I'm not sure how he writes pages and pages like that, without even crossing out a word because of a mistake? I feel like he must have re-written some of these notes afterwards, but even then, how do you never make a mistake?
I think most likely the notes were the result of re-processing information written down earlier -- if the original content was taken from a class. Nevertheless, that is very impressive -- almost a product of art. I wish I could get one copy.
My notes looked like crap almost always, but I knew some girls in university where notes looked good while writing and then exactly did this rewriting for perfectionism (and besides that, this written reiteration is likely quite good to ingrain it, like spaced learning).
After I read Moonlighting with Einstein (about mnemonics), I wondered how throughout the ages, technologies shaped the way we think and structure thoughts. This closely relate to it. I assume a 100 years ago, academic had far larger memory capacity than the average peer in today's world. We kinda traded memory for higher CPU frequency (or maybe just decreased our memory, maybe our software is digressing). But this could explain why the chain of thought was so clear to never make a mistake? I wonder if there is a research on this fascinating topic.
The story of how the mathematics of general relativity were put together is one of the well documented insights into how the human intellect incrementally tackles understanding reality around us. Physical intuition (here represented by Einstein) and mathematical structure (embodied in Grossmann) dance around before (occasionally) landing into a magical place that somehow turns out to be "true".
Neither intuition about how nature works nor mathematical skill are sufficient conditions for this to happen. If you read to the end you'll learn briefly about "teleparallel" attempts at gravity/electromagnetism unification - which is just one of the many failed subsequent attempts of Einstein to extend his intuition one further step.
Something that is not covered in much detail is how much Grossmann knew of and appreciated Riemann's work and thinking. Decades prior, Riemann already thought that the geometry of (three)-space is something to be determined experimentally.
If you want to talk about contributions to the general theory of relativity, why not talk about the people that Einstein is alleged to have plagiarized, Henri Poincaré, David Hilbert and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz?
Neither Poincare nor Lorentz are relevant to the genesis of General Relativity.
The only relevant priority dispute is whether Einstein or Hilbert wrote down the correct field equations first. This was after a long correspondence between the two, in which Einstein explained his ideas -- there is no dispute that Einstein "invented" General Relativity. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_di...
> Neither Poincare nor Lorentz are relevant to the genesis of General Relativity
Well, that's just plain wrong. From the horse's mouth:
> As we know, this is connected with the relativity of the concepts of "simultaneity" and "shape of moving bodies." To fill this gap, I introduced the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light, which I borrowed from H. A. Lorentz's theory of the stationary luminiferous ether, and which, like the principle of relativity, contains a physical assumption that seemed to be justified only by the relevant experiments
Yes, everybody agrees, but you specifically responded to the statement that Poincaré and Lorentz had nothing to do with GR. You said that statement was wrong, but it looks more like you confused SR and GR, which are two entirely different beasts.
Well the comment by pnin made it about GR, when the parent by boringuser2 was about the general contributions to relativity, both SR and GR. I believe "general theory of relativity" to be different than "general relativity" here, the former encompassing both SR and GR. Maybe that's where our misunderstanding comes from. Also, if you believe that GR has absolutely nothing to do with SR, then no Lorentz has no relevance to the genesis of General Relativity.
Anyway I don't believe we're having a discussion worth having here.
Plagiarized is too strong of a word. Poincaré too based his work on Lorentz's. And both with Einstein he sort of derived E = m c * 2, independently and earlier. But Einstein's publication was more complete.
Science is not totally ordered, the same invention can occur at two different places from the same shoulders of the same giant. Science is just partially ordered.
The paper where Einstein introduces special relativity is really explicit about just providing a new way to think, not new mathematics. It starts out with explaining that there are two explanations for the same electrodynamical physics depending on the velocity of the system, and that's really weird.
Einstein's special-relativity fame comes from saying: no, actually, that is expected and they're really one explanation if you think like this rather than like that, even if the math works out the same as Lorentz's.
Right, it's not so much a critique of the author's work that I've presented as much as a meta-commentary on the article in the context that we're posting on a forum that aggregates content for public consumption.
The author is fine, he can publish whatever he pleases. I can't stop him, as you've pointed out.
From a meta-commentary perspective, it is actually quite interesting that Einstein's alleged plagiarism covers many diverse sources.
Thank you for the boring off-topic comments, boringuser2. Maybe boringuser1 was too interesting, so you were created. I promise to read the article if you do.
But that's just how science work, and no ill will would have been employed by any participant; just as their fanclub want to pit them against one another.
Thanks, nice link. I recall hearing or reading somewhere that Einstein leaned heavily on Caratheodory for the more difficult math, and I had a strong hunch that something like general relativity would have emerged within the next decade from when Einstein published his theory, if Einstein hadn't gotten there first. However, I didn't realize it was so close, so contentious, and so well documented.
You are thinking of specific relativity. He didn't plagiarize the theory of specific relativity either because nobody had suggested it. Poincaré's idea of relativity relied on the existence of a Luminiferous aether which was disproved in the early 20th century.
