4 ms·

Thanks for the link - reading it, though, it’s not clear that your summary is fair. Plenty of scope for Hilbert to have been building on things he learnt from E

• bigbillheck 5y ago
  Plenty of scope for Einstein to have been building on things he learnt from Hilbert.
  • ChrisLomont 5y ago
    Einsteins famous quote about his difficulties in mathematics stems from this period. Hilbert had mastered the be relevant mathematics, and was closing in on relativity much faster than Einstein. Hilbert was teaching Einstein the tools Einstein needed. Recall at this time Hilbert was a god in mathematics, and one of the best that ever lived. He did groundbreaking work in n many areas of math and physics. Of the two, each left alone, it's far more likely Hilbert would have arrived first. Working while corresponding likely made Einstein much faster and Hilbert slightly faster. Einstein took 8 years to work out general relativity. Hilbert started working on physics in 1912 and by 1915 had gotten to where he was deriving general relativity. The speed he worked in physics and the broad range of topics he influenced in physics far outshines Einstein. Hilbert famously said physicists don't know enough math to do physics. He was right at that time - his math mastery let him plow through physics much faster. To see the scope of things attributed to Hilbert versus attributed to Einsteins simply look over their Wikipedia pages.