Re: Why isn't the mathematician Henri Poincare acknowledged as the true discoverer of special relativity?

Re: Why isn't the mathematician Henri Poincare acknowledged as the true
discoverer of special relativity?

Probably by a mixture of historical imprecision of early biographies, lack
of some relevant papers recently discovered, popularisation by Edington
and others (in the style of most heavy string hype), the fact that
Poincaré was more mathematician than physicist, etc.


However, history is not an evolutionary field and often the old versions
of historical facts are rewritten when additional data is available. The
last years, a number of papers and books offers to us a new perspective on
history of relativity (some references are cited in the text). It has been
already historically proven that,

i)

Relativistic theory was mainly an achievement of Lorentz, Poincaré, and
others. Now historians agree that all basic ideas of relativity theory,
including constancy of c and existence of a maximum velocity for
transmission of signals, were previously known in literature.

ii)

That none of famous formulas of Einstein, including E = mc^2 was obtained
by Einstein. Even when he did attempts to derive formulas, he failed. For
example, Ives showed in 1952 that original Einstein proof of E=mc^2 was
completely wrong [Ives, H. E. J. Opt. Soc. Amer. Xlii (1952) p.540]. Other
formulas derived by Einstein are also wrong. Some reviews are very recent.

Also the famous mass variation formula (generally attributed to Einstein
in physics textbooks) was previously obtained by H. Lorentz on Amst. Proc.
vi (1904) p. 809.

There exists recent historical work that suggests, without doubt, that
relativistic theory was mainly due to Lorentz and Poincaré.

All this was maintained by Poincaré and others long before the time of
Einstein, and one does injustice to truth in ascribing the discovery to
him.
---- Charles Nordmann

It is not surprising that Whittaker standard manual (American Institute of
Physics) claims little contribution for Einstein. I would remember to
readers the title of second chapter in the volume on modern theories: "The
relativistic theory of Poincaré and Lorentz".


iii)

Einstein copied the work of others without cite them, how even Max Born or
S. Hawking have recognized.

[Einstein's] paper 'Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Koerper' in Annalen der
Physik. . . contains not a single reference to previous literature. It
gives you the impression of quite a new venture. But that is, of course,
as I have tried to explain, not true.
---- Max Born

Wilhelm Wein proposed that the Nobel Prize of 1912 was awarded jointly to
Lorentz and Einstein, saying

"While Lorentz must be considered as the first to have found the
mathematical content of relativity, Einstein succeeded in reducing it to a
simple principle. One should therefore assess the merits of both
investigators as being comparable."

iv)

There is a general misunderstanding on that Einstein really did. Many
initial biographies are wrong. For example Pais famous book contain
several mistakes and imprecisions. E.g. Pais' claim that Hilbert did not
known the important Biachi identity in 1915 has been recently shown to be
false. Hilbert obtained it before Weyl (rediscovered it in 1917) and this
new historical data offers a new view on the priority of GR.

Recent L.Corry, J.Renn and J. Stachel. Belated Decision in the
Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute. Science. 278, 1270 (1997) claiming
priority for Einstein has been shown to be wrong.

There is an increasing interest on the role of Poincare on relativity
theory, sustaining initial Whittaker statements. See A. A. Logunov. Henri
Poincaré and relativity theory. M: Nauka, 2005.

Begin to appear serious historical studies that show that GR was not an
outcome of Einstein. See, for example, Witenberg (Z. Natursforsch 59a,
715-719, 2004). Witenberg shows that recent Science (article cited above)
attempt to prove that Hilbert copied to Einstein is incorrect.


v)

Historians have recently shown that Einstein said not the true to Hilbert
in the correspondence on GR. In his letter to Hilbert (November 18, 1915)
Einstein said

"The system you furnish agrees - as far as I can see - exactly with
what I found in the last few weeks and have presented to the Academy."

But just a days ago (not weeks ago) Einstein sent a paper to Academia
containing still the wrong equations of GR. Was just after of reading
Hilbert paper that Einstein changed his previous equations (obtained with
help of Grossmann) and sent the paper of 25 Nov to Academia; five days
after publication of Hilbert paper, and 9 days after of Hilbert
presentation of his paper Grundgleichungen der Physik at the Göttingen
Mathematical Society.

Hilbert newer claimed priority because Einstein said not the true to him
in the letter of Nov 18. Einstein had not submitted the correct field
equations to Academia! Both his papers of Nov 11 and 4 still contain the
incorrect equations!

Further historical data (including additional references) will be openly
available on

http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/

the next week.

-------
Juan R. González-Álvarez

Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)

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