← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · neoclassical
Thread ID: 18545 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2005-06-06
2005-06-06 04:46 | User Profile
Proponents of Einstein have acted in a way that appears to corrupt the historical record. Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Time Magazine's "Person of the Century", wrote a long treatise on special relativity theory (it was actually called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", 1905a), without listing any references. Many of the key ideas it presented were known to Lorentz (for example, the Lorentz transformation) and Poincaré before Einstein wrote the famous 1905 paper.
As was typical of Einstein, he did not discover theories; he merely commandeered them. He took an existing body of knowledge, picked and chose the ideas he liked, then wove them into a tale about his contribution to special relativity. This was done with the full knowledge and consent of many of his peers, such as the editors at Annalen der Physik.
The most recognisable equation of all time is E = mc2. It is attributed by convention to be the sole province of Albert Einstein (1905). However, the conversion of matter into energy and energy into matter was known to Sir Isaac Newton ("Gross bodies and light are convertible into one another...", 1704). The equation can be attributed to S. Tolver Preston (1875), to Jules Henri Poincaré (1900; according to Brown, 1967) and to Olinto De Pretto (1904) before Einstein. Since Einstein never correctly derived E = mc2 (Ives, 1952), there appears nothing to connect the equation with anything original by Einstein.
[url="http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/einstein.html"]http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/einstein.html[/url]
2005-06-06 05:39 | User Profile
It is my understanding that an Italian guy came up with E=mc2 two years before Einstein but the guy didn't know what he had, also because Einstein was working at a patent office he had access to many inventions that the layman was not able to see.
Never the less he was smart and deserves his name in the history books.
2005-06-06 14:39 | User Profile
Most famous people get too much credit. Most inventors and discoverers only make small contributions, compared to what they get credit for. And, even those small contributions, there are usually a number of people at the same time about to make those same small contributions. It is groups of people, by nature of their culture who move civilizaton forwards, or backwards.
2005-06-06 23:44 | User Profile
And Beethoven was Black(yeah, we have our share of idiots who play this "my race is better" game, too). And the Egyptians were not Black. The traffic light pre-dated Garrett Morgan. Did you guys know it was actually Vanilla Ice, not Eminem, who invented hip-hop? :blink:
2005-06-07 02:25 | User Profile
Minimising or downplaying the achievements of Jewish scientists strikes me as bad sportsmanship.
(Pseudo-scientists like Freud are a different story)
2005-06-07 03:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]Minimising or downplaying the achievements of Jewish scientists strikes me as bad sportsmanship.
(Pseudo-scientists like Freud are a different story)[/QUOTE]
I am with you on that Rowdy, fair is fair.
2005-06-07 04:19 | User Profile
There was a good article a couple of years ago written by a good friend of mine in the Barnes Review proving rather conclusively that most of the credit for the theory of reletivity should go to some Italian guy.
2005-06-07 15:14 | User Profile
It's not so much that De Pretto deserves the credit over his predecessors; it's that we know that De Pretto published the equation before Einstein did and have reason to believe that Einstein read De Pretto's work before Einstein published the equation without citing De Pretto.