Paris, 5^th May 2005

France-Culture debate on the subject of who discovered

 the Theory of Relativity: Einstein or Poincaré?

A very interesting debate took place on France-Culture on 22^nd January 2005, between Jean-Paul Auffray and Jean Eisenstaedt, about the origins of the Theory of Relativity. Its current attribution to Albert Einstein has been called into question by specialists who are keen to take an objective standpoint, in spite of the glorification of this man by the media.

Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to listen to the programme, which was only broadcast on France-Culture’s website for a week, but you could read Fabien Gruhier’s article which appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur on 5^th August 2004, entitled ‘Einstein plagiaire ?’ (Einstein the Plagiarist?) and Claude Allègre’s review of 8^th November 2004 in L’Express, ‘Lorentz, Poincaré et Einstein’ (Lorentz, Poincaré and Einstein) which was based on Jean Hladik’s publication (see below).

‘Today, we’ve got to really look at the evidence’ writes Allègre: ‘Einstein did not invent the (Special) Relativity Theory. The first one to discover it was the Frenchman Henri Poincaré. Throughout the world, physics have known this ever since the Briton Edmund Whittaker said so, but few competent scientists wanted to check the truth of this fact. Nobody dared to question Einstein’s absolute genius. Modern physics had put Einstein on a pedestal.’

It is worth noting that Professor Allègre, Doctor in Physics, was also the Minister for State Education, Research and Technology between 1997 and 2000 and that he has been a member of the Académie des Sciences since 1995.

To help you look at the issue in more depth, you will find below some references to books and articles about both the 1905 Special Relativity Theory and the 1915 General Relativity Theory:

• Jean-Paul Auffray, Einstein et Poincaré sur les traces de la relativité (Einstein and Poincaré on the Track of Relativity), Pommier edition, 1999 (winner of the Gegner prize from the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques)

• Jean Hladik, Comment le jeune et ambitieux Einstein s’est approprié la relativité restreinte de Poincaré (How the young and ambitious Einstein appropriated Poincaré’s Special Relativity Theory), Ellipses, 2004

• Jules Leveugle, La Relativité, Poincaré et Einstein, Planck, Hilbert. Histoire véridique de la théorie de la relativité (Relativity, Poincaré and Einstein, Planck, Hilbert. The True Story of the Theory of Relativity), L'Harmattan, 2004 (an abridged version is available online on the author’s website)

• Jean-Paul Auffray, Comment je suis devenu Einstein. La véritable histoire de E = mc² (How I became Einstein. The True Story of E = mc²), Carnot edition, 2005

as well as:

• Edmund Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity (first edition 1910 ; revised edition vol. 1, The Classical Theories, 1951, vol. 2, The Modern Theories, 1900-1926, 1953), Thomas Nelson, 1962 and 1961

[The book of Sir Edmund Whittaker, mathematician, astronomer and science historian, is the leading work on the question. He entitles chapter 2 of the 2^nd volume, which appeared in 1953: ‘The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz’, stating in the main body of the text (p. 40), that in 1905 ‘Einstein published a paper which set forth the relativity theory of Poincaré and Lorentz with some amplifications’. He can’t get clearer than this.]

• Jules Leveugle, ‘Poincaré et la relativité’ (Poincaré and Relativity), La Jaune et la Rouge [Ecole Polytechnique Alumni Magazine], April 1994

[In this groundbreaking article, which quotes Whittaker, Leveugle goes further than the latter by demonstrating for the first time not only Poincaré’s precedence but also that Einstein’s paper could not have been the result of independent discovery and was therefore a plagiarism.]

• Christopher Jon Bjerknes, Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, XTX Inc., DownersGorve, Illinois, USA, 2002

[Einstein did not only “borrow” the Special Relativity Theory from Poincaré and the General Relativity Theory from Hilbert, he did the same thing with Brownian Motion, the equivalence of mass and energy, etc. All his work is plagiarism.]

• Friedwardt Winterberg, « On “Belated Decision in the Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute”, published by L. Corry, J. Renn, and J. Stachel », in Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, Vol. 59a, 715-719 (2004).

[Professor Winterberg recalls that “it has been the accepted view that David Hilbert completed the general theory of relativity at least five days before Einstein”, until Corry et al’s 1997 article. The latter, having looked at the draft of Hilbert’s paper, archived in Goettingen’s library, stated that it was in fact inspired by Einstein! Winterberg checked it and realised that the document had been tampered with (a third of a page had been cut with a penknife with the result that an essential text was missing). Winterberg shows that Hilbert’s original article indeed included the complete theory and that Einstein had known about it for several weeks when he published his own. Corry and his co-authors were astounded to admit that Hilbert’s equations were “correct”, whilst maintaining that they were not “explicit”. It is true that the explanation for this was apparently found within the very text that was removed...]

The question is therefore essentially clarified, particularly following the publication of Winterberg’s 2004 paper:

- Poincaré, not Einstein, discovered the Special Relativity Theory in 1905.

- Hilbert, not Einstein, discovered the General Relativity Theory in 1915.

- Einstein copied Poincaré’s Special Relativity Theory and copied Hilbert’s General Relativity Theory.

- Eisenstaedt and certain others would have been serious contenders for the Lyssenko Prize, had the disinformation to which they contributed, been of a political nature.

The playing down of Poincaré and Hilbert and the deification of Einstein the plagiarist put a question to the scientific community. The perpetuation of the sham more than fifty years after Whittaker’s book, which should have settled the question for good, at least concerning the Special Relativity Theory, can only raise unease and doubt: is Einstein’s case unique or are there others? Could there be other generally accepted historic or scientific “truths”, which are also based on lies?

Even if you do not know a great deal about physics, you will have heard of Einstein. We are appealing to you to distribute this document to as many of your friends as possible, because the Einstein myth is symptomatic of a misinformation culture of which we are too often the victims.