>it wasn't as if there was a "race" to discover relativity Yes, there was. They didn't call it relativity, which is a later name, but probably dozens to hundre

>it wasn't as if there was a "race" to discover relativity Yes, there was. They didn't call it relativity, which is a later name, but probably dozens to hundreds of scientists were working on exactly what Einstein is credited for. Hilbert was close (published equivalent first?), Poincare was working on it (which is why the symmetries of special relativity are Poincare symmetries), Lorenz was working on it (which is why special relativity focuses on Lorenz transforms) , and many, many people were going to do it within a year or less if Einstein did not do it. There were so many people doing the same thing that there is an entire field devoted to sorting relativity priority out. Einstein is simply the one most people associate with it. See [1] for a huge list of people (and likely not all) that were on the same track at the same time. And this is also exactly my point. Many things people think were isolated inventions, because history loses most of those who were going to do it at the same time (and often did do it sooner, but just lost credit). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute