which had been published in the New York Times Sunday magazine in New Year, 1930, called "The Cosmic Religious Sense," and it was a very, very inspiring piece, and I had asked the publishers if I could quote it in my book, and I did. Having then this chapter on his philosophy, I then had another chapter on the way that I felt he had interpreted it into, how he applied that philosophy to all his own grand personal strategy of life, and how he came about developing his thoughts and his equation.

From: http://www.bfi.org/?q=node/129

 

[Ken Natton]

I am certain that you have been misinformed about Freeman Dyson’s involvement. Firstly, when Freeman Dyson first became involved with the American Physics community, he was a young British mathematician brought to America by the Commonwealth Fund of New York, in the late 1940s, when Einstein was already in the twilight of his career. So Freeman Dyson was certainly not there ‘when the theory was new’. I know nothing of any book about Einstein by Freeman Dyson, what I do know about is the account that Freeman Dyson himself gives of his career on the Web of Stories website. He gives several wonderful character portraits of many of the men he did work with, men like Hans Bethe and Edward Teller. But when the interviewer mentions Einstein, he is dismissive and makes it clear that he never worked with him and barely knew him. You’ll see that in the link I have provided Dyson is actually talking about Oppenheimer, but the point where they discuss Einstein is toward the end of the clip.

http://webofstories.com/play/4391

 

[Ken Natton]

In one of those spooky coincidences ( I honestly was not specifically looking for it) , after I made my previous post last night, I happened to read something about Sir Arthur Eddington and his expeditions to view the solar eclipse of 1919, with its subsequent paper that is credited as being the very thing that catapulted Einstein to international fame. One of Eddington’s co-conspirators was Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Watson Dyson. I have to wonder if that is the source of your misunderstanding about the involvement of Freeman Dyson.