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The great insight IMO was special theory; the General Theory was I suppose a bit more obvious generalization that just needed the math to be figured out..

pdonis 3y ago
The fact that Einstein only took a fairly short time (IIRC less than a year once he started working on it in earnest) to develop and publish SR, whereas it took him ten more years before he published GR, strongly indicates that GR was much more difficult.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  GR is much more heavyweight in terms of maths. But once SR was clear it was "just" an extension to the same ideas. The leap here was the original idea that gave rise to SR. The rest could have been worked out by most physicist of the time.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > GR is much more heavyweight in terms of maths. As compared to SR as Einstein originally developed it, yes. But note that modern usage of SR often makes use of the same differential geometry tools that were developed for GR--because those tools turn out to be useful even in flat spacetime. > But once SR was clear it was "just" an extension to the same ideas. Again, if that were the case one would not have expected it to take ten years to get to GR. Yes, Einstein had to learn about Riemannian geometry from Grossmann, but that didn't take him anywhere close to the ten years to do. He spent most of that ten years struggling with the physical concepts involved, not learning the math. > The leap here was the original idea that gave rise to SR. The rest could have been worked out by most physicist of the time. This is strongly contradicted by the fact that there were many other physicists working on a relativistic theory of gravity at the time--and they all got it wrong. Only Einstein, and Hilbert (who was a mathematician, not a physicist) after getting key input from Einstein, got it right.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
For special relativity, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity The necessary transformations for special relativity (Lorentz transformations) were already developed by Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré. Einstein's central contribution for special relativity was to reinterpret these equations in a novel way.
- mjklin 3y ago
  Exactly. The innovation was in belief that the theoretical could also be real, that the equations could be trusted. Just as with Maxwell predicting the speed of light or Darwin studying birds—these scientists had the courage to firmly state the conclusion implied by their work.

pdonis 3y ago

The fact that Einstein only took a fairly short time (IIRC less than a year once he started working on it in earnest) to develop and publish SR, whereas it took him ten more years before he published GR, strongly indicates that GR was much more difficult.

rowanG077 3y ago
GR is much more heavyweight in terms of maths. But once SR was clear it was "just" an extension to the same ideas. The leap here was the original idea that gave rise to SR. The rest could have been worked out by most physicist of the time.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > GR is much more heavyweight in terms of maths. As compared to SR as Einstein originally developed it, yes. But note that modern usage of SR often makes use of the same differential geometry tools that were developed for GR--because those tools turn out to be useful even in flat spacetime. > But once SR was clear it was "just" an extension to the same ideas. Again, if that were the case one would not have expected it to take ten years to get to GR. Yes, Einstein had to learn about Riemannian geometry from Grossmann, but that didn't take him anywhere close to the ten years to do. He spent most of that ten years struggling with the physical concepts involved, not learning the math. > The leap here was the original idea that gave rise to SR. The rest could have been worked out by most physicist of the time. This is strongly contradicted by the fact that there were many other physicists working on a relativistic theory of gravity at the time--and they all got it wrong. Only Einstein, and Hilbert (who was a mathematician, not a physicist) after getting key input from Einstein, got it right.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

For special relativity, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity The necessary transformations for special relativity (Lorentz transformations) were already developed by Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré. Einstein's central contribution for special relativity was to reinterpret these equations in a novel way.

mjklin 3y ago
Exactly. The innovation was in belief that the theoretical could also be real, that the equations could be trusted. Just as with Maxwell predicting the speed of light or Darwin studying birds—these scientists had the courage to firmly state the conclusion implied by their work.