3 ms·
I'm not an expert but I seem recall that other people were working concurrently on related, maybe tangential, questions for most of the other "great ideas" ment
by gota 5y ago
I'm not an expert but I seem recall that other people were working concurrently on related, maybe tangential, questions for most of the other "great ideas" mentioned in the article
Didn't Einstein strike such a hit precisely because his (new) approach solved sought after problems? The people who helped define the problem have a large chunk of merit, in my opinion. There's no need for a theory in a vacuum.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoEinstein generated multiple original game changing insights across multiple domains. There were people who might have generated one new Einstein insight on their own - Minkowski and Hilbert were both on their way towards GR after SR was presented - but no one else was even remotely likely to have generated all of them.
- HWR_14 5y agoIIRC, Einstein's biggest insight was cutting the Gordian Knot that other physicists faced when looking at the universal speed limit of the speed of light. Others tried to work around it. Einstein said "what would I have to do to make that true and keep other physics".