If one person discovers it, but another person develops and/or publishes the idea, does that count as plagiarism?
I would point out Einstein’s paper on the photoelectric effect, for which he won the 1921 Nobel Prize.
It is based on the discovery of Brownian motion by (you guessed it) John Brown, a botanist who observed pollen jumping around when suspended in water under a microscope:
The photoelectric effect itself was actually discovered in 1902 (Einstein’s “award winning” paper was published in 1905) by Philipp Lenard:
While one could say that development is a laudable endeavor that is separate from discovery (such as the discovery of radiation vs it’s application,) clearly Einstein got a lot more credit than the discoverers.
There was cover story, I recall it as a cover story, in American Scientist magazine, at least I recall it as being in that magazine, back in the 1960s or 70s, if I recall the approximate dates correctly, with a title to the affect ‘How Einstein Got the Prize’ which discusses how peers worked with and around the rules to get him the laureate.
Explaining a result is always valued far more in science than mere discovery. Think of Kepler using elliptic orbits to best calculate the movement of the planets and then Newton explaining the underpinning of gravity. Or, for that matter, how Einstein’s relativity was vindicated because it explained the known discrepancy in Mercury’s motion.
I need to be as emphatic as possible. This is in no way plagiarism in the slightest tiniest bit. Explaining the known is not stealing an idea. Explaining the known better than an earlier explanation is not stealing the idea. This whole notion is horrifyingly wrong and antiscientic.
While I don’t recall Pais’ work superficially, it is well known that anti-semitism, exemplified by those like Lenard, in the OP’s own link, denied him the rightful award for many years. Einstein could easily have won several Nobels if he hadn’t been Jewish. That hardly puts the blame on his shoulders.
My son and I were just talking about this. Einstein deserved a Nobel prize for his paper on relativity. However, Philipp Lenard, who was a major physicist lobbied against the awarding of the prize to Einstein. Lenard claimed that the evidence supporting Relativity was weak and even if it was true, it was not a major contribution to the understanding of physics. With a man as influential as Lenard campaigning against Einstein, it was impossible for the committee to award Einstein a Nobel prize for his work in relativity.
Phillipp Lenard was a well known anti-Semite and even joined the German National Socialist Party well before it came into power. He rallied his entire life against English physicists who he believed stole their ideas from Germans, and later talked about the false “Jew science” of relativity. With Phillipp Lenard’s influence and opposition, it became impossible to award Einstein a Nobel prize.
When Einstein later wrote his seminal paper on the photo-electric affect, Einstein’s supporters found a way for Einstein to win the Nobel prize he always deserved. Phillipp Lenard now couldn’t object and claim that the photo-electric affect was false because he was the one who discovered it. Nor, could Lenard argue that the photo-electric affect was not important enough to consider for a Nobel prize because he himself earned his Nobel for this very affect.
With Lenard now silenced, Einstein’s supporters could now lobby the Nobel prize committee to award Einstein with a Nobel prize.
Silly Putty wasn’t invented until the 1940s. Surely Einstein would have mentally compared space and time to something other than Silly Putty (at least during the 1905 era).
Perhaps in the last few years of his life, Einstein said, “Silly Putty. That’s the substance most like space and time.” That would rule.
Einstein’s seminal paper on the photo-electric effect was published in 1905, some months before his first paper on relativity theory, which appeared later in the same year. His General Relativity theory did not appear until 1915, and to the best of my knowledge, Special Relativity in itself was essentially untestable in that period. Sure, it gave some very elegant explanations of certain findings (such as the Michelson-Morley results), but it was by no means the only explanation available.
It may be true that Lenard lobbied against Einstein, but I rather think that in 1921 (when Einstein got the Nobel) Relativity theory still was pretty controversial amongst physicists in general, quite regardless of any anti-semitism that may have been in play. Eddington’s eclipse expedition, usually seen as the experimental result that got Relativity accepted, was only in 1919, and certainly Eddington’s results were not universally accepted right away, by some American scientists, amongst others.
In 1921, his work on the photo-electric effect probably was Einstein’s most solid scientific achievement. It was pretty important too, as really the first hint that quantization applied to anything other than black-body radiation. The fact that its fame has since been justifiably overshadowed by that of Relativity Theory, should not blind us to that. Relativity was known to be important by 1921, but I do not think it was yet known to be right. Under those circumstances, it makes sense that the prize was officially awarded for the photo-electric effect work.
To be fair, the information from Eddington’s eclipse observations was pretty bad. It would be hard to draw good conclusions from that data. Eddington saw what he wanted to see- proof of relativity. That’s a pretty minor nitpick, though.
True enough, but at least it was some experimental evidence favoring Relativity. Before that, not so much. It was Eddington who really made Einstein a star.
