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But how can this be? Everyone knows Einstein stole his work from his wife! |
Posted on 11/17/2004 1:57:06 PM PST by SteveH
Was Einstein a plagiarist?
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Monday 15th November 2004 15:57 GMT
A theoretical physicist at the University of Nevada has published a paper alleging that Einstein did not derive the gravitational field equations at the heart of the General Theory of Relativity, and might in fact have copied key equations from fellow physicist David Hilbert.
The two scientists were working in the same area in 1915, and were developing their theories independently but concurrently. Each submitted papers for publication throughout November of that year. The two were also corresponding about their research, making it hard to unravel exactly who knew what, and when. As a consequence the question of which researcher can claim priority has been the subject of some debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
I had read somewhere that Hilbert or some other Math dude taught Einstein the math needed. So this would not be surprising.
He got that E=mc squared thing from my great uncle.
That he would work with a mathematician and use some of their mutually-derived formulas in a paper does not seem like plagiarism to me.
If it were, wouldn't Hilbert have said something?
BTTT
Ok, now that "Jew Science" has been accepted by us Aryans, I guess we need to prove that the Jews actually stole it from us Aryans. (The 3rd Reich denounced modern physics as "Jew Science", proposing to replace it with "Aryan Science". I think Goebbels missed a bet, just call the Jews plagiarists! I have no ideer about Hilbert's ethnicity.)
I agree. They weren't living in a vacuum bubble. And If you are a scientist or mathematician you want that recognition among your piers and to be published.
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But how can this be? Everyone knows Einstein stole his work from his wife! |
Al Gore's your great-uncle? BTW, E= mc2 can be derived from Maxwell's Equation, classical physics. (See "French", Special Relativity.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393097935/qid=1100729210/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-3373521-4452140?v=glance&s=books)
Einstein just assumed that this implied that EM radiation had mass and was affected by gravity. Anyone who passed a first semester physics course should be able to master French's book, BTW.
Here's hoping your tongue was planted in your cheek...
Anyone see the movie "IQ" ? Maybe Eitsein was really an auto mechanic who just faked it for 40 years.
I'm underwhelmed by the reporting: Hilbert was a mathematician, not a physicist. All of the mathematics in Einstein's work was essentially off the shelf, though I'd not heard an association with Hilbert, who is more associated with quantum mechanics, where state spaces have a structure which bears his name.
A wonderful story about Hilbert: when told that a certain graduate student had quit the mathematics program at Gottingen to devote himself to poetyr, he replied, "Good, he did not have the imagination to be a mathematician."
And then, an Einstein story: at the end of his life, Einstein was trying to find a grand unified theory--not the 'all forces but gravity' thing particle physicists call a grand unified theory now, but all the forces in one mathematical package. He is said to have stormed through the Institute for Advances Study once, crying "The mathematicians can't tell me what I need to know!"
why yes, I believe he was.
Somewhere long ago, I read that Albert's wife did a great deal of his work and was never given credit.
Here's another one.
Hilbert had a student who one day presented him with a paper purporting to prove the Riemann Hypothesis. Hilbert studied the paper carefully and was really impressed by the depth of the argument; but unfortunately he found an error in it which even he could not eliminate. The following year the student died. Hilbert asked the grieving parents if he might be permitted to make a funeral oration.
While the student's relatives and friends were weeping beside the grave in the rain, Hilbert came forward. He began by saying what a tragedy it was that such a gifted young man had died before he had an opportunity to show what he could accomplish. But, he continued, in spite of the fact that this young man's proof of the Riemann Hypothesis contained an error, it was still possible that some day a proof of the famous problem would be obtained along the lines which the deceased had indicated.
"In fact," he continued with enthusiasm, standing there in the rain by the dead student's grave, "let us consider a function of a complex variable ..."
- taken from Constance Reid's biography of David Hilbert
Dr. Evil's dad invented the question mark.
Plagiarist, no....illuminati and freemason, YESS!!
Einstein's granddaughter plays the fiddle in a country music group with one of my inlaws here in Vermont. Yes, really.
I came up with that theory of relatives long before he did. "If your Aunt ever starts looking good, stop drinking."
I don't know if Albert was, but Kitty Kelly is.
Okay, and while we're telling stories. There is an Einstein story particularly appropriate on FR:
Kurt Godel, the mathematician who proved that the natural numbers can't be completely axiomatized and derived limits on what digital computers could do even before Turing, evidently was so spacey that Einstein took it on himself to look after him socially. Godel also, it turns out was a conservative. One day during the Eisenhower/Stevenson campaign, Einstein burst into the tea room at the Institute declaring "Godel's gone completely mad! He's voting for Eisenhower!"
I've wanted to make up a poster with Kurt Godel with an "I like Ike" button to put up in the K-State math department (seems fitting since most college-bound kids from Ike's home town of Abilene and environs come here).
AL GORE INVENTED MATH!!!
And accused chestnuts of being lazy....
That kinda punches black holes in this article.
Yeah, but the flux capacitor still needs 1.2 gigowatts of electricity for time travel no matter what E=Mc^2 calculates...
To infinity and beyond!
Please...
I just find it interesting... Most academics are liberals, scratch most any liberal, you'll find an anti-semite. (David Horowitz "explains" Jewish cultural liberalism far better than I ever could.) I could see where liberals would take almost as much delight in dethroning Einstein as the Nazis would. Better if credit could be given to an unwed mother from Peru, or maybe just his wife, but in a pinch even a German will do.
From http://www.math.umn.edu/~wittman/Biography.html
When Hilbert reached the age of 68 in 1930, he was forced to retire from teaching. In 1932, Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany and a law was passed forbidding full-blooded Jews from teaching positions. This ban applied to Courant, Noether, Landau, Bernays, Born, and Franck. At a banquet, the minister of education asked Hilbert, "And how is mathematics in Gottingen now that it has been freed of the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "Mathematics in Gottingen? There is really none any more." The Nazi regime ended Gottingen's position as the center of the mathematical world. David Hilbert died ... on February 14, 1943 in a Gottingen torn apart by World War II.
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