Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist

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Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist

Anticipations of Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity

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Documentation of the Bjerknes-Stachel Correspondence Added After Bjerknes' Response*

The Author of Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist Responds to John Stachel's Personal Attack

Christopher Jon Bjerknes

Jurgen Renn, himself, once admitted, "I had personally come to the conclusion that Einstein plagiarized Hilbert[.] [The] conclusion is almost unavoidable, that Einstein must have copied from Hilbert." [C. Suplee, 'Researchers Definitively Rule Einstein Did Not Plagiarize Relativity Theory', The Washington Post, (14 November 1997), p. A24.]

Corry, Renn and Stachel wrote, "[. . .]the arguments by which Einstein is exculpated are rather weak[.]" [L. Corry, J. Renn and J. Stachel, 'Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute', Science, Volume 278, (14 November 1997), pp. 1270-1273, at 1271.]

In the April, 2003, issue of Physics World, John Stachel, one of the early editors of Einstein's Collected Papers, published what he styled as a "review" of my book Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist. The so-called "review" opens with a personal attack against me stated in particularly meanspirited terms in an alleged effort to justify the otherwise sacrilegious "review" of a book that dares to accurately and thoroughly document the history of the theory of relativity. No mention is made of the facts and circumstances which precipitated the production and publication of this ad hominem attack against me, and I can only imagine that an innocent reader who happens upon Dr. Stachel's statements will find them bizarre and inexplicable.

The truth of the matter is that John Stachel coauthored an article "Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute" in the journal Science, Volume 278, (14 November 1997), pp. 1270-1273, which rewrote the history of David Hilbert's well established priority for the generally covariant field equations of gravitation. The claims made in this article relied largely upon a set of printer's proofs dated 6 December 1915 of Hilbert's famous 20 November 1915 Goettingen lecture "The Foundations of Physics". Stachel claimed that David Hilbert's proofs did not contain generally covariant field equations of gravitation, though the final paper eventually published in 1916 on this lecture did contain generally covariant field equations of gravitation--the implication being that David Hilbert learned the equations from Einstein's 25 November 1915 lecture. However, Stachel did not inform his readers of a material fact in his sensationalistic article. Hilbert's proofs were mutilated at some point in their history, and a critical part of the proofs has gone missing. No one knows when the proofs were altered, or why. Prof. Friedwardt Winterberg of the University of Nevada, Reno, informed me of these facts in the late summer of 2002.

Prof. Winterberg has demonstrated that even in their mutilated state these printer's proofs show that Hilbert had the generally covariant field equations of gravitation, before Einstein. This constitutes positive proof of Einstein's plagiarism, because we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915 in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915. Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on 25 November 1915.

I wrote to Dr. Stachel in September of 2002, informed him that I intended to publish on this subject and asked him to state for the record why he did not mention the mutilation of Hilbert's proofs in his article in Science. A brief correspondence ensued, with Dr. Stachel behaving very much as he did in his subsequent "review."

Dr. Stachel's avowed reasoning for not mentioning the mutilation of the proofs was, inter alia, that the article was an incomplete and preliminary report. I observed that his explanation seemed to conflict with the title and tone of his article in Science, which was dubbed a "Belated Decision". I failed to find a statement in Stachel's report that it was incomplete and preliminary, and found that since this was the case, it was all the more reason to mention the fact that the evidence was mutilated, so that those reading the article could arrive at an informed opinion of its claims, and test them against the facts in the full light of day.

Stachel had tried to change the subject to a review of my book he said he intended to write sometime in the future. I ignored his queries in this line and he presented me with an ultimatum that if I did not answer his questions he would consider the "discussion at an end." I refused to allow him to change the subject, and so ended our brief correspondence. Apparently, Dr. Stachel did not deem it necessary to inform his readers of these facts and circumstances, which preceded his nasty "review" of my book in Physics World.

Dr. Stachel calls attention to the fact that in my book I quoted portions of Wolfgang Pauli's factual statements of the objective priority of Lorentz and Poincare over Einstein, but quoted only some of Pauli's apparently insincere praise of Einstein--fully informing my readers that such praise follows in Pauli's article for the Encyklopaedie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Though I find Dr. Stachel's dwelling on this nonissue petty and a distraction from the real issues of Einstein's plagiarism, which Stachel conspicuously avoids throughout his undignified rant, he seeks to attack my credibility, and I am, therefore, compelled to respond to his poorly thought out remarks.

Dr. Stachel refers to a letter from Felix Klein to Wolfgang Pauli, a transcription of which appears in Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, u.a. = Scientific correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o., Springer, New York, (1979), pp. 27-28. It appears to Dr. Stachel that there is a mutual exclusion between Klein's directive to Pauli in this letter, that he should credit Poincare with Poincare's innovations, and my contentions that it appears that Pauli felt forced, or compelled, to praise Einstein with evidently insincere comments after proving that Poincare and Lorentz had created the special theory of relativity before Einstein.

No such mutual exclusion exits. The factual disclosure that Poincare and Lorentz hold priority for the special theory of relativity rather requires that Pauli's statements of praise of Einstein be insincere, and indeed Pauli qualifies his statements, "in a way," which fact Dr. Stachel avoids addressing. All the elements of pressure and submission exist in Klein's letter, and one should bear in mind the stature of Felix Klein--then the world's leading expert on non-Euclidean geometry and one of the greatest of the great minds responsible for the reputation of the Goettingen Academy as a world leader in mathematics. In his letter, Klein directs Pauli as an authority, informs Pauli of his like for Einstein and Einstein's peculiar remarks, and makes clear to Pauli that he wants Einstein praised, albeit with the leftovers from Poincare. Wolfgang Pauli was quite young at the time and Felix Klein's attitude towards Einstein must have served as a source of pressure on Pauli to praise Einstein, even after proving that Einstein did not originate the major concepts of the special theory of relativity. However, Felix Klein's attitude is but one factor. Einstein had recently emerged as an international celebrity, and this, too, must have served as a source of enormous pressure on Pauli to praise Einstein. But these are many words wasted on a nonissue. If Pauli was as sincere in his praise of Einstein as sincere can be, it would not change his arguments that Lorentz and Poincare created the special theory of relativity, before Einstein--which subject Stachel avoids. John Stachel has apparently lost sight of the fact that I am not the issue, rather the history is the issue.

Far more interesting than Klein's directives to Pauli, is Klein's statement that Poincare, who stated before Einstein that the Lorentz transformations form a group, felt an animosity towards Einstein and that this was the sole reason why Poincare did not mention Einstein in his Goettingen lecture "The New Mechanics". Similar comments are found in the writings of Stjepan Mohorovicic, who pointed out that Einstein repeated (without an attribution) Poincare's method of synchronizing clocks with light signals, and, as a result, Poincare did not mention Einstein in the context of relativity (See: Die Einsteinsche Relativitaetstheorie und ihr mathematischer, physikalischer und philosophischer Charakter, Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, Leipzig, (1923), pp. 23-24, 30).

Dr. Stachel has tried to manufacture contradictions in my work which do not exist and has wondered off into odd lists of what he incorrectly believes I did and did not cite, and he is so vague and timid in his remarks, that I would be required to state the implications of his remarks in order to thoroughly contest them, and in so doing run the risk of being accused of misrepresenting him. I will instead leave it to my intelligent readers to understand that Dr. Stachel's comments are so petty, inappropriate and insulting as to not merit further consideration.

However, it is noteworthy that in his long "review" Dr. Stachel nowhere mentions the fact that Einstein had an international reputation as a plagiarist throughout his career, and that his plagiarism was widely discussed in such reputable sources as the New York Times, and in the scientific literature around the world. Nor does Dr. Stachel refer to the fact that the original 1905 paper on the principle of relativity was signed "Einstein-Marity", or the fact that the theory of relativity was known as the "Lorentz-Einstein" theory from 1905 through the 1920's. There was apparently no room in Dr. Stachel's "review" for mention of the fact that the Einsteins' 1905 paper on the principle of relativity did not contain any references, though it was largely unoriginal; nor did Einstein's 1915 paper on the field equations of gravitation contain a single reference to the work of others, and it was clearly plagiarized from David Hilbert and Marcel Grossmann. Einstein clearly plagiarized the Lorentz transformation; as well as Poincare's principle of relativity, and his concept of, and exposition on, relative simultaneity; and Einstein failed to acknowledge that Poincare was the first to introduce the four-dimensional concept of space-time into the theory of relativity. Einstein's 1915 formula for the perihelion motion of Mercury is identical to the formula Paul Gerber published in 1898, as even Einstein's closest friends noted, with Einstein, under enormous pressure, eventually grudgingly acknowledging the fact in 1920. Einstein's 1911 prediction for the deflection of a light ray around the sun is nothing but a repetition of the Newtonian prediction made in the 1700's, as Einstein acknowledged in his private correspondence in 1913; and Einstein's revised 1915 prediction comes remarkably close to duplicating the prediction Johann Georg von Soldner made in 1801. Dr. Stachel completely avoided addressing any of the legitimate reasons for the numerous accusations of plagiarism and anticipation, which have been made against Einstein's work from 1905 onward. His silence on these issues speaks loudly.

I share Dr. Stachel's concern for the abuse Mileva Maric suffered, with the difference between us being that I properly attribute that abuse, perhaps even physical abuse, to its source, Albert Einstein. I could quote some of Einstein's hateful and misogynist diatribes, or offer up the evidence of his perverse behavior, his neglect of marital and familial obligations, his smear campaigns against Mileva Maric, but since I have already addressed these issues and since Dr. Stachel avows that he, like me, is genuinely concerned for her, I will leave it to him to expound upon these important issues. Strange though, Stachel found no room in his article for citation of my praise for Mileva Maric, and my arguments in the alternative. It would be nice, and it would be appropriate, if he would leave me as a personality out of the history, and return to that history.

In conclusion, we should all acknowledge the importance of recognizing and recording the facts of the history of the theory of relativity and the history of the "insane publicity" which has promoted and which continues to promote Einstein, virtually to the exclusion of his predecessors. We face a moral imperative to give Einstein's predecessors justice, if only posthumously, and we must acknowledge their legacy. We have an obligation to the science of history to accurately record the past. It was for this purpose of accurately recording the history that I wrote my book. I am quite proud of my Jewish heritage, and if John Stachel wants to change the subject to anti-Semitism, I will join him in condemning it in all its forms, and go about the work of a historian recording the facts surrounding Einstein's career of plagiarism, even if it means enduring Dr. Stachel's petty insults. I do not think that alarmist slogans and attempts to render the subject taboo have any place in a scholarly exploration of the facts.

Christopher Jon Bjerknes

Copyright 2003. All Rights Reserved.

Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes' response to John Stachel's personal attack. This response appeared, complete with extensive annotations and references not reproduced here, in Infinite Energy Magazine, Volume 8, Number 49, (May/June, 2003), pp. 65-68). Back issues of this number are still available for purchase.

Documentation Dated 30 September 2002 of the Bjerknes-Stachel Correspondence Covering the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute and the Mutilation of Hilbert's Galley Proofs:

I, Christopher Jon Bjerknes, have been informed that it would be a good idea for me to document the following entry I made to usenet discussion forums on 30 September 2002, which I ask my readers to verify and record at:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics/msg/ce4523ec814fc77d?dmode=source
My article of 30 September 2002 stated:

"Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail
From: bjerknes...@yahoo.com (Christopher Jon Bjerknes)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.physics.relativity,sci.math,soc.history.science
Subject: Re: HILBERT'S "PROOFS"
Date: 30 Sep 2002 18:08:53 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com/
Lines: 71
Message-ID:
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.250.210.101
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1033434533 3160 127.0.0.1 (1 Oct 2002 01:08:53 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Oct 2002 01:08:53 GMT

I have written to Dr. Corry, Dr. Renn and Dr. Stachel, co-authors of
the article; "Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority
Dispute", _Science_ Volume 278, (14 November 1997), pp. 1270-173;
asking each:

"Would you please state for the record why you elected to avoid
mention of the fact in your above referenced article in the journal
'Science' that this document, Doc. Ms. D. Hilbert 634, is in an
incomplete copy, which has been mutilated at some point in its history
to remove the upper portion of one sheet, thereby removing the printed
matter atop printed pages 7 and 8, and with it, equation (17)?"

Dr. Stachel has since responded. He confirms that document 634 has
been mutilated at some point in its history--he knows not when. His
explanation for the failure to mention the fact is that the paper in
_Science_ was an incomplete and preliminary report. I pointed out to
him that his statement appears to contradict the face of the article
itself. My reply to his response states, among other things:

Your statement contradicts the face of the article, which makes the
following statements:

"Belated Decision"

which indicates, without further explication, that a final judgement
has been reached after

"[a] close analysis[.]"

This "Belated Decision" contradicts that which you acknowledge to be
the

"commonly accepted view"

"presently accepted. . . among physicists and historians of
science[.]"

You avow that

"Detailed analysis. . . of these proofs. . . enabled us to construct
an account. . . that radically differs from the standard view[.]"

I fail to see how you could not have noticed that the top section of a
sheet of this document had gone missing, while conducting your
detailed analysis. I could not find any statement in your paper that
it was a "preliminary and incomplete report[.]" On the contrary, you
style it as a "Belated Decision[.]" Surely, in four pages there was
room for a mention of the material fact that the document upon which
you relied had been mutilated to exclude text and an equation. I
suspect that the pages of "Science" would not have been overburdened
by a mention of this material fact in the intervening years.

[END QUOTATION]

Dr. Stachel has mentioned that he has since made mention of the
mutliation in "Hilbert's Foundation of Physics: From a Theory of
Everything to a Comstituent of General Relativity", Preprint 118 of
the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Wissenschaftsgeschichte, (1999). And he
states that he notes the missing portion of printed page 7 of document
634 with note 72, on page 33 and that of printed page 8 with note 40,
on page 17.

Dr. Stachel has also mentioned that he wanted to take the opportunity
of our correspondance to mention to me that he has been asked to
publish a review of my book, "Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible
Plagiarist". He wonders if the complete absence of any mention of
anti-Semitism in my book leaves me vulnerable to being accused of
plagiarizing the German media of Nazi-times. I must confess that I
fail to follow Dr. Stachel's line of thought.

Christopher Jon Bjerknes"

AN UPDATE FROM BJERKNES:

John Stachel's "review" of Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist has been further discredited by the fact that Alberto A. Martinez, Stachel's colleague at the Center for Einstein Studies, gleaned many important facts from Bjerknes' book. Bjerknes has responded to Martinez' article about Mileva Maric's work, and this response appears below. At Christopher Jon Bjerknes' request, Alberto A. Martinez asked John Stachel to state where in Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist Stachel alleges to have found a citation to Johannes Stark. Martinez stated that Stachel was unable to find any reference to Johannes Stark in Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist. In his "review", John Stachel stated that Bjerknes had encountered difficulties presenting evidence of Einstein's plagiarism in the general theory of relativity, which issue Stachel failed to address--from this he recused himself. In Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, at page 107, it expressly states that the general theory of relativity would be the subject of a different volume in the series (the first volume of which has since appeared: Anticipations of Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity); and Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist does address Einstein's plagiarism of Paul Gerber's formula for the perihelion motion of Mercury; Johann Georg von Soldner's prediction of the deflection of light ray grazing the limb of the sun; the principle of equivalence of Galileo, Newton, Bessel, Eotvos, and Planck; as well as David Hilbert's derivation of the generally covariant field equations of gravitation; etc. John Stachel referred to the Einstein quote, "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." Stachel's colleague, Alberto A. Martinez, has recently written to Christopher Jon Bjerknes, asking if he had fabricated this well-known quotation. Martinez could have discovered just how well-known and widely attributed this quotation is by simply searching for it on the Google search engine, which revealed no fewer than 7,800 instances of this exact quotation.

A biography of John Stachel appears in Contemporary Authors, Volume 172, The Gale Group, Boston, (1999), pp. 366-368. A version of this biography appears on the internet in Contemporary Authors Online, The Gale Group, which can be accessed at many libraries. According to the Contemporary Authors' biography, John Stachel is the son of Jacob Abraham Stachel, a. k. a. Jack Stachel (deceased). Jacob Abraham Stachel's obituary appeared in The New York Times on 2 January 1966 on page 73. John Stachel comments on his "non-idealist approach to history [p. 75]" in J. Stachel, Einstein from 'B' to 'Z', Birkhaeuser, Boston, Basel, Berlin, (2002), p. 81, note 57.

The following journal articles also discredit Leo Corry, Juergen Renn and John Stachel's baseless and radical historical revisionism:

Prof. Friedwardt Winterberg's paper discrediting Corry, Renn and Stachel's revisionism: "On 'Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute', published by L. Corry, J. Renn, and J. Stachel", Zeitschrift fuer Naturforschung A, Volume 59a, Number 10, (October, 2004), pp. 715-719.

Abstract for Prof. Friedwardt Winterberg's paper discrediting Corry, Renn and Stachel's revisionism.

Table of Contents for Zeitschrift fuer Naturforschung A, Volume 59a.

A. A. Logunov, M. A. Mestvirishvili and V. A. Petrov, "How Were the Hilbert-Einstein Equations Discovered?" Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, Volume 174, Number 6, (June, 2004), pp. 663-678.

An English translation of A. A. Logunov, M. A. Mestvirishvili and V. A. Petrov, "How Were the Hilbert-Einstein Equations Discovered?" Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, Volume 174, Number 6, (June, 2004), pp. 663-678.

An alternative English translation was published in the Physics-Uspekhi: A. A. Logunov, M. A. Mestvirishvili and V. A. Petrov, "How Were the Hilbert-Einstein Equations Discovered?" Physics-Uspekhi, Volume 47, Number 6, (June, 2004), pp. 607-621.

T. Sauer, "The Relativity of Discovery: Hilbert's First Note on the Foundations of Physics", Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Volume 53, Number 6, (1999), pp. 529-575.

Leo Corry, Jürgen Renn and John Stachel's 1997 article in Science, which does not mention the mutilation of Hilbert's proofs:

"Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute", Science, Volume 278, (14 November 1997), pp. 1270-1273.

Christopher Jon Bjerknes, the author of Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, responds to Alberto A. Martinez' article "Arguing about Einstein's Wife":

ARGUING ABOUT EINSTEIN-MARITY'S HUSBAND

Christopher Jon Bjerknes

John Stachel's colleague at the Center for Einstein Studies, Boston University, Alberto A. Martinez, has published an article in the April, 2004, issue of Physics World, on page 14, in which he argues that Mileva Maric did not contribute to the Einsteins' 1905 paper on the special theory of relativity. In his article, Martinez published a translation from Abram Joffe's "In Remembrance of Albert Einstein". It was almost word for word the same as my wife's and my English translation found in my book Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, which also reprints the original Russian text. I read Martinez' article and wrote to him about the translation and noted that he had evidently gleaned many facts from my book. I asked him why he did not cite my work.

Martinez wrote back and stated that the long quotation published in his article and that which was earlier published in my book are "virtually identical". From my book of 2002:

"Joffe, who had seen the original 1905 manuscript, is on record as stating,

'For Physics, and especially for the Physics of my generation--that of Einstein's contemporaries, Einstein's entrance into the arena of science is unforgettable. In 1905, three articles appeared in the 'Annalen der Physik', which began three very important branches of 20th Century Physics. Those were the theory of Brownian movement, the theory of the photoelectric effect and the theory of relativity. The author of these articles--an unknown person at that time, was a bureaucrat at the Patent Office in Bern, Einstein-Marity (Marity--the maiden name of his wife, which by Swiss custom is added to the husband's family name).'[1]

'Для физиков же, и в особенности для физиков моего поколения--современников Эйнштейна, незабываемо появление Эйнштейна на арене науки. В 1905 г. в «Анналах физики» появилось три статьи, положившие начало трём наиболее актуальным направлениям физики ХХ века. Это были: теория броуновского движения, фотонная теория света и теория относительности. Автор их--неизвестный до тех пор чиновник патентного бюро в Берне Эйнштейн-Марити (Марити--фамилия его жены, которая по швейцарскому обычаю прибавляется к фамилии мужа).'"[1]

Martinez stated that he read this translation in my book before writing his article. Martinez states that after reading the translation in my book, which also contains the original Russian, he then retranslated the original Russian from the Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk with a pocket English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary to create a literal translation, which he then published in Physics World without an attribution to anyone, believing it to be unique.

In my book, I also transcribed in Russian and translated to English a passage from D. S. Danin's book Neizbezhnost strannogo mira, in which Danin stated that the Einsteins' papers published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 were signed "Einstein-Marity" or "Einstein-Maric", which quote I initially found in the German writings of the scholar Margarete Maurer, Director of the Rosa Luxemburg Institute in Austria.

Danin wrote,

"The unsuccessful teacher, who, in search of a reasonable income, had become a third class engineering expert in the Swiss Patent Office, this yet completely unknown theoretician in 1905 published three articles in the same volume of the famous 'Annalen der Physik' signed 'Einstein-Marity' (or Maric--which was his first wife's family name)."[2]

"Невезучий школьный учитель, в поисках сносного заработка ставший инженером-экспертом третьего класса в Швейцарском бюро патентов, еще никому не ведомый теоретик опубликовал в 1905 году в одном и том же томе знаменитых «Анналов физики» три статьи за подписью Эйнштейн-Марити (или Марич--это была фамилия его первой жены)."[2]

Martinez learned of this quote and the name of its author in my book. Martinez also learned of Joffe's attempt to visit Albert Einstein in Zurich, which resulted in Joffe's meeting Mileva Einstein-Marity, from my book. In my book, I not only quote Joffe's story from his book Vstrechi s fizikami; moi vospominaniia o zarubezhnykh fizikakh, I posit the notion that this was the event where Joffe learned that Mileva Maric went by the hyphenated last name of "Einstein-Marity", a thought echoed in Dr. Martinez' article.

I am sincerely delighted that my book was so helpful to Dr. Martinez in forming the majority of his arguments and I am trying to maintain my sense of humor in all of this. It is really quite funny that Stachel's critique of my book is directly contradicted by the fact that a research fellow under his directorship at the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University learned so much from my book Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist.

While gleaning facts from my book, Martinez evidently elected to not mention Joffe's statement that Mileva had said that Albert, "according to his own words", was just a patent clerk and had no serious thoughts about science or experiments. Abram Joffe did not title his obituary "In Remembrance of Albert Einstein-Marity", but rather "In Remembrance of Albert Einstein" and Martinez cannot so easily dismiss Joffe's extraordinary pronouncement that the author of the 1905 papers was "Einstein-Marity", which Allianzname Joffe does not use in other contexts, and which Albert Einstein is not known to have used, though it is well established that Mileva Maric went by this name.

Martinez claims that Albert's 27 March 1901 letter to Mileva Maric, which makes reference to their collaborative work on relative motion, could not have related to work leading to the publication of the theory of relativity. I disagree. This letter from Albert to Mileva came between two relevant others; one circa 10 August 1899, in which Albert discusses the electrodynamics of moving bodies in "empty space"; and another dated 28 December 1901, in which Albert pleads with Mileva to agree to a collaboration in marriage on their scientific work. Albert's plea of 1901 is made in the express context of Lorentz' and Drude's writings on the "electrodynamics of moving bodies"--which is the very title of the Einsteins' 1905 paper on the theory of relativity.

After the publication of the 1905 article, Albert Einstein repeatedly stated that he had taken the light postulate of special relativity from Lorentz' theory, and professed that the Lorentz transformation is the "real basis" of the special theory of relativity. Lorentz had published the Lorentz transformation in near modern form in 1899. Drude featured Lorentz' theories in Drude's famous book of 1900, Lehrbuch der Optik (The Theory of Optics). The path to the special theory of relativity was paved by Voigt, FitzGerald, Larmor and Lorentz, among others, and Poincare published the modern form of the theory before the Einsteins and Minkowski. Prof. Anatoly Alexeivich Logunov, former Vice President of the Russian [Soviet] Academy of Sciences and currently Director of the Institute for High Energy Physics, has proven the priority and the superiority of Poincare's formulation of the special theory of relativity over the Einsteins' later and less sophisticated work.[3] Poincare pioneered the concept of synchronizing clocks with light signals in his articles and lectures La Mesure du Temps (1898), La Theorie de Lorentz at le Principe de Reaction (1900) and The Principles of Mathematical Physics (1904). The Einsteins copied this method without giving Poincare credit for the innovation. Poincare stated the principle of relativity in 1895, and in 1905 stated the group properties of the Lorentz Transformation. It was Poincare, not the Einsteins, who introduced four-dimensional space-time into the theory of relativity. At first, Albert Einstein did not approve of the idea. The Einsteins learned the formula E = mc^2 from Poincare's 1900 paper. Martinez' fiction of an abrupt formulation of the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein in 1905 does not agree with the historic record.

Martinez mentions "early biographies of Einstein." One such biographical sketch is that by Alexander Moszkowski, who stated in his book of 1921, Einstein, the Searcher: His Work Explained from Dialogues with Einstein,

"[Einstein] found consolation in the fact that he preserved a certain independence, which meant the more to him as his instinct for freedom led him to discover the essential things in himself. Thus, earlier, too, during his studies at Zuerich he had carried on his work in theoretical physics at home, almost entirely apart from the lectures at the Polytechnic plunging himself into the writings of Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, Boltzmann, and Drude. Disregarding chronological order, we must here mention that he found a partner in these studies who was working in a similar direction, a Southern Slavonic student, whom he married in the year 1903. This union was dissolved after a number of years. Later he found the ideal of domestic happiness at the side of a woman whose grace is matched by her intelligence, Else Einstein, his cousin, whom he married in Berlin."

In fact, Albert Einstein relied upon collaborators and often failed to give them adequate credit for their work. On 3 April 1921, The New York Times quoted Chaim Weizmann,

"When [Einstein] was called 'a poet in science' the definition was a good one. He seems more an intuitive physicist, however. He is not an experimental physicist, and although he is able to detect fallacies in the conceptions of physical science, he must turn his general outlines of theory over to some one else to work out."

Little is left of Martinez' argument to refute, other than his false proclamation that there is no evidence that Mileva contributed substantively to the papers published under Albert's name. Since the Einsteins are known to have engaged in a working partnership--since they, themselves, discussed their partnership, and since we have an eyewitness account that the 1905 papers were authored by "Einstein-Marity", the burden of proving that Mileva played no substantive role in the production of the works lies with Dr. Martinez. He has failed to meet that burden. Desanka Trbuhovic-Gjuric, Senta Troemel-Ploetz, Evan Harris Walker, Margarete Maurer and I, among others, have accumulated abundant evidence; and Dr. Martinez is free to pretend otherwise, but he will not convince anyone knowledgeable of the facts.

____________

NOTES:

1. A. F. Joffe (also: Ioffe), "In Remembrance of Albert Einstein", Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, Volume 57, Number 2, (1955), p. 187. А. Ф. Иоффе, Памяти Алъберта Эйнштейна, Успехи физических наук, срт. 57, 2, (1955), стр. 187. Special thanks to my wife, Kristina, for her assistance in the translation. I initially found this reference in Pais' work of 1994, and he credited Robert Schulmann with it, but did not give a date. I later discovered that Evan Harris Walker had cited it in "Mileva Maric's Relativistic Role", Physics Today, Volume 44, Number 2, (1991), pp. 122-124, at 123.

2. D. S. Danin, Neizbezhnost Strannogo Mira, Molodaia Gvardiia, Moscow, (1962), p. 57. Д. Данин, Неизбежность странного мира, Молодая Гвардия, Москва, (1962), стр. 57. I became aware of this quotation through the work of Margarete Maurer. Her papers include: "Weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf. . . 'DIE ELTERN' ODER 'DER VATER' DER RELATIVITÄTSTHEORIE? Zum Streit über den Anteil von Mileva Maric an der Entstehung der Relativitätstheorie", PCnews, Number 48 (Nummer 48), Volume 11 (Jahrgang 11), Part 3 (Heft 3), Vienna, (June, 1996), pp. 20-27; reprinted from Dokumentation des 18. Bundesweiten Kongresses von Frauen in Naturwissenschaft und Technik vom 28.-31, Birgit Kanngießer, Bremen, (May, 1992), pp. 276-295; an earlier version appeared, co-authored by P. Seibert, Wechselwirkung, Volume 14, Number 54, Aachen, (April, 1992), pp. 50-52 (Part 1); Volume 14, Number 55, (June, 1992), pp. 51-53 (Part 2).

3. A. A. Logunov, Henri Poincare i TEORIA OTNOSITELNOSTI, Nauka, Moscow, (2004); А. А. Логунов, Анри Пуанкаре и ТЕОРИЯ ОТНОСИТЕЛЬНОСТИ, Наука, Москва, (2004). An English translation of this book will soon appear as: Henri Poincare and the Theory of Relativity. A preprint of the English translation is available online.

Internet Resources for Mileva Einstein-Marity:

Documentary: Einstein's Wife

Einstein's Wife on amazon.com

M. Maurer, "Weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf... 'DIE ELTERN' ODER 'DER VATER' DER RELATIVITÄTSTHEORIE?", PCnews, Nummer 48, Jahrgang 11, Heft 3, Wien, (Juni, 1996), S. 20-27

"In Albert's Shadow: The Life and Letters of Mileva Maric, Einstein's First Wife" by Milan Popovic

"Im Schatten Albert Einsteins" by Desanka Trbuhovic-Gjuric

"Einstein's Wife: Work and Marriage in the Lives of Five Great Twentieth-Century Women" by Andrea Gabor

Was Einstein's Wife Mileva His Silent Collaborator?

Mileva Maric

Mileva Maric on Wikipedia

Einstein's Plagiarism in the News:

Alex Johnson, "The culture of Einstein", MSNBC, April 18, 2005