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Always a pleasure to read an appreciation of this turning point in human thought. But, like most accounts, this book excerpt gives the impression that Einstein

Always a pleasure to read an appreciation of this turning point in human thought. But, like most accounts, this book excerpt gives the impression that Einstein worked alone to develop his theory. In fact, it was more of a collaboration: https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/general-relativity-100-years-of-the-most-beautiful-theory-ever-created/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/general-relativity-1...

purple5 5y ago
pvarangot 5y ago
Even that article doesn't mention Minkowski. Journalists and writers have such huge egos that can never see past the man in Einstein no matter how hard he tried to explain he was also standing on the shoulders of giants.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Do you think that Minkowski was important in the development of GR? Why, specifically? (I mean in its creation, not in the evolution of its interpretation after 1915.) EDIT: I don’t understand the relationship between the egos of writers and their estimation of Einstein’s role. “Shoulders of giants:” in fact, it was Einstein who jealously guarded his credit for GR and never seemed to mention, in public, the contributions of others, although he did in his private letters.
  - pvarangot 5y ago
    Doesn't Minkowski's work with hyperbolic space predate GR? I thought it was like a stepping stone between Special and General Relativity. I don't understand GR, I'm not even close and I tried for years twice or thrice to teach myself GR and I find it pretty impenetrable. Maybe I see Minkowski's work as a stepping stone because that's one of the paths that I was put into to understand it.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      In my article I talk about the people that Einstein collaborated with in his struggle to arrive at the field equations. Minkowski was not one of those people (although he was one of Einstein’s math teachers in school). I don’t think this work of Minkowski’s that you mention is directly relevant, but, even if it’s part of the mathematical background, Minkowski is not part of that particular story. Now we talk about "four dimensional" spacetime, and that point of view is largely due to Minkowski. But it wasn’t Einstein’s point of view, and for years Einstein remarked that he didn’t see the point—it seemed needlessly formal and academic to him. But he sort of came around later.
      - ordu 5y ago
        > I don’t think this work of Minkowski’s that you mention is directly relevant, but, even if it’s part of the mathematical background, Minkowski is not part of that particular story. Probably you are right, but... maybe its just me, but this coincidence seems too much of a coincidence. I can't resist hypothesizing, would it be possible to Minkowski somehow influence Einstein, maybe indirectly. For example, Minkowski was interested in curved spaces, it is possible that he somehow implanted his ideas into Einstein's mind, isn't it? Not consciously, but as it happens with teachers passionate with their subject by bringing his favorite topic in his lectures for any reason or even without any reason. > But it wasn’t Einstein’s point of view, and for years Einstein remarked that he didn’t see the point—it seemed needlessly formal and academic to him. But he sort of came around later. This fact also can be incorporated into my hypothesis, though with an additional assumption: teenager Einstein was exhausted by his teacher's constant remarks about curved spaces, and was conditioned to roll his eyes hearing about curved spaces. So he naturally continued to roll his eyes at curved space-time. Yeah, it is just a hypothesis, a wild guess, and even if it was true, it wouldn't mean that Minkowski was a collaborator, but what a fun story it may be. A story about a passionate teacher shaping a mind of genius into a curved space despite all lack of mutual enthusiasm. On a more serious note, I can remark, that this hypothesis consistent with all I know about a human mind. Einstein might have a mental model for a curved space, and his mind might have used this model to propose new thought experiments, but Einstein disliked the very idea to the point of not noticing how his mind relies on it, and he worked hard consciously to find another model to rely on. Moreover there are psychological theories stating that a mind must have at least two different models/representations of a problem domain to deal with it successfully, so this hypothetical inner conflict might benefited Einstein's genius by urging him to construct his second mental representation of gravity.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > Do you think that Minkowski was important in the development of GR? Why, specifically? Minkowski came up with the concept of spacetime as a 4-dimensional geometric object. That was a crucial insight required for the development of GR: just take this geometric object, which was flat in SR, and allow it to be curved. IIRC Einstein himself, who initially was dismissive of Minkowski's idea, later changed his mind and recognized its importance, and said so in a number of his writings about relativity. Unfortunately, Minkowski died the year after he came up with his idea, so he never got to see where it led.
belter 5y ago
Everybody was working on it and it was much more of a race to an inevitable interpretation of the world, than most credit historically. Certainly not a single man vision. "General relativity priority dispute" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_di... "Relativity priority dispute" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute
- leephillips 5y ago
  Everybody, eh?
  - belter 5y ago
    Everybody as in, the leading experts in theoretical physics of the time: "It was noted by Sir Edmund Whittaker in his 1954 book that David Hilbert had derived the theory of general relativity from an elegant variational principle almost simultaneously with Einstein's discovery of the theory.[B 1] Hilbert's derivation of the theory predated that of Einstein by five days.[B 2]"
    - leephillips 5y ago
      Aside from Einstein (and the people he was directly working with, such as Noether), and Hilbert, who else?
      - belter 5y ago
        As I wrote, everybody here, means: The leading experts of the domain at the time and some other eclectic people like Poincare. "Did Einstein discover E = mc2?" https://physicsworld.com/a/did-einstein-discover-e-mc2/#:~:text=Henri%20Poincar%C3%A9%20had%20stated%20that,according%20to%20E%20%3D%20mc2.&text=He%20calculated%20that%20the%20motion,2%20times%20the%20radiant%20energy https://physicsworld.com/a/did-einstein-discover-e-mc2/#:~:t....
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
That's a very good article and puts the other contributors in context. The fact that there was so much discussion between the main players is underappreciated. I strongly suspect that today GR would be a multi-author paper.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Accepted practice for listing authors on scientific papers is always changing. In older papers you often have people listed in an acknowledgement who, today, would absolutely be on the author list.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Because in the past the scientist's career wasn't contingent on getting on the author list.
sriku 5y ago
A collaboration.. and even the article says 8 years of hard work and missteps and still we stick to the "Einstein's genius" narrative. I think the genius narrative is disingenuous to the person and discounts all the effort and furthermore putting everyone else in the position of "are you a genius? No right? So don't hope to do Einstein level work."
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Well, I think it could also be disingenuous to presume that anyone could do what he did if you just put in the hard work. If hard work was all you need, we would have a lot more Einstein level discoveries than we do.
  - Kranar 5y ago
    We do have a lot more Einstein level discoveries than most people may realize. If anything, we have so many discoveries that it's hard to single one out for special consideration. The big difference between now and then I'd argue is that progress is much more incremental today so that it never seems like you just wake up and there's one major breakthrough that comes out of nowhere. Instead we're constantly being exposed to small improvements that add up to significant advances over a 15-20 year period.
    - swaranga 5y ago
      What would you say are some examples where you look back what the state was 15 years ago vs the progress we made till the present and the jump would seem just as profound. Just curious. I felt the same way - it seemed like the early 20th century made so much progress with those visionaries compared what what is being made now. Obviously I am not well informed because that is likely not the case.
GuB-42 5y ago
The way I understand it, out of all the fathers of general relativity, Einstein was one of the only ones who really did physics. That is, applying the formulas to real life observations, or thought experiments, something that Einstein was particularly famous for. Einstein got a lot of help with the maths, but I think he deserves full credit for the physical application.

purple5 5y ago

pvarangot 5y ago

Even that article doesn't mention Minkowski. Journalists and writers have such huge egos that can never see past the man in Einstein no matter how hard he tried to explain he was also standing on the shoulders of giants.

leephillips 5y ago
Do you think that Minkowski was important in the development of GR? Why, specifically? (I mean in its creation, not in the evolution of its interpretation after 1915.) EDIT: I don’t understand the relationship between the egos of writers and their estimation of Einstein’s role. “Shoulders of giants:” in fact, it was Einstein who jealously guarded his credit for GR and never seemed to mention, in public, the contributions of others, although he did in his private letters.
- pvarangot 5y ago
  Doesn't Minkowski's work with hyperbolic space predate GR? I thought it was like a stepping stone between Special and General Relativity. I don't understand GR, I'm not even close and I tried for years twice or thrice to teach myself GR and I find it pretty impenetrable. Maybe I see Minkowski's work as a stepping stone because that's one of the paths that I was put into to understand it.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    In my article I talk about the people that Einstein collaborated with in his struggle to arrive at the field equations. Minkowski was not one of those people (although he was one of Einstein’s math teachers in school). I don’t think this work of Minkowski’s that you mention is directly relevant, but, even if it’s part of the mathematical background, Minkowski is not part of that particular story. Now we talk about "four dimensional" spacetime, and that point of view is largely due to Minkowski. But it wasn’t Einstein’s point of view, and for years Einstein remarked that he didn’t see the point—it seemed needlessly formal and academic to him. But he sort of came around later.
    - ordu 5y ago
      > I don’t think this work of Minkowski’s that you mention is directly relevant, but, even if it’s part of the mathematical background, Minkowski is not part of that particular story. Probably you are right, but... maybe its just me, but this coincidence seems too much of a coincidence. I can't resist hypothesizing, would it be possible to Minkowski somehow influence Einstein, maybe indirectly. For example, Minkowski was interested in curved spaces, it is possible that he somehow implanted his ideas into Einstein's mind, isn't it? Not consciously, but as it happens with teachers passionate with their subject by bringing his favorite topic in his lectures for any reason or even without any reason. > But it wasn’t Einstein’s point of view, and for years Einstein remarked that he didn’t see the point—it seemed needlessly formal and academic to him. But he sort of came around later. This fact also can be incorporated into my hypothesis, though with an additional assumption: teenager Einstein was exhausted by his teacher's constant remarks about curved spaces, and was conditioned to roll his eyes hearing about curved spaces. So he naturally continued to roll his eyes at curved space-time. Yeah, it is just a hypothesis, a wild guess, and even if it was true, it wouldn't mean that Minkowski was a collaborator, but what a fun story it may be. A story about a passionate teacher shaping a mind of genius into a curved space despite all lack of mutual enthusiasm. On a more serious note, I can remark, that this hypothesis consistent with all I know about a human mind. Einstein might have a mental model for a curved space, and his mind might have used this model to propose new thought experiments, but Einstein disliked the very idea to the point of not noticing how his mind relies on it, and he worked hard consciously to find another model to rely on. Moreover there are psychological theories stating that a mind must have at least two different models/representations of a problem domain to deal with it successfully, so this hypothetical inner conflict might benefited Einstein's genius by urging him to construct his second mental representation of gravity.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Do you think that Minkowski was important in the development of GR? Why, specifically? Minkowski came up with the concept of spacetime as a 4-dimensional geometric object. That was a crucial insight required for the development of GR: just take this geometric object, which was flat in SR, and allow it to be curved. IIRC Einstein himself, who initially was dismissive of Minkowski's idea, later changed his mind and recognized its importance, and said so in a number of his writings about relativity. Unfortunately, Minkowski died the year after he came up with his idea, so he never got to see where it led.

belter 5y ago

Everybody was working on it and it was much more of a race to an inevitable interpretation of the world, than most credit historically. Certainly not a single man vision. "General relativity priority dispute" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity_priority_di... "Relativity priority dispute" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute

leephillips 5y ago
Everybody, eh?
- belter 5y ago
  Everybody as in, the leading experts in theoretical physics of the time: "It was noted by Sir Edmund Whittaker in his 1954 book that David Hilbert had derived the theory of general relativity from an elegant variational principle almost simultaneously with Einstein's discovery of the theory.[B 1] Hilbert's derivation of the theory predated that of Einstein by five days.[B 2]"
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Aside from Einstein (and the people he was directly working with, such as Noether), and Hilbert, who else?
    - belter 5y ago
      As I wrote, everybody here, means: The leading experts of the domain at the time and some other eclectic people like Poincare. "Did Einstein discover E = mc2?" https://physicsworld.com/a/did-einstein-discover-e-mc2/#:~:text=Henri%20Poincar%C3%A9%20had%20stated%20that,according%20to%20E%20%3D%20mc2.&text=He%20calculated%20that%20the%20motion,2%20times%20the%20radiant%20energy https://physicsworld.com/a/did-einstein-discover-e-mc2/#:~:t....

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

That's a very good article and puts the other contributors in context. The fact that there was so much discussion between the main players is underappreciated. I strongly suspect that today GR would be a multi-author paper.

leephillips 5y ago
Accepted practice for listing authors on scientific papers is always changing. In older papers you often have people listed in an acknowledgement who, today, would absolutely be on the author list.
- lupire 5y ago
  Because in the past the scientist's career wasn't contingent on getting on the author list.

sriku 5y ago

A collaboration.. and even the article says 8 years of hard work and missteps and still we stick to the "Einstein's genius" narrative. I think the genius narrative is disingenuous to the person and discounts all the effort and furthermore putting everyone else in the position of "are you a genius? No right? So don't hope to do Einstein level work."

jjeaff 5y ago
Well, I think it could also be disingenuous to presume that anyone could do what he did if you just put in the hard work. If hard work was all you need, we would have a lot more Einstein level discoveries than we do.
- Kranar 5y ago
  We do have a lot more Einstein level discoveries than most people may realize. If anything, we have so many discoveries that it's hard to single one out for special consideration. The big difference between now and then I'd argue is that progress is much more incremental today so that it never seems like you just wake up and there's one major breakthrough that comes out of nowhere. Instead we're constantly being exposed to small improvements that add up to significant advances over a 15-20 year period.
  - swaranga 5y ago
    What would you say are some examples where you look back what the state was 15 years ago vs the progress we made till the present and the jump would seem just as profound. Just curious. I felt the same way - it seemed like the early 20th century made so much progress with those visionaries compared what what is being made now. Obviously I am not well informed because that is likely not the case.

GuB-42 5y ago

The way I understand it, out of all the fathers of general relativity, Einstein was one of the only ones who really did physics. That is, applying the formulas to real life observations, or thought experiments, something that Einstein was particularly famous for. Einstein got a lot of help with the maths, but I think he deserves full credit for the physical application.