Albert Einstein presented the theories of special relativity and general relativity in publications that either contained no formal references to previous literature, or referred only to a small number of his predecessors for fundamental results on which he based his theories, most notably to the work of Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz for special relativity, and to the work of David Hilbert, Carl F. Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, and Ernst Mach for general relativity. Subsequently, claims have been put forward about both theories, asserting that they were formulated, either wholly or in part, by others before Einstein. At issue is the extent to which Einstein and various other individuals should be credited for the formulation of these theories, based on priority considerations.
Various scholars have questioned aspects of the work of Einstein, Poincaré, and Lorentz leading up to the theories’ publication in 1905. Questions raised by these scholars include asking to what degree Einstein was familiar with Poincaré's work, whether Einstein was familiar with Lorentz's 1904 paper or a review of it, and how closely Einstein followed other physicists at the time. It is known that...
shortstories
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the