To whom it may
concern:
I have recently come upon an article which asserts in a credible
way that Einstein plagiarized most of his work. Altho the
article is not properly documented, the author obviously knows
his subject. (I have communicated with the author and
requested documentation, but he has not yet provided it, and I am
uncertain of his willingness to do so.) Another unfortunate
feature of the article is its obvious bias against Jews -- a bias
which might or might not be justified, but which is clearly
inappropriate here.
If the assertions in this article are true, it is obviously of
vital importance for the history of science, as it would change
Einstein's status from a 20th century scientific icon to a
probably-incompetent plagairist. Therefore, I request that
you, as someone with both interest and knowledge of the history
of Relativity Theory, give me an informed judgment on the
correctness of this article. I have posted it on my webpage
at
http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-EinsteinWasAFraud.htm
Thank you for your interest. -John Bryant
Thanks for your
inquiry to the Niels Bohr Library. I have looked at the article
in question. It is completely without value. Of course it is true
that Einstein built on the work of his predecessors, and in his
work, as in the work of all scientists, one can easily trace
ideas that were already present in one or another form. Even the
greatest scientific work consists largely of combining,
rethinking and clarifying concepts that are in the air. Einstein
actually went considerably beyond this. The paper has too many
errors to be worth detailed analysis. Let me just mention the
first extremely ignorant error in it. This is the statement that
Maxwell already showed the constancy of the speed of light.
Einstein's great contribution (well, one of his many great
contributions) was the fantastic hypothesis that the speed of
light is constant in all reference frames--something Maxwell
literally could not conceive, something that all other physicists
of his time and down to Einstein's found almost unthinkable, and
yet something which every experiment has shown to be completely
true.
If you don't know what I mean by constant in all reference
frames--(something the author of the paper clearly does not
know)--then you should not be worrying about any of this until
you have read one of the many good books explaining, with simple
high-school algebra, what Einstein discovered.
To sum up, there is very good reason why all serious physicists
(aside from some half-mad anti-Semitic ones during the Nazi
years) have admired and praised Einstein for his work. You are
not doing anybody a service by putting on your site a copy of
this anti-Semitic screed, which is not even original but only one
more version of old nonense, propagated by Nazis in the 1930s and
long since refuted.
: Spencer Weart : sweart@aip.org
:
Director, Center for History of Physics
: American Institute of Physics
: One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 USA
: Phone (301) 209-3174 : Fax (301) 209-0882
: Check our Website... http://www.aip.org/history/
To: Pastor VS Herrell From: John Bryant Re: Einstein article CC: various
Yesterday I sent an email message to about 10 experts in the history of science and/or relativity theory asking them to read the article Einstein Was a Fraud. I have received just 2 responses, both negative, tho one respondee seemed not to have read the article. The other response is given below. I am going to publish it along with the article, and I welcome your response, if you care to make one (If you do not, I will note the fact). I now have less confidence that the article is correct, so I urge you to put your article in proper scholarly form, to seek properly qualified individuals who will support you (or correct your errors), and above all to remove the anti-Jewish remarks which, whether true or not, are inappropriate in the present context. -jb
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