Author: Alastair Scott
Date: 04:47:58 09/23/02
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On September 23, 2002 at 03:50:55, Ulrich Tuerke wrote: >On September 22, 2002 at 14:18:37, Alastair Scott wrote: > >>... >>Unlikely things are not impossible things ... occasionally. For example, >>Einstein had no university position and was working in the Swiss Patent Office >>(at a rather higher position than is usually assumed, it must be noted) when 'On >>the electrodynamics of moving bodies' 'popped out of nowhere'. >>... > >I don't think that this is completely right. >Regarding the special theory of relativity there had been important findings >before Einstein. Einstein himself for instance could use the results of Lorenz. > >IMHO, regarding special theory of relativity, Einstein was the one person who >had the courage to say "that's physics" (and not a mathematical exercise). > >IIRC, things had been quite different later, when Einstein formulated the >general theory of relativity. This is essentially his work, which he had >developed from scratch; a work of incredible ingenuinious creativity. > >What you are referring to (electrodynamics of moving bodies) looks much like the >special theory of relativity. This is all correct, and the General Theory was a far better example. How much of Lorentz, FitzGerald and others Einstein was aware of has been a matter for debate for the best part of 100 years, but solid evidence is lacking and it's quite probable the correct answer is "all of it". (Obviously he was fully aware of the Michelson-Morley experiment, for example!) But there are, in retrospect, faint hints of the Special Theory right back to the work of people like Weber and Maxwell*. "If not Einstein then whom, and when?" is an interesting speculation. The original 1905 paper was called 'on the electrodynamics of moving bodies'; I've read it with great difficulty. Not because it was in German as I understand the language well, but because it was in a special collection under tight security! Alastair * To get a little mathematical, in various places in Maxwell's collected papers you see the first couple of terms of the binomial expansion of gamma(v) [a mathematical function which occurs right through the Special Theory and cannot be fully derived from classical physics].
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